Seneca Hill Perennials

February 5, 2008

Trying to type here under low-light conditions: no more room at the outlet for the light.

Lovely day, though it dragged at times.  The owners of Carnarvon Estate drove us all over creation, or all over the moon, in a 4x4  -truly impressive to see what those things can do.  We went where no wheeled vehicle should go, and lived to tell the story.

Anyway, Carnarvon has vast domes of dolerite on which only the hardiest of plants can possibly gain a toe-hold, and these we set off to see this AM, accompanied by 4 tireless English pointers and one factotum, Dumi, a tracker, stockman, skinner, and general attendant to rich foreign folks.  At our first stop I soon discovered that Dumi had been told to take care of me, because as everyone wandered off in his or her preferred direction I was the one who had a companion.  He did find me a modestly interesting asclepiad to admire (possibly a Miraglossum?) and a clutch of eggs of a ground-nesting bird, and I got to ask him a few questions, so I can report he speaks some English (helpful), is 26 and not the 18 he appears to be, is polite and diffident as one must be in his job, and he tells me the asclepiad is used in native medicine to treat acne (might work, too – they have plenty of interesting alkaloids).

Over the course of the day we bounced over amazing territory and saw such delightful plants as Androcymbium striatum, Stapelia hirsutus, lots more Strummaria gemmata, Disa porrecta, Kniphofia stricta and K. triangularis subsp.triangularis, Cyrtanthus epiphyticus, a Brachystelma sp., a tiny little near-globular Crassula sp. with other succulents, Gazania miniaturized by the harsh conditions, Dierama robustum, Pachycarpus vexillaris and Hesperantha coccinea, but there was some unvoiced sentiment that the amount of time spent looking was not altogether well-rewarded.  The underlying problem is that though this was doubtless once a truly fantastic habitat, it is now a game farm (mostly ruminants: Barbary sheep, fallow deer, many different antelope, Cape zebra) run to produce sustainable populations for intrepid hunters to shoot (in fairness, the animals do live as wild animals and have to be stalked as such), and most of the places we went had been grazed or overgrazed. 

We got back as storms were moving in and went our separate ways to clean up.  We were supposed to meet w/the owners before dinner for drinks and socializing, but I was not especially keen on it, so got immersed in Paul Theroux and “forgot” to go until John showed up to get me, having been similarly summoned from his own forgetfulness by Cameron.  We agreed we were not in the mood for an evening of chit-chat, but in fact it turned out to be quite delightful, as the owners’ son-in-law was there too, and he’s both an excellent informant on the economics of running a sustainable-yield game farm and the problems associated with running the “big-animal” tourist-oriented preserves now springing up all over the malaria-free Eastern Cape (what DO you do with your elephants when they multiply and start demolishing all your pretty trees?), and a great teller of hysterical stories about such things as a friend who tried to smuggle a cobra into the US inside his shirt (it died en route, and he had to find a planter in the airport in which to ditch the body) and about his favorite pet meercat (they bond very well with humans and dogs and are *quite* entertaining, though his wife finally drew the line at the meercat sleeping with them and made up “a little basket with a warm water bottle, a nappy and a teddy”).

Dinner, of course, was yet another variant on the South African National Farm Dinner (which John correctly points out I have named incorrectly, as it’s only the Eastern Cape Regional Farm Dinner, henceforth, if need be, the ECRFD): roast leg of lamb, rice, steamed or boiled (who can tell?) carrots and green beans, and roasted winter-type squash (that was quite good), with gravy.  For dessert we had large meringue shells (excellently prepared) topped with canned peaches and vanilla ice cream (it’s always vanilla).  The red Pinotage John bought yesterday was quite good; he pointed out that there were advantages to buying wine in the Queenstown Pick ‘n Pay, where the clientele is relatively unsophisticated: the wines sit around longer, so you can buy some really nice older vintages, that would fly off Cape Town shelves, cheap.

And now it’s 9:50, and I’m not at all sleepy, despite having been in the sun the entire day and having hiked up, down and across quite an assortment of challenging surfaces.  Will read for a bit and then turn in, hoping not to be pestered too much by bugs.  For some reason, screens are not much favored in SA; last night I had to put up with two bee-like creatures buzzing frantically in my reading light for an hour or so (all attempts to get them out where I could swat them failed), until finally, out of exhaustion, they descended to flat surfaces and I demolished them.  The mosquitoes remained, of course, and I suppose I drifted off to sleep with their little songs in my ears.  And then, in the early morning hours, the hadeedas (sp?  Big fat ground-feeding ibis with incredibly loud cries that sound – sort of – like “ha-dee”da”) erupted at intervals – much more effective than any alarm clock. Well – it *is* Africa.