Seneca Hill Perennials

February 14, 2008

My sweetie called to wish me a Happy Valentine’s Day at 8 AM today, on Cameron’s phone (1 AM Oswego time) – a lovely surprise!  I hope the card I sent from Cathcart arrived at home today, but I do not know.

One way or another today became the day I felt completely ready to go home.  We had a wonderful day; after breakfast we headed up to Sentinel Peak to see one of SA’s great floral areas.  An amazing place indeed, and I have lots of so-so pictures to testify to that – but most of the areas we walked in were near-vertical, so I expended a fair amount of energy just suppressing a degree of terror, and quite a lot more trying to move uphill in very thin air.  Sentinel tops out around 10,000ft, and I assume we were at least 800-1000 feet below the top, but still, at times every step becomes an effort, especially when the hills are as steep as these.

Our first stop was to see a tiny yellow kniphofia – a whole slope full of it, and I didn’t get any good overall pics, but the thing is roughly 30cm tall, and none of us had a clue what it was (note: John says K. breviflora).  Then we moved on to the terminal parking lot, with its welcoming sign, paid our second fee (apparently some chief has a monopoly on access, so at the first gate you pay 20R PP, and when you embark from the parking lot you pay another 25R PP) and began our explorations.  First stop was a vertiginous, or so I thought then, slope with Kniphofia thodei (exquisite thing), Ranunculus baurii and Crocosmia pearsei, plus millions of other things, of course.  By the time we finished up there we were all pretty well separated onto our own paths, and I ended up crossing to the eastern side of the ridge a bit and finding a hybrid swarm of Eucomis autumnalis and E. humilis.  This was exciting, and I took lots of pics, but I really do almost feel sick when I’m anywhere near those several-thousand-foot drops…scares me silly.  Did what I had to, mostly sitting; also collected some Albuca fastigiata seed and looked at the Xerophyta viscosa (ended up photographing them on the way back); moved up the ridge a bit and photographed Eucomis bicolor in profile, hanging off the near-vertical eastern slope; then moved back to the comparative comfort of the western slope and set off to get nearer the others.  The flowers are just amazing…no point listing all, but it’s just an astonishing place. 

So I inched along, taking pics, checking my footing, at times climbing by grasping clumps of grass and pulling myself up.  I’m not sure I thought it fun, exactly – it was too scary. But there were wonderful flowers all along the way: Wahlenbergia cuspidata (1,2), Eucomis bicolor, Monsonia attenuata, Hesperantha baurii,  Hesperantha scopulosa, Dierama dracomontanum, Hirpicium armeroides, Romulea thodei, Oxalis sp., Helichrysum pallidum, Disperis sp.,  Brownleea macroseras, a lovely red-stemmed Berhkeya sp., Zaluzianskya microsiphon, Galtonia regalis (1,2) and many more (but no pics of them).

We stopped for lunch under an overhang, and studied the landscape falling away from us.  No photo I can take captures that – the steepness, the distance, the endless recession of terra firma.  Then we crept onward, and eventually I dragged myself up to the saddle, from which there’s a phenomenal view to the south of the high crags of the next peak (not sure which that is – must check a map), framed by buttresses on either side and filled in the middle with Agapanthus campanulatus.  I was glad I’d forced myself to do it.  At this point it was roughly 2PM, time to start getting off the mountain, so we eased our way back, stopping to photograph the very rare Eucomis schjiffii, of which Dawie found us few excellent specimens, for which we were very grateful.  It was no stroll – not much less work than coming up, as by then the knees were going, the back was sore from carrying knapsack aft, camera fore, and twisting and slipping in between, and one ankle was slightly twisted (fine now, no damage done).  As we headed down we saw a lammergeyer (bearded vulture) soaring – very rare bird -also a jackal bustard (not rare), and some medium-sized falcon streaking past on the wind.  The views back were spectacular, as the sun peeked out from time to time and caught the rocks, but the clouds were moving in, and the upper ramparts were completely obscured by the time we reached the car. (Here are several more scenic shots from Sentinel: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

After pit stops, water and one of John’s carefully hoarded shortbread biscuits (very nice), we started down in the car, stopping to check out various plants, collect  light pink version of Brunsvigia radulosa, etc.  At one stop there was a local guy peddling crystalline rocks, mostly unremarkable quartz crystals, but he did have one very lovely one that must have been from inside a large geode, with fingers encrusted in tiny quartz crystals; this I bought for Doug, for 30R (approximately $4.20), which I was informed would buy a week’s worth of mealie-meal or 4 beers.  I was glad to get the rock and glad to help the guy out – I’m sure he needed the money.

And back we went to our lodgings. This place has worked very well for us, and been extraordinarily inexpensive, as they gave all of us Dawie’s rate, which is something absurd like 35R per night PP.  Unfortunately, we cannot stay here through Friday night (no space),  so we have to go to another lodge across the dam for the final night.  This means relocating all our groceries, which is a pain.

John and I have produced good dinners both nights, despite having rudimentary tools to work with. Tonight we had a good thunderstorm while we cooked, so the power kept flickering off and then on, a somewhat disconcerting thing, as we needed the oven to keep functioning to produce our pizzas.  All went well in the end – we produced perfectly adequate pizzas and salad.

Tomorrow we will move house, and then Dawie will take me and John to a site where Kniphofia multiflora grows.  Later we will walk around the veldt, assuming we can find a good area; Cameron has committed himself to showing Petra, who has reappeared with her advisor and two younger students, around Sentinel, and I do not have it in me to go back for another day of that.  The mountain has mastered me - besides which, I'm getting slightly sick.

Tonight I cleaned most of my remaining seeds and prepared some for mailing (will give the others 1 more day to dry some more).  Probably lots of useless stuff, but some nice things as well, and some ideas about what I’d like to try in the future if someone will collect them for me.

Getting late now – must get to bed.  Hugs and kisses to Doug on this, the 36th anniversary of our engagement - !