Kate's One Word Scavenger Hunt 12/03/2021

This week's topic for our picture hunt is Look up/Look down.  This really had me thinking for a while till I realised the way I should go.  So here is my interpretation of Kate's words.  

I searched through old photographs taken whilst driving round the Panorama Route, Mpumulunga, South Africa when we lived in nearby Hazyview.  To give a brief explanation much of that part of South Africa is either Highveld or Lowveld and usually there is an easy drive down between the two.  But here the cooler Highveld towers above the much hotter and drier Lowveld below where we lived.  The Panorama Route took in many lovely sites like Bourke's Luck Potholes, Pilgrim's Rest and God's Window.   That is where the first picture was taken. 

Here we are looking east over vast forests owned and maintained by the Forestry Commission and beyond that across the town of the aptly named Hazyview and towards the Kruger National Park and eventually towards Mozambique.  I like to think this photographs shows both looking up at the clouds whose shadows make dark blotches on the forests below where your eye is drawn to look down.  We loved being up there as it was a way to escape the extreme heat of the Lowveld below. 

This next picture I took of Rosie's Pan where I think it shows both looking up and down.  The clouds above are reflected in the water below. 

  

Here a male Kudu is standing above the water with his reflection down below. 

I have more pictures 'looking up' than looking down so here is one last one of storm clouds building up over Naledi Dam as the sun was setting.  

That's it for this week.  Thanks Kate for keeping us going with your weekly picture hunt. Now off to see how everyone else has interpreted the prompt for this week.

Kate's One Word Scavenger Photo Hunt 5/03/2021

This week's choice is Signs of spring/Signs of Autumn.  I had it all sorted, just need captions when this morning, as I lay in bed thinking I should get up, it suddenly came to me.....a photograph I had taken of the gorgeous trees that had come into flower one year while we were working at Thabamoopoo Hospital in Mpumulunga, South Africa.  So I gave up all ideas of daffodils, snowdrops etc and searched for my photograph.  

Spring in Central and Southern Africa where we had always lived has a different sort of feeling to it compared to the UK.  Here it has been cold and dreary and we can't wait for signs of snowdrops and daffodils to cheer us up and give hope of soon to be arriving Spring.  In Africa we have just had a very dry and (for Africa) cold few months.  The grass is brown and dead looking,  the trees bare and everywhere is very dry.  It does not have rain all year round but for only a few months, usually October or November to April.   Then after the first rains all the wild flowers just appear and the trees burst into bloom.

In this photographs the bougainvillea  is climbing up a Jacaranda tree which is just starting to come into blossom.  The lighter purple tree in the background is different shade of Jacaranda  and the yellow tree nearer the office is a Tipuana Tipu just coming into flower.  I unfortunately can't remember the name of the yellow one.

The bougainvillea in the picture below was an enormous old one and helped make a background and cover for the outdoor stage we built for the concerts put on for the patients.  I have used this picture before so some may remember it.  The ladies in it are staff, either nurses or cleaners, dancing wearing their traditional dress.    Many tribes were represented here,   Xhosa, Pedi, Shangaan, Sotho, Tswana, Zulu and Venda.  My favourite is the Shangaan, second lady from the right.  

Looking at these pictures set me on a search for other spring flowering trees though these pictures are curtesy of Google.  So forgive me for cheating. 

The first is of Jacaranda in bloom in Pretoria, administrative capital of South Africa. **** The city is famous for nearly all its streets being lined with the beautiful Jacaranda.  It is an amazing sight in October but it has many problems, not least being the mess it  makes when the flowers drop.  It causes Jacaranda Eye, itchy eyes for sufferers (B being one of them) for as long as the flowers are out.

                     

Another favourite  is the gorgeous Flamboyant  with its tulip like flowers.   It has very long seed pods,  up to 30 cms long, that can be shaken like rattles.  They are also used in street planting and  are a wonderful sight when in flower.

