When freedom is normal

It’s Saturday on Freedom Weekend. My body is tired after this back-breaking work of digging out weeds, grass and other invasive stuff from the aloe garden. So I am happy to pounce on V’s suggestion that we drive to Chintsa East (a huge village on this part of the east coast, relatively speaking) to find a restaurant where we can have lunch.

 

A corner of my (legal) home: plenty of reason to smile

First stop is the Barefoot Café. I love the barstools here – they are made from old paint drums – and the menu is good, even for vegetarians. But it is packed – there is rugby on the TV – and it smells of beer, which is what pubs tend to do. 

We head to Michaelas, perched on the very top of a sand dune. I can’t tell you much about the quality of the food these days, but the views are spectacular. We climb into the see-through lift. It jerks and shudders its way up the sand dune, through the milkwood trees, wild banana (Strelitzia nicolai) and the coastal silver oak (this stuff is all over the place!).

Chop-chop

But Michaelas is about to close its doors for a private function, so we will have to be chop-chop (quick) about ordering food. We don’t fancy a rushed meal, so decide to have a drink on the deck overlooking the sea instead. There are a few other occupied tables, but it suddenly strikes me … “There are no black people here,” I hiss at V.

“What about me?” he says. “You don’t count,” I answer, without really thinking. He laughs because he’s a good sport.

Let me explain. Most South Africans are not racists, but, given our history, we are so very aware of race. And this is, after all, Freedom Weekend. Okay, for the sake of accuracy, it was Freedom Day on Friday, a public holiday to mark our first post-apartheid elections in 1994. With the help of Workers’ Day tomorrow, we are making a long weekend of it all.

Isis, another normality

As we should: it’s been 18 years since those first elections when we queued and queued to vote (with something like a 90% poll). We did it in our millions, we did it proudly, and despite four decades of the most appalling racism that structured everything in our lives, we did it peacefully. We should never stop celebrating.

Us, the criminals

V and I have our own little celebrating to do on this Freedom Weekend. He is of Indian descent and I am of European descent: for the first few years after we met, we were actually criminals because our relationship was illegal.

The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act and Section 16 of the Immorality Act were repealed in 1985. We married in 1986 and it did involve some sort of racial reclassification for me; I’m still not sure what race the morons made me. We do laugh about that now, but it wasn’t funny at the time.

Trying to go to some establishment for dinner or drinks was usually very difficult indeed. He would either not be allowed in or I would be harassed. So it’s kind of nice being able to drift to whichever place we feel like.

Anyway, back to the drinks with a view. On cue, it seems, a black man and two black women wander on to the deck. They take some photographs. They seem in a hurry to leave, but I hear one of the women say: “I like this place.”

So do we. We stay for a second drink. And we consider trying to get something to eat at Country Bumpkin or Murambi Country Kitchen.

A legal home

But we prefer to go home: we live in our home legally, and that means a lot because we remember the Group Areas Act that made it so hard for us to find somewhere to live, a home. That legislation reserved the most prime property for whites. It was repealed, along with the Population Registration Act, only in 1991.

We had to sneak around and hide away, breaking the law, of course. And we came across some nasty little “lefties”, spoilt white brats, who actually made profits out of sub-letting apartments in “white” areas to illegals.

That’s another story. I’ll share it with you sometime. In the meantime, let’s just savour freedom.

“I detest racialism, because I regard it as a barbaric thing, whether it comes from a black man or a white man.” – Nelson Mandela

The art of wasting time

In my former life, I had a “proper” job and tried my best to be a decent mother (mothers are always full-time, no matter what else they are doing). I was far too busy to waste time on things like being a member of a book club. Now, I am a member of not just one, but two, book clubs, and I treasure the time I waste with the clever, interesting women who gather to drink wine, laugh, cry, discuss books, and make sense of our lives.

When the royalty, Isis and Angel, allow, I waste time learning to drum

I’ve just started wasting time learning to play the djembe drum and, until quite recently, I wasted oodles of time going to pottery classes.

In fact, I’ve become a master at time wasting. It is a real art. I can spend ages staring at the sea, for example, watching the swell and assessing the crazy array of blues and greys. And I can beachcomb for hours.

Just this morning, I watched a very large pod of dolphins (maybe more than one) swim past while a flock of gannets dived madly into the sea. Perhaps it’s an early sign of the sardine run that is still to come. It was a frenzy, but not at all hurried. I know because I watched it all.

Enriched

And I don’t feel guilty, not any more. Instead, I feel enriched, deep down inside.

