Lost in the forest

Uh oh, they are going off in the Land Rover WITHOUT US. How can that be! Hey! You have forgotten something! Come back! Nope, we have been abandoned today. How depressing.
Turns out they had quite a tough walk so maybe it was just as well. Pauline, Paul and Thea came and they went up the Great Dog Highway to the top past some Orgidekies (Disa bracteata) which is a seriously bad weed in Australia. (And we don't care as after the rugby, and after stealing our Acacia name, Australia deserve everything they get!)
Thea and Pauline on the Great Dog Highway with some alien grass along the way.
Fonteinbos (Psoralea pinnata)
and Psoralea aculeata.
A stinky little orchid (Satyrium pumilum) that smells like rotting meat to attracts fly pollinators.
And while the FL was snapping away at flowers, Paul was more interested in Mandelbrot set patterns like this lichen,
while Thea demonstrated what another lichen, old Man's Beard, is all about ...
The Food Lady then dragged them through wet slippery forests, and through deep dark caves
with strange dinosaur-bird rock monsters,
and over slippery rocks with drippy branches overhead, draped in Old Man's Beard. Not for Scots.
Tea on the top - Pauline, Thea, Paul and the Alph.
The FL was happy to see lots of these impressive Sissies - which is what the Alpha calls Dougal when he is reduced to jelly if he hears the tiniest of popping noises. Their real name is Brachysiphon fucatus and they like growing on the top of the mountain. Grootkop is in the background.
Not really Scottie-friendly territory. This is on the edge overlooking Orange Kloof - Grootkop sticking up on the left.
Then they really went over the top and came back along the cliff face
with good views back to Hout Bay.
This little fern was to commemorate the victory of the All Blacks over the Aussies (thanks to the cellphone link with our human brothers).
On the edge - Paul doing some fractal photography,
and Thea crawling through yet another cave.
They stopped for a snack and to admire the view, and this little fynbos ant ran away with a piece of peanut.
The FL thinks this may be the Peninsula Conebush (Leucadendron strobilnum) - one of the Table Mountain endemics but she needs Alice to come back on the walks!
Pseudoselago quadrangularis.
The Sky Dam - De Villiers Dam - where we have had many interesting dog encounters on the Great Dog Highway.
Star-eyed Aristea (Aristea spiralis) on the way back to the car. And they were both rather tired so we never got to go our for a walk until the next morning. It's a dog's life!

Apologies for the late blog but we have been having Internet problems.

Mink and Manure

Yay, our favourite place in all the world! The Constantia Greenbelt. Not quite on top of Table Mountain but on the slopes of our favourite mountain in all the world. (You can see it in the background.) That's me with my tail up in Le Sueur Meadow. Sue came with us - me, Doog, Dawnie and the humans - and we met Pauline here.
Sue was happy to see that the river was called the Pilot River, which was good because the humans were all feeling rather depressed as the referee in the world cup match let the inferior Australian rugby team win over our vastly superior Bokke. What with the two best teams, Scotland and South Africa, out of the running, there is not much left to keep our interest. We hope, for the Alph's sister's sake, that New Zealand thumps the rest, although our human brother is rather hoping that France will win. I also like France because I am named after Coco Chanel - who is famous for inventing the little black number.
Squirrels and other dogs kept Dougal happy, and me and Dawnie were happy to dip into the Pilot River to cool off as today was fiercely hot.
This part is called the Alphen Trail. The Greenbelts are managed by Cape Town City Parks, and they are an absolute pleasure, even though the Food Lady calls them a giant puppy class because of all the other dogs. But that's what we dogs just LOVE.
There are not many indigenous plants, but lots of pretty flowers like these nasturtiums from South America,
and these Allium triquetrum weeds from Europe that just love shady spots.
We then crossed the road to rub shoulders with the mink and manure set (here is the manure part of the equation with the mink part on its back) and set off on the Klaasenbosch Trail which we haven't done for ages as it is quite quiet and secluded and the we like to have the Alph with us when we do.
This part of the Greenbelt is famous for having a few of the rare and endangered Knysna Warblers that we have heard a few times but never seen. The Alph is reading a noticeboard all about them.
The warm air was heavily perfumed with fragrant jasmine (originally from Asia) which belongs to the olive family. Of course, being a dog, I preferred the scent of fresh horse manure - in fact it was so tantalising, I ate some.
We looked at the large and loud houses - this was about the nicest one - a couple of acres of Cape Dutch house, the stables of which were ten times bigger than our humans' whole house and garden put together! and we decided we could just cope with this "little" garden cottage behind the barred fence of this large estate.
We ventured deeper into the forest ...
with large spreading tree ferns that come from Tasmania ,
and parasitic plants like the Branched Broomrape (Orobanche ramosa) that originally comes from the Mediterranean area.
Soon we had looped the loop and come back to familiar territory, but sadly that meant our walk was just about over.
A quick drink from the drinking fountain,
then the Alph had to chase us back to the Land Rover!

Late spring flowers in Cecilia

We were going to Hout Bay but the Southeaster was roaring so we decided to play it safe and stay on this side. Sue and Pauline joined us and we set off up the newly cleared area of Cecilia now that they have opened the parking area again. Can I just have a quick dip, please?
A Painted Lady (Gladiolus carneus) as opposed to the Food Lady who is not painted. They are quite common.
Tea on the rocks with delicious crunchies, prunes and rusks for the humans and some beanos for us. Yummm, oops I dropped mine,
but its a long way down to look for it, so I will just play Monarch of the Glen.
Under a rock, the Food Lady wondered what these little orchid-ish flowers were going to be. Maybe Holothrix villosa?
Some more robust, scented Drumsticks (Zaluzianskya capensis) that only open fully in the evening.
On the road back the Food Lady saw some little Gladiolus gawleri flowers, also sweetly scented but they open in the morning and wither and die in the evening.
Back into the deep dark forest
and out into the open where we saw lots of beautiful translucent blue lachenalias - Lachenalia orchiodes var. glauca that used to flower sparsely under the pines and are now flowering in their hundreds. Some are quite pale and some are darker. This variety only grows here on the eastern slopes of the mountain.
Pauline admiring the drifts of Cecilia lachenalias.
The smart new parking area has hundreds of miles of irrigation pipes to water the fancy plants that have been planted here - and it seemed likes hundreds of miles to get back to the cars. We were two tired but very happy Scots.