A "TOWNIE" and her COUNTRY GARDEN
When we started to create the garden in the country, "Kibbenjelok", I was a real "townie". I was a beginner, a learner, an innocent in all things that grew and belonged to the unsophisticated world of the pastoral scene. Let me illustrate with a story.
THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT {Part one} We were certainly busy during those first years of the creation of our country garden. I was working, generally in the weekends, as a marriage celebrant and Kees had put off his retirement for several years. We would rush down after my last marriage ceremony late on Saturday night. Sometimes I would stay until Tuesday night by myself as Kees had to go to the office early on Monday morning. The first time I stayed , by myself, I thought that our acreage of 140 acres was enormous and rather frightening. I waved Kees off on Sunday night and busied myself with some household chores.
The house the day we bought it
I stopped vacuuming now and again and listened to the heavy silence. I stoked the heater up and indulged myself with a ruinously fattening "high tea." All evening I listened to the deafening quiet of that still, cool night. I read my gardening books and I thought of the wonderful garden that was beginning to grow so splendidly in my imagination.
The door to the renovated bathroom
Around eleven o'clock I decided to take a long bath in the reconditioned, lion's paw legged bath we had purchased from somebody's backyard and had re-enameled in the most delicate, pale apricot colour. I love baths and this antique bath was of a very deep design and sat proudly on the four white claw feet in the middle of a little room which was once a bedroom off the filled in verandah. Family members, who had anything to do with the country, told me earnestly that I would have to forgo my evening ritual of a long read in a deep bath so as not to waste the tank water. We had perceived a rather cynical smile on one daughter's lips as she observed the dishwasher being installed in our reformed kitchen.
The kitchen the day we bought
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