You see, in my former life, I ran around doing urgent things, so much that I seldom had time to do the important things. Today, I do the important things – like be with my friends and my family, be fully aware of this amazing environment, and take care of my own needs.

Crises and urgent things still crop up, of course, but they are part of the picture, not the whole picture. And my work – which I do enjoy very much, by the way – has become part of my life, not my whole life.

Cracking the work ethic

Beachcombing yields all kinds of delights

But it was very hard work to crack that Calvinistic work ethic: the ingrained notion that work is somehow good for the soul. I’m not for a minute suggesting that we shouldn’t work – that would be silly – but, rather, that we try to find a way that works for each of us to put work where it belongs, as part of life. 

So when I left Gauteng 11 years ago to get a life here in the Eastern Cape, I worked very hard indeed as a freelancer, and congratulated myself on those months that I earned more than I had in the employment I had left. It didn’t take long for the burn-out and dissatisfaction to creep back. And I wondered why I had given up the career if I was trying so hard to maintain the status quo.

A new way of being

I began to understand that my job had been a primary part of my identity for a long time, and that I would have to learn a new way of being in the world. I went from the hectic extreme to the idle other side (didn’t like that at all) until, eventually, I did find a balance and things began to fall into place. It was when I could “waste time” without an ounce of guilt that I knew I was well on my way. 

My life is nowhere near as busy as it once was, but it is fuller than ever before. It remains a learning process; perhaps it always will. I like it that way.

PS: V has pointed me to this article, written by a former car worker, Walter Johnson. Published 26 years ago, it’s as timely as ever. It goes to the root of that irrational idea that the harder you work, the more likely your salvation, that work is “the measure of a person’s moral worth and character”. Then he examines how and why the ethic that drives the work-consumption-debt cycle is sustained. It’s really worth a read.

Winter offerings

These late autumn days and nights are decidedly chilly, and soon, perhaps even tonight, we’ll make our first indoor fire of the year. The garden obliges with an abundant offering of wood that will likely be more than enough to warm us through the winter months.

First, on a particularly windy day – there’s a howling south-westerly – an entire tree crashes down, narrowly missing V’s car. It’s an ngwenya tree, a wild plum (Harpephyllum caffrum), the smaller of the two: the other is at least 12m high, and probably as wide.

An entire tree crashes down, just in time for winter fires

The car is trapped. With the help of Phillip’s bakkie (pick-up), a lot of small handsaws, sore muscles and sweat, we manage to move most of it out of the way to free the car. A few days later, Cousin D arrives with his chainsaw – I’m looking for one in pink – and then Alex, the gardener, dispatches it into neat piles of firewood, drying in the sun.

Useful ash

Some of that wood has already made its way into the fire pit, and the ash has been spread through the garden. Wood ash is a great source of potassium, which plants need for growth, disease resistance and fruit formation. It’s also needed to maintain crucial functions, like photosynthesis. Sandy soils, like mine, are most susceptible to potassium deficiencies.

A large branch of the allophylus tree breaks off

Ash also apparently helps keeps snails away. In fact, I can’t imagine any goggas (bugs) being partial to ash, so I have also scattered it onto plants that have been attacked by real nasties, like amaryllis worms. It seems to help.

Ash is not good for acid-lovers, like camellias and azaleas, and there is some caution that some wood may contain heavy metals. So, as with most things, moderation is the key.

In my face

Then, I stumble to the kitchen to make coffee early one morning and open the door to the garden. And I see … a tree! Close-up, right in my face. Talk about not being able to see the wood for the trees.

A very large branch of the allophylus tree (smile, Kathy) has rotted off, right at the base. It’s quite a job to hack it up and drag it out of the way, and now it, too, is awaiting Alex’s attention.

We’ll be giving Cousin D a call soon to beg his muscle and chainsaw power: the guava, naartjie and lemon trees, among others, need some serious trimming.

Vegetable meanderings

The sign at the side of the dirt road should be warning enough: seedlings are sold here “wholesale to farmers”. But I want seedlings badly and I can’t bear a trip into town.

Peppers for Africa in the kitchen: the garden worked hard all summer

The women behind the counter can probably tell from a mile off that I am not a big buyer. The grumpy one spits something at me. “Pardon?” I squeak. The nicer woman meets my eye. “There’s no spinach, broccoli and cauliflower,” she deciphers.

Pity about the broccoli. A dozen little plants are growing strongly in my veggie garden, but I wanted more. Now, in the autumn coolness, is the time to plant them, I’ve learned. They become covered in mildew in the hotter months.

