Here are some recent photos from just "around", and a few notes to go along with them.
We're still loving having Alan around the place, even though the testosterone level in the house has been thrown so totally out of balance. I'm seriously considering getting at least a few more female animals around or something. 3 male dogs, 2 boys and 7 sports channels on TV... Or maybe redecorating the house... in shades of pink and lilac or you know, along those lines.
So, what is the queen to do?
Besides put them to work (obviously):
A & J1 pruning the snot out of our overgrown peach tree. Desperately needed. Now we might actually get fruit this year that won't be the size of a golf ball, but rather actual peach-sized peaches?!?
Also in the last week or two I planted a passionfruit vine and a grape vine. I have no faith in my own ability to cultivate edible plants, but we'll see if maybe the warm and dry Botswana climate can do it for me. With the help of the great Irish slave-boy, I also planted chillies, sweet peppers, cucumbers and coriander in the vegetable garden. I aspire to make my own salsa by the end of this coming growing season. The gardener laughed at me because I've obviously not sown a single seed since my 3rd grade botany project. I had seeds everywhere and he overheard me telling Alan to space them out in "exactly 30cm spacings". whatever! apparently that's not necessary when you can transplant them later on in the year. who knew?!
While I was busy out there, I noticed some weavers have begun building their nest in one of our other climbers on the pergola:
Speaking of birds, we suspect there is a crested barbet building a nest in one of the trees in our yard. Actually, not the tree itself but in a log that we nailed to the tree, which we took over from the Polsons. Fingers crossed.
The landlords came by last week to check us out. They live in the West Indies and were back in BW for a visit/general stuff. They said we weren't keeping the pool clean enough and we said "but it's winter" and that was pretty much the end of that. I think they realize they got some good renters in the place and we're obviously not wrecking the joint. She nearly had a go at J1 for not mowing the lawn enough but before she even went down that road he reminded her that we'd just had frost the night before so I think that was the end of that thread. Either way, I suppose we can understand, I mean, not a day goes by that we don't breathe a sigh of relief that those nice (clean) Swedish boys who are living in our house back in Ireland aren't a bunch of irresponsible scumbags or something.
The road to fitness (and summer i.e. swimsuit time) is still going strong. We're still climbing the mountain 2x per week, yoga (Alan in tow) and J1 playing tennis on mondays, plus we manage to work a run or something-or-other into another day during the week. Sprinter Lynch is pushing us to the point where we're actually running up the mountain (from about halfway up - where the track starts) rather than climbing. We're getting there. If we can only pull off about another 100m, we'll be there. But of course the last hundred metres is the steepest and most uneven and looks like Mount Everest. But I'm enjoying the feeling of having legs-of-jelly. It's been a long time since I've had that feeling.
This weekend the boys were filling up at a petrol station and J1 saw some guys moving a roof tent, in the back of a bakkie. So he went up to them and offered them money for it on the spot (without even asking if they would consider selling it), seeing as they obviously weren't using it (come on, it was in the back of their bakkie!). So, they realized their chance to make a quick 3k right then and there had arrived, and lo and behold the tent is ours! It's a total bargain considering new ones retail at 7k. It's brand new and would have only been sitting in those guys' garage. Now it has a nice comfy new home on the top of a lovely '93 Pajero, where it'll get lots of abuse scraping along thorn tree branches and will enjoy a wide variety of foreign bodies sleeping in it throughout the year! (We will kindly be offering it to our visitors and taking the old trusty ground tent for ourselves - that is until said visitors realize how much of a pain it is to get in & out, up & down etc. in the middle of the night when nature calls).
So anyway, now we just have to get a rack welded onto the top of the rig and fix the tent on, and we're 2 items closer down to the bottom our never ending 4x4 (standing at the bottom of a diesel tank tearing up dollar bills) wish-list. We're going to take it on a test run with Alan this weekend, in Khutse. Can't wait. Photos to come.
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