Pics from December and happy holidays

Our Fynbos Summer Sale was fantastic:

A bustling retail and mouth-watering wheat-free tea garden treats…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a free guided fynbos walk and lots of amazing arts and crafts on sale…

 

The kiddiewinks were rather happy with the activities available…

 

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Other Fynbos fun included Fynbos Gardening talks, Fynbos food, music, new faces, lots of plant specials and of course, the stunning surroundings of the nursery. Remember that we have these events four times a year…hope to see you at the next one!!!

In the meantime, happy holidays and safe travels. Please note that the nursery will be closed on 24,25 and 26 of Dec as well as  Saturday – Dec the 31st and Sunday – Jan the 1st 2011 ….as much as we love having you – we need to have 5 selfish days of the year to have the nursery all to ourselves will post pics in the next blog!

Happy New Year 2011 to you all!!!!!

Photos of Springtime

Hello Spring!

Bringing mixed weather – sunblock and beach sand in your hair mixed with rainy days by the fire and gale force winds bringing down shadehouses….welcome to Cape Point!

Here are some pics of what we have been up to this month:

Succulents ablaze

 

Our Annual King Protea in flower on the koppie

and Fushia Vygies                                                                                                                                         Oppie Koppie

Chickens and landscaping

Vegetables from the garden. We now only use garden veg and flowers for our salads. As one customer said this weekend: “Ooh, its like a garden on my plate!”

We constantly are being asked the super secret recipe for our carrot cake…

So watch this space  – I think I will have to share the simple delights fo how easy and “moisty” this carrot cake is to make on my next post.

In the meantime to whet your visual appetite: below are some chocolate truffle filled wheat-free chocolate cupcakes.

We are having quite a lot of kiddies parties at the nursery lately..there is a convenient open space behind the playground and the kids pretty much entertain themselves which is great.

Jay&Lotta’s Dreamweaver web chairs   are possibly The Most Comfy to lie in after chasing your three-year old around to get him to drink some water to counter-combat all the jellytots eaten off the gingerbreadmen…and of course for using as a climbing frame as demonstrated below

Spring into Fynbos Sale!!!!

Sorry about no posts in a very long while…the nursery team and myself were working like crazy to get everything just perfect for the sale. It was great!!!

We had horserides, a jumping castle, the playground, facepainting and fabric painting for the kids…

A talk on Permaculture by Omigodwhoisthat (Thats what most girls say when they first catch sight of him) and a Free guided Fynbos walk by Wowheknowshisstuff Rupert. Not related to the bear.

There were beautifull stalls with stunning wares displayed, mouth watering food stalls, the tea garden Fynbos Cakes stall and of course the nursery looked absolutely AMAZING.

A fantastic jazzy band set the atmosphere….

There was a beautiful wild flower display from our mountain and even some cut flowers on sale.

Treats on the Tea garden stall were colourfull and had a bit of Fynbos fusion going on in them….

Ohhhhhhh yum.

Bikes were popular with the cool kids…blue for boys and pink for girls!

Altogether is was a fantastic day full of fun, laughter and, of course, fynbos!!!!Fynbos jou lekker ding!!!!

Fynbos walks and cupcakes.

A wintery chill is in the air. But the wind died down and the sun came out on the weekend so we went for a hike up the Fynbos Walk.

We walked and talked

and climbed and saw some stunning flowers and had a picnic and oohed and aaahed at the magnificent views…

And jumped off boulders like Big Boys.

…well, one incredibly happy body did….

Today, with thanks to the inspiration from Ravishing Rayne, I embarked on making Decadent Cupcake for a Birthday Party order. I first followed the recipe given…but unfortunately for some reason or other they tasted a bit like washing powder(?) so the chickens had an interesting second breakfast. Then I adapted my own recipe (secret one, not telling) and the results were as follows:

<<<cupcakes with creamcheese icing and cranberry and edible glitter decorations     ****       ***Wheat-free rose cupcakes with pink chocolate icing and crystalized lavendar decorations>>>>>>

And Wheat-free chocolate cupcakes with a vanilla centre, choc ganache topping and mint choc ball to decorate.

And here they all are…….

A cluster of cupcakes?

A snuggle of cupcakes?

A comfort of cupcakes?

Well whatever it is, its time for tea!

Bye bye for now…Sweet dreams!

Garden club and lovely Kids of Nature visitors

Business as usual…had another garden club in this past week…

Bergvliet Garden Club. The weather performed marvelously, they had a fantastic talk by Ownerlady while Kingoftheplayground performed tricks in the sculpture tree.

Talks…

And tricks.

And we served them tea and tea and

Rose cupcakes                                                                                 and                               Pecan and white chocolate cake with

My new experiment…Crystalized indigenous flower decorations!!! Yes those are Tecoma capensis flowers on the cake, and Yes – you can eat them!!! And some more tea.

The carrot cake was served and served until and only one lonely slice remained:

Awww shame. And so then I ate it. Yum.

Blooming fantastic in the retail were these beeeutiful Erica’s:

pleased with our morning in the retail, we trotted off home to bake something else.

This weekend our lovely guests at the Fynbos Ecolodge were Petra Vandecasteele and Paul Goddard, esteemed creative writer and brilliant photographer, creators of the books “In Celebration of Fynbos”  and “Enya and James  in the land of Magic” (currently for sale in the retail….get one now!) but most importantly creators of James and Enya…. Kids of nature!

They enjoyed the experience of a weekend in and around Scarborough, including a Guided Fynbos walk and a Fynbos Fusion lunch at the Tea Garden.