“I’ll take 10 each of whatever else you have, please, but no beetroot,” I say (I don’t like beetroot, the way it turns everything on your plate red).

Word vomit

Broccoli does better in my garden in the cooler months

I babble on. Call it nervousness; my son calls it “word vomit”. “Last time, I got 20 of each, and it was far too much,” I say. Indeed it was: 20 somehow seemed to be more like 50, and I was handing out seedlings to anyone vaguely interested. The comment is ignored.

I recall my last visit here: a big, burly chap drove up in his bakkie (pick-up) and bought 1,000 tomato seedlings.

Anyway, the women here are friendly enough to a little buyer like me, and encourage me to “give us a tinkle” soon to check if the other seedlings are ready. And for R18.20 (less than two euros), I buy 10 thyme plants, 10 tomatoes, 10 cabbage and 10 lettuce.

Gurus

Now for the planting. First, I consult my gurus: Toni B Walters (Cultivating Flavour, Lizard Leap’s Press); and Jane Griffiths (Jane’s Delicious Garden, Sunbird Publishers).

The vegetable garden is tired after working hard all summer, so we’ll leave a few beds empty for a while (apart some coriander that may seed itself): they’ll be snug under layers of newspaper.

Oh yes, the planting. What should be a 30-minute job takes close to three hours. It’s as if I actually stop thinking when I’m gardening; I just go with where it takes me.

There are bottles to be planted, weeds to be pulled out, things to be cut back. I find a row of ancient red bricks, buried for who knows how long. They will work fabulously as a pathway near the milkwood trees. I dig them out. It’s far too much trouble to fetch a spade from the shed, of course, so I do it with a hand spade. And I land up with a big blister in the palm of my hand.

Close-up look

The lemon tree: too laden to cut back yet

Then I discover a very long, thin snake. I get a real close-up look at him as my face is inches away from him while I squeeze my body under the lemon tree that has grown over the pathway: I can’t cut it back yet because it’s heavy with lemons.

He is pretending to be dead (I think it’s a grass snake), so I turn the trickle of water from the tank on him. Poor terrified thing, he flees. I don’t scream or run away. And if I could pat myself on my back, I would.

Back to the planting. I stop planting cabbages when there are 20 in the ground (thought I bought 10).

I am determined to grow tomatoes without using poisons. This is, after all, tomato country. I can remember my grandfather, who farmed in this area before retiring to this exact house, giving me two tomatoes to taste: one grown in a tunnel, the other in the sun. You cannot compare the taste.

Tomatoes like weeds

The self-seeded cherry tomatoes grow like weeds here, but every bought seedling has literally rotted. This could be something called botrytis, a fungus that thrives in warm, wet weather: just the kind of summer we’ve had.

Maybe this cooler weather will be better for tomatoes. Plus, on the advice of one of my gurus, I don’t include manure in the planting holes. I do, however, line the holes – 20 should do – with comfrey and seaweed, as well as a bit of shredded newspaper, and I’ll keep feeding them with a seaweed, comfrey and/or “worm wee” tea (earthworms don’t actually urinate; the vermi-liquid is a by-product of the process). This is said to help keep disease away, at least partly by making plants stronger.

In summer, some lettuce shrivelled in the sun and some bolted in the shade. So I plant them all over to try to figure out where they will do best.

The thyme is also spread all over. Although I haven’t eaten meat for about 30 years, thyme reminds me of the biltong my grandmother made on the farm, and it remains one of my favourite herbs.

Somehow, while this is happening, I manage to acquire trays of spinach, broccoli and pepper seedlings, a rue plant, and seeds for red onion and peas … no wonder a gardener’s work is never done.

Everyday magic

From the aloe garden, he stares and stares

Girl fairy helper is blowing out the candles on her birthday cake – she is four – when she spots him. “Buck,” she says.

Buck (antelope), indeed. He is the big male bushbuck, who tends to be quite furtive: the females (his harem, I suppose) are the ones that we see more often. He walks swiftly and decisively, and stops in the aloe garden. Trying to hide behind the garden shed, I manage to take a few pics on my phone.

But he knows I am there, and he stares me down. After a few minutes, I scuttle off to eat cake with smarties and pink icing.

Later, perhaps an hour later, boy fairy helper – he’s still six – is shadowing me, as he does, and chattering nonstop, as he does, while I clatter at the sink outside the kitchen door. Seeing that we live half in the bush, we wash our pots and pans here, not in the kitchen. When it rains, we don’t wash the pots. Simple.

