Spring is in the Air…

I live in the SOuthern Hemisphere, remember?!  On Sunday, spring will start in all her glory… but where I live, we just can’t complain about the weather at all. The sky is blue, the sun is shining, and it is already touching 30 degrees Celsius here in the Bushveld. (In winter!)

I am supposed to sit behind my desk. I have 3 sermons to deliver in the next 72 hours! Tomorrow morning I have to lead a funeral. And Sunday Morning and Evening worship services are just waiting around the bend…

But while I am sitting here behind my desk, I hear the joyful sounds of nature. The hummingbirds are outside in the Bauhemia tree, collecting their nectar. As I look outside, I see a new season unfolding in all it’s glory… So- how could I resist the call of Spring? I just had to go and grab my Canon 400D, and go for a walkabout in my garden. And that is the beauty of life, sometimes the most precious experiences wait for you just outside your door, if you would but open your eyes…

Just outside my front door I planted a Day lily two weeks ago. And it is happy there…

Day lily

At the front gate there is this bush that my wife said I must cut down. I told her about the beautiful white little flowers, and she argued with me, she has never seen white flowers on it…  I am not that good at gardening, I do not know the names of more than half the things in our garden. So Bridget Jackson and my other friends with green fingers must help- what is this bush called?

Little white flowers bush thingy…

And then I saw the hummingbirds in the Bauhemia tree on the sidewalk. And I am extremely sad that the longest functioning lens I have, is 250 mm… this photo is already cropped a lot:

They look black, but when the sun catches them just right (which I obviously didn’t) they have the most amazing metallic dark green colour…

On my way around the house, my eye caught the Strelitzia, a bit worn after the August winds around here, but still one of South Africa’s most loved indigenous plants:

Strelitzia

I walked around the house to the back yard. My honeysuckle is still having one or two blooms- I planted it in a pot in front of my bedroom window, to draw the hummingbirds and other nectar feeders near-

Red Honeysuckle

Just outside our bathroom we planted a pomegranate bush in the autumn. The fruit is so filled with natural goodness that you just can not live without them. They cost a lot for one fruit in the shops, it is a beautiful bush anyway, so why not have your own?  It lost all it’s leaves during winter, but is jumping right back for another season of fruitfulness (i hope!)

Pomegranate bush

I also planted 6 River Bush Willow trees (Vaderlandswilg) outside our bedroom on the lawn, because, as you can see from our winter temperatures, it gets really hot in the Bushveld- we need all the shade we can get during February, when you Northern guys goes skiing… then we have temperatures around 40 degrees Celsius (would that be about 110 Fahrenheit?) The Bush Willow loses it’s leaves in winter, another plus for the compost heap and the warming of the house by the sun…

River Bush Willow tree- Combretum erythrophyllum (River Bush-willow) or Vaderlandswilg

I have no idea what all these plants are called, they are drought resistant, and grows in front of my youngest son’s window…

And so, in a space of 5 minutes, I had a fantastic morning in my own garden, looking for some inspiration for tomorrow’s funeral sermon. And that is the beauty of nature, even in the death of winter, there is always the promise of new life in spring.

So sorry for my friends in Cape Town, they are having enormous winter rain, and snow on Table Mountain. And we are having this amazing winter weather, much better than England’s summer!  I hear there is a cold front moving in from the CApe, and we should also expect some cold weather to hit us over the winter. The winter witch gives her last parting shot. But then, then it is Springtime, an amazing time of year in our part of the world…

If you could forget about politics and crime, we live in a very special place indeed!