Bram's No-Party BDay

View from our roof terrace.

Bram’s BDay – ever since his the full monty 50th birthday bash he refuses to have a party. Okay, buying & butchering a goat is a hassle, but even a simple boerwors do is out of the question... To celebrate his 56th he invited ‘our’ welder Shorty to help him build a carport.

A huge carport at that - to fit our future new(ish) Toyota Land Cruiser 70 series pick-up:-) We managed to narrow our shortlist down to that one, which already is a big step forward. Now we have to get and compare quotes for brand-new ones, and look what is available second-hand. He didn’t escape the live congrats totally, cause at the end of the day Hamish and Mpho dropped in on their way back from bike-racing around Rasesa.

Sunday after party! Inga & Andres and their kids came over for a mellow long lunch afternoon. So when Greetje & Arend made a surprise visit we could receive them in a clean house, and offer nice refreshments. People hardly ever drive ‘all the way’ to Morwa for a surprise visit so it’s really nice when that happens!

Another surprise: Mme Binkie walked over with het grandson (our linguist) and her lastborn granddaughter to show the dresses she had the seamstress make out of the cloth we brought her from South Africa. Our by now traditional X-mass present for her is enough metres of Germin or Shweshwe for a new dress. Maduo was so proud of her new dress, same same as nkuku- she couldn’t stop showing of like a real top model

About the traditional fabric Shweshwe

Maduo’s companions will match her beautiful dress after their thorough bath.

At the end of the afternoon it cooled down enough to go for a walk. It even looked like it might rain, but that was again a no go. It’s so beautiful to hike in the bush, and it’s so close to our house – but somehow we only get round to doing that when we have visitors...

Afternoon shadows.

Afternoon nap.

Is this our wake cup call?

Yes, Louis is Maud’s special dog. Though he doesn’t agree he’s a dog; he’s a human caught in a dog’s body, as he already noticed when he was about three weeks old.

Our neighbours Bennie, Thuto and Tintere all set for school.

More neighbours; three generations of Thamage-ladies. Baby Maatla Rianne is ours because we helped deliver her.

The first of our many citrus trees that’s carrying fruit – loads of fruit. This one was bought at the expensive posh nursery Sanitas, and just for once we clearly didn’t buy a lemon. In general the stuff we get from Sanitas isn’t even that good; the community project Mokolodi Indigenous Nursery provides way better plants.

Maud did a lot of citrus trees from cuttings end of 2009. The survivors do quite well – this one looks like it might give us fruit in two or three years. They tend to be attacked by caterpillars, but the Afrikaantjes (Marigolds) should take care of that. Inez gave us a bunch of seedlings end of 2011. They are thriving; we are already on our third generation of self-seeded new plants.