Huge

He wins the staring contest

Suddenly, there is a movement, and there he is, under the milkwood trees. The ram is huge. I am almost 6 feet tall, and I swear that if you include his horns, he is at least as tall as me. Boy fairy helper (bless him) draws in his breath, and we are both as quiet as mice. 

The ram does not bullet away in fear; he gives us a rather bored look and saunters off. He was surely snacking on my garden while I was eating cake.

My uncle Aub, a farmer and a true man of this soil, sees the photos and he is quite excited. Do you think he is the only male around here? I ask. It’s possible, Uncle Aub says patiently, that there are other males in the area, but this must be the senior buck. Only the senior would be brave enough to come so close to us.

Alpha male

Gathering on the field behind the house

Wow! The alpha male. I am feeling suitably thrilled and privileged until I remember that I have seen this ram up close before – in Kathy’s garden on the other side of the village. Or maybe there’s another ram on that side? Anyway, he eats her herbs and vegetables. Oh, and her pelargoniums, all of them. She waves her arms at him – much as I do to the damn monkeys – and threatens to turn him into biltong.

A view from my office

Privilege

But the fact that we are so blasé about something so magical shows that we are very privileged indeed. We see these beautiful, graceful creatures – usually the babies and the females, but sometimes also the males from a distance – almost every day.

There are also some blue duiker, the cutest little things, but they are far more skittish than the bushbuck. They scurry out of the bush to grab fruit that has fallen to the ground.

Poaching has been a real problem in this reserve (and elsewhere), and the ranger talks of a pack of dogs from a nearby farm that have run wild here and killed some of the buck. The duiker remain terrified of humans, and sadly, that’s the way it should be.

On paper

Usually, we buy three newspapers a week: the Mail & Guardian on Friday, the local Daily Dispatch on Saturday, and the Sunday Times on, well, Sunday. The rest of the time, we read the news online.

Butternut plant, courtesy of the worm farm, sprawls over newspaper

Still, the newspapers quickly accumulate into big heaps. Recycling points seem to be somewhat scarce in East London, and until very recently, there were none out here on the east coast. 

We would cart stuff to a recycling point in town and, often, find that it had: a) been moved somewhere else; or b) was no longer functional. We are delighted with the neat and nifty recycling station that’s just been installed at the little supermarket up the road.

Meanwhile, we stumbled on a few ideas that keep yesterday’s news alive. Note that we use actual newspaper and not all that shiny paper that adverts are printed on.

1: Worm food

Strawberry and borage with a paper lining

V uses newspapers, as well as paper like egg boxes, to line his earthworm farms – he has two farms now – and layers it between the vegetable and fruit cuttings. The busy worm workers turn it all into a kind of black gold that makes stuff grow like mad. 

It also spews out a few surprises, like butternut seedlings that grow vigorously.

2: Soil enricher

I’ve been using newspaper to line holes for new plants in this sandy, coastal soil. It seems to help retain water and food around the roots. Also, as it breaks down, it enriches the soil.

First, I shred the paper: my sense is that this would be important for drainage, and it would also help it to break down quicker. Then I add any compost or manure that is handy and a bit more of the original soil (don’t want to burn those new roots) before placing the plant in its new home. I top it all with a mulch of dried grass clippings, leaves or half-ready compost. 

3: Weed killer

It all gets covered in mulch. The broccoli don't mind

Newspaper is my best friend when it comes to clearing biggish areas of weeds. I’m also quite a lazy gardener and this saves a lot of hard work.

I pull out and chop off whatever I can, dampen the soil, and lay down thick layers of newspaper, dampening that too. Then I toss mulch or compost over the top to stop the wind from blowing the paper away.

The earthworms quickly start eating the paper (result: better soil) and the weeds are smothered, more or less. If I want to plant something before the paper is all broken down (it takes a few months), I tear holes into the paper, which then doubles as mulch.

I am eyeing two patches of grass that would be so much nicer as beds of plants, perhaps with some pathways – lawn is just too much work. Newspaper could be the answer.

Hot and hotter

On weekends, V likes to get busy in the kitchen. It’s his “down-time”, he says. He picks whatever chillis he can find in the garden and turns them into sauces of varying heat. And he bakes bread.

Chopped chillis from my garden ... a breathtaking array of colours

Chilli plants of all variety fill a long strip of the vegetable garden. They range from piquant bell peppers (the trade name is “Peppadew”) to mild (ish) jalapenoes to insane naga. The latter is said to be the hottest chilli in the world: even its skin is blistered, and I’m sure that is because it’s so scorching, even to touch.

