Here and now

Once, not that long ago, I clawed and sweated my way along the corporate ladder. This was the done thing, so it seemed, and I worked hard to meet the goals that my society taught me were good. When I was not too exhausted, I thought that I was indeed a successful someone. And then I walked away, moving from the bigness and busyness of Johannesburg to the quiet of the small coastal city of East London on the south-eastern coast.

At the time, I put it down to the hole that corporate life and its values had bored into my soul. I see now that it had more to do with sheer burnout and, mostly, to the realisation that it was more important to me to spend time with my children, my partner and my friends than to chase the next story, the next way to make some money, the next rung on the ladder. It was not about losing my ambitiousness: it was about being more honest to me about what I wanted to achieve. In short, it was about getting a life. Was it sensible to abandon the salary and security that came with the big job and the big career? Probably not. But 10 years later, I do know that the hole in my soul has taken care of itself. Perhaps there is a different way to be sensible.

Watching from the milkwood tree

So my series of choices has brought me here – to this place under the milkwood tree – at this time. I remain as ambitious as ever: at any random moment, my ambition may be to grow the perfect organic brinjal; at any other moment, it may be to find exactly the right words for a piece of writing, my own or someone else’s.

But, first, before we go there, let me tell you about here. This part of my garden is its heart. It edges onto the coastal forest and I share it with all kinds of creatures, not just human. As I sit here at the big teak table, a thrush is busily darting about. Earlier, from my bedroom window up there, I watched a pair of orioles high in the branches of the milkwood. I can hear the troupe of very naughty monkeys scuttling in the forest, quite close. An entire nursery of guinea fowls is scratching through the aloe garden, which I can just see from here. And Isis the cat is trying to crawl onto my keyboard. On weekends, the human kind of creatures gather around the table. Perhaps we make a fire – a braai (barbeque). Probably, we eat some of V’s freshly baked ciabatta and drink some wine. And definitely, we begin again to solve the world’s problems.

There is not just one lonely milkwood tree stretching its branches over my head. There are, in fact, two milkwoods (Mimusops caffra) and an allophylus: my friend, Kathy, cracks into a smile every time I remind her of the allophylus’s name. Overhead, I can’t make out where one tree ends and the other starts. Baubles from Christmas Day – we had lunch here, of course – still hang from the branches. We left them there because they look so pretty. A useful spinoff is that porcupines apparently don’t like the shininess of the baubles. Perhaps this is true: since we added the baubles to the bits of mirror mosaic and little solar lights, the porcupines have stopped digging up the agapanthus and the paintbrush (haemanthus) and sand lily (veltheimia) bulbs.

The larger milkwood is a handsome fellow indeed. He is big and strong, even more so since we hacked away the bougainvillea that had slithered all the way to the top, happily smothering the poor thing. The trunk of the smaller milkwood has, intriguingly, shot at a 45 degree angle from the ground. The trunk now bears a “face”; to V’s horror, I gave him this face as a gift, along with some LED solar lights in the shape of butterflies and dragonflies. Well, I thought they were gorgeous. 

Beyond this milkwood is a knobwood tree (Zanthoxylum davyi). If you crush its leaves, it offers a delight: the scent of lemon. Today, freed of a thick choking vine, this little fighter stands upright, reaching proudly for the sky. Soon, it will rival the milkwood in height.

This part of the garden blends into “the bush” (this is how South Africans describe all kinds of groupings of native vegetation), so today, almost all the things growing here are indigenous. There are pools of sun and pools of shade. Closer to my level is an array of treasures, among them, a few types of plectranthus, red hot pokers (kniphofia, including a yellow variety), blue felicia, wild iris (dietes), wild garlic (tulbaghia; the story goes that it repels snakes), bulbinella (the gel is brilliant for soothing cuts and scrapes), a pavetta (forest bride’s bush, which I grew from a cutting; it should reach a couple of metres in time), little creeping aloes, plumbago, and thatching grass. The previous owner brought the crinums, which grow in this part of the Eastern Cape, from a nearby farm; I have divided the bulbs and spread them around, and the big spiky white flowers in mid-summer are truly majestic.

Guinea fowls in the aloe garden

The slope towards the sea is covered in clivias (mostly miniata, but also some of the lovely nobilis variety). This is one of the most beautiful plants you could ever wish for: its shiny strap-like leaves are always attractive, and its flowers are mostly of the craziest, almost neon orange. The flowers brighten the late winter days, and are followed by bunches of seeds, which slowly morph into fat red troves of new plants. Some of these clivias were decimated by amaryllis worms – sorry, I can’t see any beauty in the black and yellow stripes that coat their thick bodies – but I think I have found a way to control them. I make a “tea” out of chopped chilli, crushed garlic and shavings of green household soap, and pour the diluted liquid into the heart of the plant. Strained, a spray of this mixture helps to keep bad goggas (insects) off roses and vegetables: you have to use caution because it probably gets rid of some good goggas too.

From this heart, the garden fans out around the house, past the outdoor shower, past the fire pit, past the big, big clump of strelitzia. If you bear with me, I’ll take you to every corner of my garden, sometimes my life, and share with you what I have learnt and have yet to learn.

Note: I will do my best to provide the proper names of plants, but I ask forgiveness in advance for errors!