Sunset Promenade

The late afternoon down at the beachfront promenade is truly the golden time of day.   The sun starts to set around quarter to eight and families flock to the beach to enjoy the best time of the hot summer's day. 

Some set up picnic table and rugs on the rocks and others take the opportunity to get in a little fishing or a leisurely amble.  It's a particularly friendly time of the day when people are more likely to chat to strangers, especially if there's a cute dog involved, and to smile at small children riding tricycles or scooters.

Umbrellas are still necessary as the temperature's still pretty fierce and the setting sun is reflected in the wineglasses raised for a surreptitious toast (alcohol is actually banned from the beaches) but to expect Capetonians who live, after all, in the midst of the most splendid vineyards, to salute the setting of the sun without a toast is an exercise in futility.

The dying sun adds sparkle to beachfront apartments ...

... and turns the whole beachfront stretch into a golden mile.

Blogger's Block

I've been suffering through a long period of complete inability to post anything at all on my blog.  I could blame the heat, lack of inspiration, the pressure of beginning of the year workload, or I could be honest and just admit that I've been feeling down and dull and unable to see anything interesting around me.

I subscribe to several newsletters which have recently commented on this subject, so it seems I'm not the only sufferer.  The main piece of advice they advocate is just to start writing something / anything about any subject, no matter how small and to refrain from too much analysis or judgment.  I thought long and hard about this and realised that the one activity I've kept up with is watering the garden and picking my roses.  The reason for this is that we've been experiencing incredibly hot, humid weather, particularly in the City Bowl where I live and you either water or your plants die.  Gardening in this winter rainfall area is particularly demanding in summer - the mountains seems to radiate heat out over the city and the temperature doesn't always drop much at night.  When the sun isn't burning the roses, the wind denudes them of petals and after that the bugs complete the destruction.

Despite all these problems I realised anew how rewarding roses are and how there's nothing more enjoyable than picking a fragrant bunch for the house.

The Just Joey rose in the picture was my darling father's favourite rose and everytime I bury my nose in its petals I'm reminded of the joy he experienced from his and my mother's fairly large collection of potted roses.  He didn't have as much time as he deserved to enjoy his roses (and his dahlias) in his golden retirement years but I think of both my parents when I potter around the rose shrubs.

The other rose is my favourite Abraham Darby which I thinks rivals any other variety for its sublime fragrance.  It's the only one of my English Roses which has flourished in the city bowl area, although I believe that new hardier varieties of the English Roses have been grown specifically for the harsher South African climate.  Maybe it's time to try some others again. I find the closely packed cup of petals and the delicate colour changes during the maturing process, just too beguiling to resist.

I'm drawn mostly to the  peachy-pink and yellow colours but it has to be said that the yellow roses attract the most stubborn and  annoying black and white spotted beetles which can devour and destroy a bud in short order.  I don't like to use non-organic sprays and unfortunately the organic ones are ineffective so I'm reduced to picking these little wretches off by hand.  I've always been squeamish about doing this but a little bit of healthy annoyance at the insect destruction has hardened my resolve.

And there we have it - at last a new post to break the dry spell, perhaps more personal that I'm using to sharing, but I'm glad to be on the return trail at last!

Seagull Territory

As the sun dips lower and lower towards towards the horizon, the Sea Point public swimming baths, closed for the night, are strangely deserted.  

A few seagulls fly in to do their "floating duck" thing on the unruffled surface of the pools.

The numbers begin to swell.

And at last the mystery as to where seagulls go, between their day and night shifts, is solved.  They fly in for sundowners!

Suddenly, in a seemingly joint decision, a great cloud of birds depart the pools and head for the restaurant strips and apartment blocks of Sea Point.

So now you know!

Experimenting

The prevailing southeasterly winds raged around the city bowl the entire weekend, snapping branches off trees and shrubs, driving dust under doors and through minute gaps in the windowframes.  Several of my newly planted petunias were blown clean out of the soil and the garden today looks pretty parched and battered.  This morning the wind has dropped and, as usual, it's a swelteringly hot day.  You'll find that Capetonians are pretty evenly divided between those who prefer the wind to the heat  - we know what happens when it stops.  I actually prefer winter above all!

As the gusts of wind made it difficult to stand upright, let alone take sharp pictures, I thought I would try a little experimentation on a couple of spare pix.   I call this image Wood, Stone, Brick.  It was cropped from a larger photo because I liked the effect of the sunbeams falling on the different surfaces.

The next picture was taken in Cape Town's new Biodiversity Gardens at Greenpoint and I'll do a post about this in the near future.  My point of departure was an oversaturated and underexposed photo, with nasty greens and blues, as a result of forgetting to change from the John S Filter on the Hipstamatic App.

 First, I lightened the exposure and applied a fairly hefty dose of blur.

I quite liked the  watercolour effect that this produced, so I tinkered around and cropped the image to just the people on the bridge.

I also tried a black and white version with selective colour ...

... but finally came to the conclusion that adding the Toaster filter to the image worked best of all.

Sunburst

Before sinking behind Lion's Head mountain in the late afternoon, the sun sets the kitchen windows on fire and illuminates the whole room with its radiant, golden light.