kirstenbosch gardens

they are teasing me for disappearing into my cabin for so long to write this, but I have to share just a bit more, for I'm not sure when next it will be easy- I had a wonderful birthday- Sam and I hiked up Table Mountain, wandered around up top, and flew down again, landing in a garden. that's a view from lunch, and below, an idea of what it's like on top of this very unusual mountain- long, skinny, and flat on top, plants all dry and spikey, white rocks, hot wind- reservoirs stained tea- brown with the tannins of so much plant life.
and then we pass from such a craggy tumble to the highly manicured gardens of Kirstenbosch.
this is a place dedicated to indigenous plants of the wide variety of bioregions of South Africa, and it was so peaceful to me when I returned the next day- (on my birthday, I was just too wobbly-tired and trying to keep up with the long-legged Kiwi)
Gina, these photos are for you- you'd have an ecstatic fit in here
I spent the day drawing and writing.

we have also been meeting up with family friends from Florida- the son of which journeyed on the first Argo with Jason as they made their way around the world so many years ago. Claude met his wife Julie on that trip and is now the father of two sweet lively kids, and building a new ship for their next life- long adventures- Pop and i had a lovely long lunch visit with them in their home overlooking Hout Bay.. and we've had other social engagements that have taken the potter with the perpetually shredded nails and dirty mind nineteen floors up to one of the most posh places in town to taste the wine that tempers the tongue and eat the delicacies flown in that morning from who knows what corner of the planet. Before the steel domes over the plates were simultaneously wisked off, I saw my reflection- David de Rothschild came up in conversation- I'm not sure how, but I jumped- he's one of my favorite people, and I immediately saw a way to inject words like "climate change" and "desperate poverty" into the afternoon. slip it in, with excitement, with hope---- dead on arrival.... sigh