North of Cape Town, on the way to Namibia, each year the arid desert bursts into bloom as soon as the rains start to fall in Spring.  Tourists come from  all over the world  to see the acres and acres of wild flowers,

Below is a selection of pictures taken from the Namaqualand web pages.  The first being of an Oryx posing in the gorgeous flowers, then there were so many pictures to choose from I just selected a variety of different coloured flowers.

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Yellow  Namaqualand daisies and  purple vygies or mesembryanthemums 

Acres and acres of different coloured and variety of daisies 

I could not show pictures of African spring flowers without including the Flame Lily or Gloriosa Lily.

It comes into flower as the rainy season starts and was always special to us, not only as it is a beautiful flower, lasts well in the garden and vase but is the national flower of Rhodesia and now of Zimbabwe. 

****  If you, like me, are keen on quizzes and like to know  unusual facts you may have noticed I said Pretoria was the administrative capital.  Well South Africa  has THREE capitals, Pretoria as I have already mentioned, Bloemfontein is the judicial capital and finally Capetown is the legislative capital. 

Now off to see what others have posted about Spring/Autumn.  

Kate's One Word Scavenger Photo Hunt 26/02/2021

 

Kate's One Word choice for this weeks' Scavenger Hunt is 'Delicious'.   As it is just B and I at  home these days and what with stay home restrictions at the moment,  I don't get an opportunity to bake for either ourselves or for the 3 hollow legged males in Kate's family.  So I had to think again.  Then I remembered this.  We had done a small fruit and icecream tea for our son a while ago and when our daughter-in-law's birthday came round  she asked if we could do the same for her but on a larger scale and ask all the family to join us.  It seemed a good plan.  

So J came round in the morning and we got stuck into cutting up the fruit between us.  It was not that difficult  at all, the hardest part was buying the fruit at the right time.  I'm sure you all know the mangoes, kiwi or nectarines that say they are ready to eat but take at least a week to ripen on the kitchen windowsill.  The pineapple was the same.  But once we got started it was no problem.  We washed and trimmed as much of the fruit as we could the afternoon before which saved time on the day.  I have a melon baller and a knife that cuts the zig zag pattern which helped speed up the preparations.  I had bought two vanilla Carte d'or icecream, as they always look pretty, one for each end of the table as it was a 'help yourself occasion.   

The beautiful table cloth had been  hand painted for J as a birthday present from her late mother some years before.  The sunflowers just added to the tropical look of the table.  

The more I look at the pictures the more my mouth is watering.  Perhaps we can do it again sometime for one of us Katie??

Now off to look at others interpretation of 'Delicious' and I know their pictures will really get my mouth watering.

PS.  Just realised that there is not an African animal in sight on my blog.  Sorry Lovely Lady!!

Kate's One Word Photo Hunt 18/02/2021

Another week has flown by and for once I had planned what I was going to do.  My friend Threads through my Life is always so good on checking that I am ready and this week I was able to tell her I was all organised.  

The title for this week is 'Unexpected'.

My picture this week is of a most Unexpected surprise ....... a beautiful cyclamen, a present from Katie and Himself.  They were kindly dropping off a little bit of shopping we were needing and this was inside the bag.  It was a most unexpected and most appreciated present.  🧡

But then she produced another unexpected surprise a couple of days ago.  She had been tidying up and found this..........

................a Christmas card, unopened, addressed to us, from Youngest and his GF.  It was an unexpected surprise gratefully received and the added illustrations inside made us smile too.    An extra unexpected bonus has been that when I scanned and enlarged the picture we saw there is a robin perched on the deer's back that we had not noticed before.  Thanks Youngest and GF.🧡

But how can I do a weekly blog without my usual dose of animals from Africam.com.   I was watching the screen when suddenly this head popped out of the bushes.  

So Hello - he was an unexpected surprise. 

This was an unexpected surprise too.  I had just been looking at all the water plants that have grown since the pans and dams have filled after all the wonderful rains that have fallen in Southern Africa when this popped up.    I felt the hippo was actually watching me watching him!!!  (Not good quality picture but taken of  computer screen and the camera man had zoomed in very close).