Close-up of the naga chilli

Its name is interesting: “naga” apparently means “cobra” in one of the major Indian languages; very similar sounding, “nyoka” means “snake” in Xhosa. The heat of the naga is measured at more than a million Scoville units, which is used to measure such things. 

Me, I don’t eat too much in the way of chillis. Mostly, I enjoy their array of colours, and I use them in my muti (medicine) to get rid of bad goggas (insects).

Quite a kick

But I did enjoy the jalapeno slammers – quite a kick they delivered – that V made on Easter Monday.  And I added the tiniest bit of his sauce to my rice and vegetables. Usually, the chillis that he picks get finely chopped: my farmer cousin, D, loves to do this, and he does it better than a machine, although he has insisted on gloves.

D often appears on a Sunday morning. “Where is it?” he asks. “I want to chop.” It’s very sweet. Otherwise, the chillis are indeed shoved into some sort of chopping machine.

Easter Monday’s pickings

Blend

Then V gets blending. To the mixture of chopped chillis, he’ll add some olive oil, a bit of lemon juice, maybe some dhania (coriander), pounded peanuts, and a touch of mint. Every result is different.

Personally, I prefer the milder versions, softened with a little extra of the peanuts and coriander. But his sauces are greatly enjoyed by many of our friends, and their friends, too. He gets asked when he will have some for sale, and he’s very proud of it all.

An art

At the same time, V will have got the bread underway. “Me and Jamie,” he mutters. He means Jamie Oliver, who, in one of his earlier books (The Naked Chef), talks about the baking of bread as an art. You can find his recipe here. 

V's flat bread being demolished

Made by “me and Jamie”, he says

The process lasts for hours: all the ingredients (from The Naked Chef’s basic bread recipe) are mixed and kneaded, left to rise, bashed into shape, and left to rise again. 

Here, too, it’s a bit of a lucky dip: some weekends, for example, we get cumin seeds or sundried tomato in our ciabatta; sometimes, we could have olives pressed into crusty, herby flat bread.

It all gets demolished pretty quickly, every last crumb of it, often smeared with the chilli sauce of the day.

Easter bounty

... Easter weekend has just begun

Easter eggs, Swiss chocolate and a house (and garden) oozing with family from all over the place are not the only joys at this time of the year. All that quaffing of wine under the trees and around the fire pit produces a bounty: a great big crop of wine bottles for the vegetable garden.

I started planting wine bottles in what would become the vegetable garden years before we actually moved into this house. So there must be thousands of bottles there now – and this project is still not complete.

Some of my friends keep their bottles for me, and even dump them over the fence when they are in the area. I don’t allow “anonymous” bottles – those from a pub, for example – into the garden. I like to think that each one contains a story for me or someone I care about.

More than a pretty face

They are buried neck first to a depth of about a third of the bottle. Of course, I think they are very pretty indeed, especially when the light catches them. This is why only coloured bottles are allowed. 

But they do more than please my eye. Packed close together, the bottles form a brilliant edging for the beds, holding in the soil and compost.

A fabulous and unforeseen benefit of all these upside-down wine bottles is that they are believed to keep moles away. I read this somewhere fairly recently, and I think it actually works. Apparently, they don’t like the sound that is created underground when the wind hits the bottles.

And as K, my bang-broek (scaredy pants) sister from Geneva, points out with a big smile, snakes can’t slither on glass. Or can they? 

Now if only someone would figure out a way to get a bottle or two to grow …

Things that slither

It’s as I am reaching for the chives that I detect, out of the corner of my eye, a slight movement on the fence of the vegetable garden – a snake, a long, very thin, green thing with black markings. I lurch backwards and the terrified creature slithers in the opposite direction. It twirls itself onto the gate, and I am trapped.

Wild garlic, a smelly but pretty snake repellent

I can see my mother – the granny in the granny flat – and I wave my arms frantically. This is a terrible mistake: my ridiculous fear of snakes is all her fault. “I don’t like that,” she says. “It could grow into something very ugly.”

The little thing lifts its head. “No, it’s not a boomslang (well, I really hope so), and even if it was, it couldn’t do anything to us,” I say. “It’s quite pretty.” I cannot believe I’ve just said that – shows you how far I’ve come.

A boomslang is poisonous, but its fangs are so far back in its mouth that you would literally have to force your little finger almost down its throat if you really want to be bitten. But still …

We yell for grown-up boy-child (so glad he is home), who finds a long pole for the snake to slither onto. “Take it far away,” I say.

