TUNING IN TO TULIP TIME!

Tulips seems to be blooming better than ever this year. I wonder why. Do you think perhaps it has to do with that long, cold winter we endured? Really, despite the advances and miracles of modern science, how little do we know about growth forces and what impacts what.

After a sunny morning admiring the blooms, beds and colours of this year's Tulip Fest, I suddenly got the idea to send a few photos to my oldest and dearest friend, back in Cape Town. If you want tulips in your South African garden you need to plant new bulbs every year, so that's not something that's done on any kind of a grand scale.

My friend emailed me back almost straight away. This is what she wrote:

'Your marvellous pictures of the tulips arrived as if in response to a most irrational need for a chat with you! An angel brought them and I felt so happy - the exquisite colours, your dear face, the unexpected closeness to you all of a sudden! '

Sometimes it's good to take notice of what flies into your mind!

Now, perhaps you'd like to view a few flowers? Well, take a look...

Approach to Christmas

This morning my husband and I sat down to breakfast: grapefruit and then that traditional South African porridge 'Maltabella', made out of sorghum, the old traditional African grain, now eclipsed by corn, to the impoverishment of the soil and all that entails. All four advent candles were lit, outside snowflakes were falling, gently wafting down onto the spruce tree, the birdfeeder and the ground. Inside Handel's Messiah was playing on the radio... a truly beautiful recording. And so I sensed the approach of Christmas, the first of the thirteen Holy Nights, and the birth of the Child.

With the cold weather and snow of the past week, outings have been minimal. Perhaps it was this quiet time that brought the space I needed in order to experience the season, and I'm grateful for that.

I'm also grateful to Radio 2, the French program. Saturday and Sunday mornings I tune in, in order to have some classical music as accompaniment to breakfast preparation. But this morning it felt kind of ironic, listening to the English words of 'The Messiah' on the French program. Nevertheless, once again, I was grateful.

Escape to nostalgia, anyone?

'Five of the World's Sunniest Cities' goes the BBC website travel headline. From deep in my heart comes the whisper: "Johannesburg." And sure enough, the article features the place of my happy, golden childhood years.

I remember waking to a kiss of sunshine every morning (or so it seemed); venturing out to spend time in the garden whenever I wanted... unless there was the drama of a thunderstorm and/or cloudburst to clear the air; riding my bike to school on sparkly, frosty winter mornings that melted into midday warmth... Ah yes.

I've heard it said that, because of the mining on the gold reef, everyone breathes in homeopathic doses of aurum. Perhaps that's why Johannesburgers have the well-earned reputation of being friendly, the local populace cheerful.

Which I am not, right now.

On this April morning when the temperature at 7 a.m. reads minus ten, I'm dreaming of moving to warmer climes, where spring, perhaps, comes when it should. I think of my father-in-law, who, at the age of seventy, decided he wanted to return to the country of his youth... England. And I'm beginning to understand this longing, although, climate-wise, my father-in-law's switch would not have been advantageous. Nevertheless he had a few years of enjoying life in the depths of the Devonshire countryside, surrounded by pastoral bliss. Plus, of course, being immersed once again in that special and stimulating English sensibility.

And there, for me, lies the rub if I think of returning to South Africa. Sunshine and friends, yes, but what about the culture (in the general sense of the word)? Here in the northern hemisphere I've grown accustomed to being in the thick of things as it were. Meanwhile South Africa has moved on - in both good and bad ways.

So I'll hang tight for the time being and trust that April is almost done being so cruel.