Friday 16 July - Monster Shadows

I love to come home and spend about half an hour in the back yard sitting in the sun with a cup of coffee. This afternoon I was sitting there chatting to my brother and I mentioned I needed to find a photo topic. He pointed out this shadow cast on a wall by our bare pin oak. Quite weird when you really look at it.

Thursday 15 July 2010 - Hearts in the window

This is the view from inside our kitchen. The curtains are necessary because of the proximity of the neighbour's house. I took the photo in the early evening and the light was great.

Wednesday 14 July - Glowing Gazania

I love gazanias. I have some in my garden and this afternoon I got home in time to catch the last of the direct sunlight on this one. It's amazing how the tiny ant casts a shadow on the petal...

Tuesday 13 July - Boy with a Fish.

This little statue in our garden has been here since we bought the house. I think it must have been part of a water feature at one time. Today I just noticed how happy he was looking with all the foliage around him flourishing after the recent rain.

Monday 12 July - Wiggly Worm

I was looking at my daisy bush when I saw this little worm with his nose in the pollen. Is he eating it? He must be a moth or butterfly in the making. At least he couldn't fly away before I took a photo...

Sunday 11 July - Zebra Plate

During our travels we heard about the Dedza Pottery in Malawi. We decided to pay them a visit and I fell in love with this plate. I just loved the expressions on the zebras' faces. It will be a reminder of our trip.

Saturday 10 July - Pink Church

I've often seen this lovely little church beside the road. It's just after Kokstad, on the way to Harding. This time I got Mark to stop so I could take a photo. Unfortunately I didn't get the angle quite right so it looks as if it's falling to the right. I just love all the contrasting colours against the winter dry grass.

13 June to 9 July - Trip blog

During this month we've been on the road traveling through Africa. We took loads of photos every day so I'm not going to upload them to this blog - instead check out the link to Tanzania4Tea for this period. www.Tanzania4Tea.blogspot.com

Umkhanyakude - 12 June 2010

We spent the night in Hluhluwe with our friends Dave and Anne, Maggie and Oumi. It's good to be back here in the wilds of Zululand.

This tree is prevalent in this area. The English name for it is Fever Tree. The name was given to it because early settlers in the area would come down with an unexplained fever after camping under trees like this. They thought the tree caused the fever and so it got its name. In fact it was the anopheles mosquito that caused the fever - malaria.

The trees have an ethereal glow, especially when seen in the late afternoon sunlight. The Zulu name for the tree is umkhanyakude which basically means "glows, or shines, in the distance". When we drove into the village late this afternoon we couldn't resist stopping to take a photo of one of them.

Nicholas Meets Clown

On Monday I posted a photo of the clown I made for Nicholas. This is Nicholas meeting Clown for the first time. He's very attracted to the bright colours of course. He's grown so much in the two months since we last saw him. He's such a delight and so busy.