“Umm … I’m running out of time,” he says. The snake is indeed now half-way up the stick. He manages to get it to the boundary fence. It winds itself on the latte and hurries away.

‘Super pet’

It turns out that this is a bush snake, which a blogger called Libby says “makes a super pet for any young boy … They become extremely tame and will recognize you immediately and slither to the glass to ‘talk’ to you”. This snake is not poisonous.  

Amazingly, this is the first snake that we have seen here since our house-warming party last April when a snake (someone identified it as a red-lipped herald), lazing in a potted tree, made its presence known to our guests. That caused quite a flurry.

We’ve had some close encounters. The most scary was when my two cats flushed out a puffadder, close to two metres long and with very yellow markings (apparently, this is a sign that it is old), from behind an old hibiscus and herded it into the bush. Puffadders are the worst: they are highly venomous and lazy, too, which means that they won’t always get out of your way. Fortunately, we don’t get the mamba so far south, although we have seen them in the Transkei and in our garden in Durban.

Sharing

I’ve had to accept that I share this space with all kinds of wildlife, including snakes. In fact, I am in their territory. That, and the dawning understanding that snakes are really terrified of humans and will get out of our way, has helped deal with some of my unreasonable fear.

But I still don’t like them, and I’m always on a mission to find ways to keep them away. It’s said that cats keep snakes away, and that does seem to be the case. Phew! 

Also, there are apparently some plants that repel snakes. Wild garlic (Tulbaghia) is one of these, so naturally, I have planted clumps everywhere. These plants, indigenous to big chunks of South Africa, do have a strong smell (which is probably what the snakes don’t like), but their purple flowers are really pretty. Allegedly snakes don’t like pelargoniums and geranium, also indigenous, so these, too, are planted all over the place.

Familiar comfort

Coastal red milkwood fruit on the table

The milkwood tree has been a constant in my life for as long as I remember. The trees grow prolifically in the coastal dune forests of the Wild Coast in the former Transkei “bantustan”, where I grew up. As we discovered as children, the gnarled branches make excellent resting spots in the shade for tired, salt- and sand-encrusted bodies. And those springy ones that twist close to the ground as they try to grow towards the light … well, the joys for small children are endless.

After I left the Transkei to study and work elsewhere, I would return every year to this piece of paradise. The milkwoods would be there, like sentries of a time when there were no cares. In Durban, I felt a comforting flutter of familiarity when I saw these same trees – albeit much smaller and seldom in a clump – on the city beachfront.

Protection

Now, a little further south from my childhood home, they shelter my outdoor gathering space, stretching their limbs overhead and lining the forest that my garden touches. I like to think that they are protecting this space. Hence, I did not sniff in derision when I read that the milkwood tree is associated with some powerful stuff: its energy is thought to bring a deep sense of connection and belonging and to help us “with feeling at home in the world” (more on this here).

Morning sun warms the milkwood

These trees, and those that I knew so well in the Transkei and chanced on in Durban, are the coastal red milkwood (Mimusops caffra). The South African National Biodiversity Institute tells us that it is found naturally in dune forest in KwaZulu-Natal and the Transkei, and is common from Port Alfred and Bathurst (small towns about 150km to the south of East London) and all the way to Mozambique. It’s a protected tree in South Africa, which means that it may not be cut, disturbed, damaged or destroyed.

Those in my garden are sporting fat red fruit right now: the birds love them, and the monkeys gorge on them. The berries prettily decorate the table. They seed themselves freely, and it’s always a thrill seeing a baby milkwood sprouting from the black, sandy soil.

Good company

Two other Mimusops are indigenous to South Africa: the bush red milkwood (M. obovata), which is bigger, and the Transvaal red milkwood (M. zeyheri), which has yellow fruit.

Then there is the white milkwood, also indigenous to South Africa, but that’s a different genus entirely (Sideroxylon inerme). As a child, I remember being intrigued when we stopped in Mossel Bay on a long road trip to Cape Town to have a look at the “post-office tree”, which functioned as a post office for European colonists in the 1500s: people would tuck letters into the tree. This enormous, sprawling tree is a white milkwood.

A different matter entirely is Welsh poet Dylan Thomas’s 1954 radio drama, Under Milk Wood, later made into a stage play and a movie. It’s set in a make-believe village called Llareggub (try it backwards), and it’s about the dreams and lives of the people who live there. No resemblance intended, I promise, not even on this April Fool's Day!