A Maludious afternoon.

My friend Malu grew up in the beautiful Stellenberg, a manor house built in the early 1800's and home to her family for some 80 years.


Its glorious gardens are the work of Malu's mother, Sandy Ovenstone, and they are every bit as beautiful, timeless and gracious as their creator.


This formal garden was designed by the great David Hicks, it consists of two symmetrical knot gardens seperated by an arched walkway.



Over time, Sandy grew a little tired of its relentless rigidity and in a show of feminine triumph, some unruly flowering was allowed to flourish. In deference to the good Sir Hicks, Sandy still maintains one side in his original design.



If you ask me, Sandy's wild interpretation is altogether more endearing. The garden is divided into many themed 'garden rooms', each with a unique style and purpose.

This then is the garden of contemplation...

And this a little herb garden, surrounded by a much larger vegetable one. Malu wont let you leave without a few armfulls of whatever is ripe and abundant on the day of your visit. (I'll be cooking melezane for weeks at this rate!) Everywhere you look is a feast for the senses. Fountains. Old wrought iron gates. Garden walls with the patina of centuries.

Its a place of bliss.

And there are lots of smaller houses on the estate.

If you want to wake up to the view from the window in this lovely old homestead when you next visit Cape Town, it's available for short lets. But only to very nice people.

And of course, only very nice people read this blog.

xxx

elle

Ways of dying...

On the way home from a few days at the cottage at Boulders, I drove through Fish Hoek, and saw a search and rescue helicopter circling above the beach.

I could see a life saver's boat being tossed about in the rough surf, and like one of those ghastly people, who slow down to look through splayed fingers at the scene of a car crash, I went down to the beach to investigate!

Worse still, a friend who had followed behind me by car, joined me (at my encouragement) for an eye-witness account! O the shame!

I guess I was expecting an exciting rescue of some sort, I have seen bathers being pulled from the sea, and fishing vessels run aground on the rocks close by. All these encounters ended happily.

But not today.

Instead, the Shark warning flag was up.

There are look-out towers on the mountain slopes, that enable 'shark watchers' to warn the life guards on duty when there are great white sharks, coming in close proximity to bathers or surfers. The guards then raise a flag, and a siren signals people to leave the water.

In fact, unbeknownest to us, earlier in the day, a warning had been issued through the print and internet media, advising the people of Cape town of increased Great White activity in the False bay area.

It was too little, too late for Lloyd Skinner, a 37 year old engineer visiting from Zimbabwe, who died in the jaws of a shark some twenty minutes before we drove by.

Just a man, visiting the beach with his girlfriend on a beautiful summer's day. Who could have imagined such an outcome, to such a wholesome, innocent quest.

I drove home, sobered by the terrible news, ashamed of my insensitive curiosity and bemused by the fate of this man. When Tyne Daly, an elderly local, died in the same way, some four years ago I felt the same puzzlement.

Of all the ways to die, this most primal, savage end seems inexplicable. Out of the billions of people that inhabit this earth, only a very few will die this way. Mr Nielson better known as Sid, always says that everyone has to die, and there are lots of ways of dying. But it seems absurd to think that someones destiny can include such an ending. Dying at the jaws of a Great White Shark.

The next morning at Cafe Neo, my friends and I watched foreign tourists take photo's of the newspaper headlines. 'Fatal shark attack at Fish Hoek
beach'.

Something to show the folks back home...

Tiptoe through the boudoir with me.

I find Skye, flushed and elated at the top of the stairs.

'Mum', she announces, 'I've tidied my boudoir.'

Of course I know without asking, that no broom, mop or polish has found its way to those rooms.

That child has been moving her things around again!

In fact, Skye is so delighted with the results that she has taken some photo's!

Frames from Cape to Cairo;

Assorted paper mache roses;

Old paintings by Skye, sewn together with ribbon and thread;


Tiny bits of her travelling tales;

Little pieces of beauty made or found...

It's late at night and the family cluster together in little constellations of familial connections.

There's no place on earth I'd rather be...

xxx

elle

The edge of love.

Open a pathway through the slow sad sail


Throw wide to the wind the gates of the wandering boat

For my voyage to begin to the end of my wound.

We heard the sea sound sing, we saw the salt sheet tell.

Lie still, sleep becalmed, hide the mouth in the throat,

Or we shall obey, and ride with you through the drowned,

Dylan Thomas.

Images from The edge of love,

The stuff of dreams.

Mr Nielson better known as Sid, and I were strolling along, taking in the excitement of the Christmas shoppers in our local mall. You could feel the last minute frenzy, that seems to panic everybody, as the 25th of December draws near.

'There is a lot of stuff in the world', Mr Nielson said sagely.

I nodded gently, in my all knowing way, allowing Mr Nielson better known as Sid, to continue.

Thus encouraged, he went on, warming to the subject, (as he is wont to do), and soon we were having a perfectly, lovely chat about the material world as we know it.

Mr Nielson recognises, that the more people become caught up in the desire for more and more things, (or stuff as Mr Nielson like to call it,) the emptier they feel.

Mr Nielson calls this 'stuffology'; a modern day ailment, with only the most meta-physical of cures.

Of course, Mr Nielson does not complain when said 'stuffologists', come into his store, looking to add a few pretty jewels to their collection!

In truth, I am not unfamiliar with the affliction.

Any girl worth her salt, knows how to collect a thing or two, for goodness sake! My own malady, finds its fullest expression in the stuff of art and books, one of the most chronic forms of the condition!

There is a lovely joy, in finding beauty in a collection of special things, that each add to the whole.

And there is something quite magical, in the way in which grouping things together, can create an order, and form that would otherwise be absent.

Even Mr Nielson knows, that sometimes more is MORE!

xxx elle

Love the difficult.

What is required of us is that we love the difficult and learn to deal with it.

In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us.

Right in the difficult we must have our joys, our happiness, our dreams: There against the depth of this background, they stand out, there for the first time we see how beautiful they are.

Rainer Maria Rilke ( Selected Letters)

Where the sock things are.

It's that time of year when Witeka, the char goes home for a month to visit her family in the Eastern Cape.

And thus, one early morning, but only when forced to... you venture into the bowels of the laundry room to unearth the year's secrets.

It takes a few days at the very least, to get the room looking like it did at the same time last year.

When I am at last spent, there are piles of freshly ironed laundry, a shining floor, machinery that gleams inside and out, and....

At least a basket full of single socks!

One of lifes unanswerable mysteries...remains unsolved.

xxx elle

All I'd want for Christmas...

If I celebrated Christmas...sigh,

I'd want a few of these around my Christmas stockings!

No wonder that Valentino has such a big yacht!

xxx elle

You can't keep a good girl down!

It didn't take long for Leslie Oschman of Anthropologie fame, to move on to interesting and new things in the world of creative possibility.

Not content with the extraordinary achievements, of the covetable lifestyle brand, she helped to establish, Leslie is now commissioning artwork, on the retro pieces of furniture she has sourced.

It's a reinvention of that Bloomsbury penchant, for adding a lick of paint to everything and the kitchen sink! Just the inspiration needed, to brush up on a bit of furniture of my own... And I'm liking that dog a lot too!

xxx elle