Screaming Green, a blissful day in the garden, pronking and high jinks

An image that I have randomly discovered that tickles me, I watched a programme all about" Reverse graffiti recently, this deserves to be up here as well..

Captain..Pronounced "CAPTINE" is a small white Maltese terrier, who belongs to Willem and Gerda, they live across the Augrabies road, directly opposite our driveway. This is a story about him, but in order to explain properly you need to know the terrain between W & G and us and also some perfectly useless information about my gardening exploits.
Our main entrance opens out onto the Augrabies road. It's a B road, and sound enough to deal with the many trucks that travel along it carrying supplies to and from the farms, the tractors and trailers that bump along it, and the many visitors to Augrabies waterfalls 15 kilometres beyond us, as well as a regular succession of workers walking to and from their places of work at all times of the day.
The other side of our entrance, across the Augrabies road, is a gravel drive and as one follows its slope downward ; you drop down into W & Gs farm. We are on the top of a hill..that is what "De Bult" means.
Our dusty drive way is probably a half kilometre up a fairly steep slope, and past our vineyards, to the temperamental electric green gates of the farm. Some days these gates refuse to open at all. Other days, they open half way and just as you go through them, they decide to close.
Jessie Tommy Finn and Little will remember how frightened I used to get at the level crossing when we did the school run in England every morning. Sometimes the gates would start to come down, as I was driving across the tracks..And a loud siren would sound and it always made me scream involuntarily and stamp my foot down hard on the accelerator. They all thought it very amusing..I didn't. Well the green gates at the farm have a similar effect on me.
They are being renovated to make them more reliable, I hope that Moses will paint them white. There is something institutionalised about the particular colour green that has been used, and I don't like it! [its probably just the fact of being gated inside that I don't like]

No green gates at the moment

Anyway..to progress the tale, I worked all day in the garden yesterday. I have found a use for the waste produce, left over from cleaning the raisins at the factory..the dried stalks, rejected raisins and assortment of organic matter, make a brilliant mulch for our dry soil here..So Skelm, the gardener who doesn't garden!, has been bringing up trailer loads of raisin mulch for me. As you all know, he doesn't understand why I like to dig in the garden, nor does he agree with my use of raisin mulch.

Jungle garden

Every time he sees me spreading it, he does a little war dance and points at the tress, and then pretends to peck at the ground. I think [I HOPE!] that he is suggesting that birds will come and peck at the mulch. I do a little war dance back to him that says "I`m cool with birds, I like them pecking at my mulch!" It seems my dance is less articulate than his, as he leaves shaking his head.
So All day I had been busy laying mulch in my jungle garden and bracing myself to start digging the iris boarder that I made last year [the one with Stonehenge boarders], if I ask Skelm to weed it, he simply chops the heads off the weeds, shuffles soil around and looks proudly at his work. Since he refuses to weed properly, I do it! With the help of Bongo and Bee, who usually come and lay in the exact spot that I am weeding, so much fighting for territory goes on. Yesterday I sat watching Bongo doing pronking..Pronking is a new adjective that I have just learned; it's what springbok do when they are alarmed. The word sounds rather rude to me, but hey what do I know.
They jump with all four legs and kind of curve their bodies in the air..when they hit the ground they leap again..very strange.
Well I realise that Bongo does two legged pronking, when he has the scent of something, it's usually an insect of some kind, but I always think it may possibly be a scorpion or worse..a snake. [don't worry..I have my "Bronco Lane Throwing knife" with me at all times, as well as my Machete.] Bongo jumps up into the air, [leaving his hind legs firmly planted on the ground] and bounces on the spot, but with his head arched fiercely down, nose pointing at what he has spotted, and with his ears cocked firmly forward.
He had been doing this in the iris border for some time and had then become distracted by something else. So I left the border for a few minutes and then attacked the weeds, making lots of noise, to ward off anything unpleasant. I leant over the Stonehenge border and rested a hand on the soil while I went to dig with the short fork. My left hand made contact with something cool, squidgy and flesh like, and it was moving under my hand.... My screech defied anything that I had hitherto used exiting our green gate or going over level crossings.
I leapt up, shaking my hands furiously..it was a large ugly TOAD!! Bongo and Bee lay in the irises and watched me, racing around in circles on the lawn, shouting "Yuck..Yuck YUCK!" and waving my hands as if there was something still attached to them. They were as impressed with me, as I was with Bongs pronking earlier.
By around 3.00pm Bongs and Bee, had had enough of "helping me in the garden" and had retired inside to sleep, it being around 27 degrees. I was covered in filth, I can't use gloves, so my hands were covered in dried mud , fingernails black, I had large oval patches of dirt on the knees of my jeans and my hair was slapped to my skull..[I must remember to find a hat for gardening]..This is how I like to work in the garden..real hands on stuff.

new braai room raised borders

Grass freshly mown and growing

At a certain moment I had the sense of being watched, and turned around to see a small white dog considering my every action. When he saw me he wiggled with delight..it was Captine, G& W`s Maltese terrier, who is a great character, in his head he thinks that he is a really BIG dog!. Never ever has he been anywhere near our farm, let alone inside our green gates. Mercifully Bongs and Bee had not picked up his scent, so he jumped around and had some fun with me, until we heard Bongs scratching at the front door.
I knew it would take him only moments to reach the open bedroom doors, so I whisked Captine up and headed for the car, sadly Bongo and Bee caught us. Bee was delighted by Captine and I would have put him down if it were just her, but Bongo was growling in a very meaningful way and a ridiculously brave Captine was reciprocating like he was some kind of match for Bongs. The incident almost made ME break out into a PRONK!

blue wall and raised beds.

After much juggling, I managed to get Bongs and Bee inside the house and Captine into the car, and whisked through the open gates [that's how he got in] and down to W& G`s. Now Captine loves to drive..and I really mean drive. [ I drove him and Gerda to the club house one evening]. Captine places his back feet on the driver's thighs and his front feet on the steering wheel, following its movement like a hamster in an exercising ball, and stretching his head upward so that he can see out of the windscreen. So it was in this manner that we arrived at W&G`s farm. They were not there but their gardener and lady who "does" were. Neither speaks English.

So I hopped from the car, forgetting the state I was in, and started to do my dancing explanation of why I had a wriggling little Captine in my arms. Honestly their eyes just got wider and wider.

You know when you sense someone is not understanding you, you become even more exadurated in your speech. Well without any recognisable speech for them, I just acted out [or danced as I like to call it] the sequence of events that I felt had brought Captine to my garden...Not a good idea, both seemed frightened at this point and I could see that they were fearful for Captine`s safety..So I released him, and the lady hurriedly scooped him up and raced him into the house.

It was only when I returned to the farm entering via our bedroom and into the bathroom that I saw the dreadful state that I was in..covered in mud .Filth, smeared across my face..twigs in my hair..sodden dirty jeans, and the black hands, Hey ho, I wonder if they will know who I was, and I bet that they don't tell W&G.

Random picture from the jungle garden.