This blog has been unexpected for me too as I had only planned to use the cyclamen picture this week  but 'like Topsy, it just growed. **'

(** Quote from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe)

Have a good week everyone, take care and stay safe.  

Kate's One Word Photohunt 11/02/2021

The Word chosen for us this week begins with W.   As usual I have searched through my Africam archives for my pictures.

My first selection is a couple of photographs taken at Cat Eye pan of a family of Warthogs.  They are not the most beautiful members of the pig family but fascinating all the same.   Their curved tusks are used to dig up roots and can grow into dangerous weapons.   During fights their faces are protected by protruding pads on either side called Warts, hence their name.

                   

                      Warthog family with Impala in background.

   

They kneel to feed because their have short necks and relatively long legs.  These are a couple of youngsters and their tusks have not grown yet. 

One thing I love about Warthogs is that when you have driven miles around a game park and hardly seen anything but the  ubiquitous Impala, you can rely on a family of Warthogs to be running by.  When they run it is usually in single file and all have their tails held straight up in the air, making it easier to see the one ahead in the short stubby grass where they are usually found.

My second choice for W is a web, a spiders Web spun around the housing of the camera.  I love the symmetry of it.

Well that's it for this week.   Now to go and see what others have selected for their words.  Stay safe all of you and keep well.  

Kate's One Word Photohunt 4/02/2021

The words Kate has chosen  this week are 'Lovely Memory'.  I have been going through my remaining archived photographs, the ones I did not lose, and cannot find the one I was searching for but a few days ago I was sitting at my computer watching a tremendous tropical African downpour at Njuma Game Lodge, South Africa, watching the Impala buck getting more and more wet, the water rushing down the tracks of the dirt road. 

 I did take a picture but it does not show the heavy rain though I did manage to get a picture of a particularly bedraggled Impala ram.  He was soaked through.  

But sitting there watching him reminded me of another time B and I were in the Kruger National Park and had pulled off the road under some trees to have a lunch in the car (you are not allowed to get out of your vehicle at all except at designated safe stops between the camps).  As we sat watching some buck and keeping an eye on a very black cloud approaching, the heavens suddenly opened.  We hastily shut the car windows to keep out the pouring rain and immediately our windows steamed up.  B had a brain wave.  We opened one window a little way and put out an umbrella to keep the rain from coming in and carried on with our game viewing and lunch.  I must say we got some funny stares from another car that also pulled into the same clearing.  

Not quite the correct photograph but thanks for the memory Kate, it gave us a good laugh. 

                  Promise to follow rules next week.  Already got picture planned! 

Now to see what others have posted.  Keep well and safe all of you. 

(P.S.  We have both had our first jabs.....yay)

Kate's weekly photo hunt 28/01/2021

This week's title is My Own Choice.  This is not my most favourite title, I prefer to have a definite subject to look for, to go outside the box, be different.  So I was stuck until Lovely Lady  suggested it should be something that made me smile.   I knew immediately which picture I would use.

B's nephew and his wife live in Australia and S is a prolific blogger, usually full of sunshine and glorious settings as well as happy times with her family and friends.  But every so often her very naughty cats creep into her blogs.  And this was one of those times.  She had posted a picture of her two Persians glaring at the camera.  It made me laugh out loud and when I read the comments I giggled even more.  So I contacted her to ask permission to use her pictures. 

Here is the picture of Angus  on left with Picasso!  According to S.  he was the runt of the litter and was a 'weirdo' so he ended up as Picasso!! 

                           

                    Some of the comments with names deleted as it is not my blog............. 

Comment:            OMG guilty looks!  They were up to something!!

       S's Reply              I had just stopped them from fighting!

Comment:            Such intense stares. Did you disturb their peace?

         Reply :                  They were being told off for fighting!!   🤣😂

Comment:              Looks like they've been up to no good. 😂🤣🤣

          Reply:                They had been fighting......got shouted at!! 😊

Comment:               OMG it's a two headed cat ....🤣😊😊

Another picture from S's blog...............Picasso can look cute and innocent...... sometimes!!! 

Now I am off to see what others have chosen as their Own Choice.  Keep well and safe all of you.   

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