I Can See Clearly Now (Sort Of)

2Summers | 4 December 2011
johannesburg melville melville koppies gardens trees nature reserves weather

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.
Another view of the back yard during the same rain storm in December 2010.
[Christmas dinner](/2010/12/27/christmas-under-the-african-sun/ "Christmas Under the African Sun"), 2010. This gives you a nicer idea of what the private jungle felt like.

At around 6:00 last night, I was sitting on the couch working on my computer. I heard a loud series of cracks outside. Panic seized me. Gun shots? Someone trying to scale the fence? I looked outside and the tree was moving strangely. Then suddenly it was gone. Half the rock karee tree collapsed, and the back yard was transformed.

Suddenly I could see all the way to Rosebank, on the ridge five kilometers away.
Straight ahead I saw the Melville Koppies, which are tantalizingly close but were obscured from view until now.

At first I was stunned. Horst (my landlord, who lives in the cottage next door) and I stood there gazing at the hole for a while. The yard felt oddly bright. But the more we looked, the more we liked the view. Especially when the sky went pink and I took this photo.

Rosebank at sunset.

I went to sleep feeling pleased about the change of scenery, excited for morning coffee on the deck.

I woke up feeling sad. It was cloudy and cold and the view didn’t look that great anymore. The yard was forlorn. That poor tree, strangled almost to death by alien vines. Why didn’t we ask Lucky to pull them down? Stupid, stupid, stupid.

And poor me. I have to move out of the Lucky 5 Star – this house that I’ve loved more than any other house I’ve ever lived in – at the end of this month. That is going to suck, big-time. In fact, ‘suck’ isn’t a strong enough word but I can’t think of a better one. And the person I’d most like to enjoy the new view with, if only for another 28 days, isn’t even here.

I had a good cry.

Later the sun came out, as it always does in Jozi.

Okay. I guess it really is a nice view.

I’ve pulled myself together now. This is how I roll these days. Cheerful and positive one moment, black and mournful the next. Then I start again.

Maybe I’ll have a back yard viewing party before I clear out of here. Don’t hold your breath for an invitation though. I might change my mind.