Instagram for Art’s Sake: All shot this evening at sunset, at the Lucky 5 Star.
gardens
All posts tagged gardens
Tomorrow is Heritage Day, a South African public holiday.
South Africa has lots of public holidays. I have trouble keeping track of them and what they mean. Heritage Day is pretty simple though — it’s a day to celebrate South Africa’s heritage. This can mean basically anything, because South Africa, like the United States, is a very diverse place with lots of different heritages. So basically, Heritage Day is an excuse to take the day off from work and do fun cultural things. Heritage Day falls on a Monday this year, which means we have a whole long weekend of cultural celebrations to choose from.
Today, my friend Horst and I celebrated Heritage Day weekend by going on a tour of private gardens in Upper Houghton, sponsored by a local charity called Gardens of the Golden City. Continue Reading
Installment #2 in the Instagram for Art’s Sake series.
A tree fern in the garden of the Lucky 5 Star. New fronds are in the foreground, old fronds are in the background.
I recently sat in my therapist’s office, weaving my latest tale of woe. When I finished, she looked at me in that measured way that therapists do, and said:
“How ready are you to really work on yourself?”
My stomach seized up. I wanted to scream, “Not ready at all!” and run from the room. But I didn’t. I sat and thought for a moment.
“I guess I’m ready.” Continue Reading
A couple of hours ago I was sitting on my deck, looking out at the Melville Koppies. It was a beautiful fall afternoon, and a public holiday to boot. I felt like going for a walk on the koppies and taking pictures.
Six months ago, I would have turned to Jon and said, “Let’s go for a walk on the koppies and take pictures.” And we would have gone right then, and it would have been lovely. But you see, this is one of the many reasons why it sucks when your boyfriend dies. Jon isn’t here anymore and I can’t just walk up onto the koppies alone. Much as I hate to admit it, walking alone on the koppies isn’t safe.
I’m sure I could have found someone else to take a walk with. I didn’t feel like it though. Continue Reading
Yesterday I had a picnic with the girls in the rose garden at the Johannesburg Botanical Gardens.
Under a tree in the rose garden on a quiet Wednesday afternoon. It was the perfect picnic spot.
I’ve been to the rose garden many times and I wrote a post about it once, a million years ago. I hadn’t planned to blog about yesterday’s outing. But it was such an enjoyable experience that I decided it was blog-worthy. Especially because, for the first time ever, I got some decent photos of the amazing roses there. Continue Reading
I went onto my deck this morning and found a curious insect resting on a green plastic chair. It appeared to be part beetle, part moth, part butterfly. Let’s call him a beetherfly.
The beetherfly.
His wings were round like a beetle’s. His body was flat like a moth’s. The way he slowly flexed his wings in and out reminded me of a butterfly. Continue Reading
I shot some photos in the garden the other day. All were snapped within a 10-foot radius of each other, although I shot half while looking down and the other half while looking up. The ‘down’ shots were taken in the middle of the afternoon and the ‘up’ shots were taken at sunset.
There’s no need to search high and low for beauty around here. It’s everywhere you look.
LOW
Tiny wildflower.
As long as I’ve lived here, the view from the deck at the Lucky 5 Star has been a wall of green. It was one of my favorite things about the house — the back yard felt like a private jungle, filled with unruly indigenous plants and flowering creepers (the creepers are pretty, but invasive).
Yesterday, the creepers got the best of the yard’s largest indigenous plant — a twisty rock karee tree.
Here’s a shot taken from the deck, exactly a year ago during a summer rain storm. You can see a limb of the rock karee tree shooting off to the left. The other limbs are obscured by creepers.
This post was supposed to be about a photowalk. Most of you know that I’m part of the Joburg Photowalkers; last Saturday we did a walk around St. John’s College, the oldest prep school in Jozi. It’s a beautiful campus — very Dead Poets Society. It was a lovely place to explore and I enjoyed it.
The courtyard at St. John’s. It was a Saturday, unfortunately, so there were no cute high school boys walking around in jackets and ties.
As I edited through my pictures of St. John’s, I realized this post should be about something else. Or rather someone else. This post is about Joe. Continue Reading
