LAST Sunday we went for a walk on Red Hill with Alice and Maddie and her brother Claude (who we had met long ago when they were good and sweet puppies that didn't eat sausage dogs and bite humans). Luckily he remembered us and didn't want to eat us at all. But Alice still kept them both on their leads as they have a habit of bounding into the middle distance after small animals.
Just as Claude is the king of dogs (to me), this is the king of proteas.
Did I hear the word TEA?
Lets have tea up there. That's a good spot for tea. Come on. Lets go lets go lets go letsgo. Claude, all shaven and shorn, wanted to go up there.
I wonder what he can see up there?
Yikes, a rock dog monster! We can't go up there.
This is a better tea spot. Ocean View and Kommetjie spread out beneath us.
After tea we descended a steep hill and thought we might end up in Ocean View, but suddenly the path took a left turn and headed back up the hill
into pink and purple fields of flowers:
Darktip Heath (Erica corifolia),
Sticky Heath (Erica viscaria),
Stoebe fusca,
one of the impossible ericas,
Hangertie (Erica plukenetti),
and the Beautiful Heath (Erica pulchella)
being munched by a large and ugly weevil.
Lots of swallows swooping,
Dougal was a little bit footsore and weary but he kept bounding into the bushes after mice and goggas which didn't help.
Some newly opening flowers of Anaxeton laeve
Is this some sort of complicated dance. Humans one way, dogs opposite? Who knows. But I am doing EVERYTHING that those cool Bouviers do.
Down to the Kleinplaas Dam for a dip.
Another pink flower, a buchu - Agathosma.
You gotta love him!
A Kleinplaas Dam Monster!Cousin of the Loch Ness one that we wee Scots are familiar with.)
Another swim in another dam. We three black dogs were unperrturbed by monsters, but just where is Dougal? Hmmmm?
Someone else must have gone for a swim and forgotten to retrieve their undies from the Metalasia bush afterwards ... or maybe the Lewis Gay Dam Monster ate them.
Today was the last day of the Navy Festival and at 12 noon we saw and heard the 9 Inch Cannon on the Middle North Battery being fired. (Poor Dougal was completely finished by this stage! He just fell asleep in the back of the honda dreaming of rock monsters and bangs.) You can see the puff of smoke in the middle of the photo. The gun is apparently 134 years old and was designed in 1865 as a broadside gun for ironclad ships and harbour defence. This one started out in Halifax, Nova Scotia - which is where Kate and Leanne come from! - and only came here in 1896. It was restored by the Simon's Town Historical Society in 1984, having last been fired in 1903.
No comments:
Post a Comment