And now on a Monday misty morning its raining and damp, just the way the plants like it. There are wet paw prints on the floor, another cake to bake and seeds to sort out and label.

Have a great week!

The Fynbos Family Day!

What a great day we had! Cars were lined up and down Plateau Rd:

There was fun for the kids…and even tigers:)

It was a bit windy with gusts of fresh air, but that did not stop everyone from having an amazing day. All plants were discounted, there was a R40 ea tree section (still on sale by the way) and lots of people must have been planting up a storm this week!

There were delicious eats baked by yours truly (Up untill 3am ) and served with a smile by Mary+Sister#2 and also Florence+Pateka…

We were serenaded by Phillip Nangle’s beautiful african calabash marimba music….putting the vibe into the atmosphere everyone’s step. He is a fantastic musician, instrument builder and artist. www.phillipnangle.com

There were also Talks on Healing plants in your garden by Peter von Maltitz…very, very interesting and informative. He has even written a little book called ‘Natural Medicine for children’  which gives you cures to ailments from earache to when babies don’t want to eat to childhood diseases. its only R50….come buy it at the nursery!

The other speaker was Ivan Groenhof who spoke on his Rim of Africa mountain trails…an awesome presentation with slide show and drums and even lovely Lisa his wife playing the oboe. Shivers down the spine and amazing photos to inspire even the most unfit and unsure to take this spectacular journey on. Find out more at www.rimofafrica.co.za

There were amazing stalls too: Food from the tea garden, samoosas, many beautiful craft, ceramics, clothes, soaps, handmade furniture, art and more.

And that, my friends was that! To those who could make it and joined the fynbos fun – thank you so much! And to those who could not grace us, pop over on our next event (Winter sale I think in the June July holidays) and you wont be disappointed!

I leave you with this mouth-watering display of sweet treats from the Tea Garden:

Count down to Fynbos Family Day event

And so its less than a week till the Big Day -

*x*x*x*Fynbos Family Day event on Monday 5th April*x*x*x*

So much to do…so many public holidays yet so little time. It always ruffles my feathers when it’s so close to an event…Will anyone come? Will too many people come? Will we sell all the plants and have to grow them from scratch? Will we run out of food or will we be eating rooibos cake for two weeks?

Got the display finished today. You can’t imagine the muscles involved in pushing wheelbarrows of plants around. They should really add it to all gyms exercise equipment. Respect to all barrow pusher around the world!

Mabuthi (Or Yourbuthi as Kingoftheplayground likes to call him) did the hard landscaping and I put the pretty flowers in..

and lugged the pretty flowers around from nursery shadehouses to display.

Tough work this flower business.

Especially that 20kg Leonotis.

Then after a quick snack from the Tea Garden

We went home and put on some tunes

And got down to making lunch for the Tea Garden. We have had amazing veg out the garden lately including

and

and carrots, potatoes, millions of herbs, baby tomatoes, aubergines, spinach, leeks, sweet potatoes, onions.

Gosh who needs shops anyway?

So we started making stew

While Expert Chopper-with-the-blunt-knife cut the soft potatoes and cabbage leaves and the dogs were happy with the flying veg that landed on the floor…

All in all delicious and nutritious enough to set us up for the next few hectic days. Tomorrow is more stocking up of the nursery, getting the stall holder space ready and ordering ingredients for the delicacies to be sold on the day.

Goodnight and hope to see you on Monday!

Fat of the land and driftwood constructions.

So the weatherman was being silly when he said gale force winds on Saturday…He meant to say Boiling hot and No wind on Saturday and Incredibly Breezy and warm on Sunday..oh and Nail Everything Down on Sunday night because by the time you remember it, it will have already Blown Away to Australia. Last night I felt like Dorothy in the tornado part of the Wizard of Oz.

Yesterday we went a pickin’ our crops.

There were some very interesting carrots in the bottom veggie garden. We wandered past the tea garden on our way up to the top veggie garden and saw

Pateka (pink) and Florence (purple) who are the beautiful tea garden ladies, delivering food and drink with a smile.

Food like this:

Mouth-watering cinnamon, cardamom & vanilla cupcakes*.

Yum.

*Wheat-free of course.

Moving on – after convincing Kingoftheplayground that they were really rather sour and that there were much better things to eat in the veggie garden – we arrived and got to work.

Well, we went to work

and Pollox

took some

thyme out. Oh hahaha.

We found some ridiculously big carrots:

And some more fat of the land…..

And even found the Sutherlandia’s seeds almost ready for collecting.

This plants beautiful red flower is pollinated by sunbirds and had balloon-like seed pods. It has documented effects in treating very serious illnesses such as HIV and Cancer as well as their side effects such as anxiety, depression, TB and eczema. It is not, however, a miracle cure-all – its real benefits are to assist the body as an immune booster, is known to improve energy levels and gives an enhanced sense of well-being.  Wow people…what are you waiting for??? Why am I drinking this coffee? ‘ Scuse me while I go make some Sutherlandia frutescence tea…….

Okay, feeling great, looking good. Where was I?

Went home. Taskmaster was pleased with our bounty of goods. I said If we were living in the country we would surely win a pig-on-a-string at a fair for these massive carrots? He said No, farmers grow them that size all the time. Well. Even Mandy Doll was impressed with this one….Taskmaster had 5 mins to spare. He had a couple of screws, some wire and a bunch of driftwood. He quickly whipped up two bed side table lamps and this really cool feature light for the Ecolodge. He’s like Fynbos McGuyver. Now I know how to wire up a lamp in a fix…so easy! Even Kingoftheplayground was teaching Pollox how to do it with a pair of blunt-nose scissors and some toilet paper. Dont ask.