Rewards for getting up early

All the promises of yesterday...

... were in full bloom this morning!

Water lilies too were at their best at 5.45am.

Enjoy all the little things that can brighten your day!

Once upon a Sunday morning in cattle country

All of a sudden, my yard becomes a bullfighting pen!

Who says living in the bush is dull? Certainly not me!

Bush flora

My theme today is the early rainy season flora. Living in the savanna doesn't mean that it's dry grass as far as the eye can see. This early May, we've had several big rains already, the baobab trees are green and a lot of flowers pop up everywhere.

This one is funny because you see a stalk one evening, and the flower opens all of a sudden the next morning. They seem to appear from nowhere and disappear as fast as they appeared. The other peculiarity is that they  are never in groups, but rather few and far apart (I would say about 20-25 per acre only).

On the contrary, this one comes in clusters, and graces wet and waterlogged places. It's also quite short-lived though.

I never knew what in French is called (probably not a scientific name) "mother-in-law's tongue" because it's so long and pointed did flower at all, and that the flower would look like this!

Waterlilies are also one of these flowers that you only find open early in the morning, and close when the sun starts shining in earnest. A reward for those who get up early!

These clusters of papyruses in the middle of the pond are huge. I think each stalk is about 1.20m / 4ft high, maybe more.

 

They are very interesting up close too:

Lastly, something I don't have the faintest clue what it can possibly be, but I found it interesting anyway:

More later about the flora in my corner of the bush! I hope you enjoyed looking at the pictures as much as I enjoyed discovering these plants and taking these few mementos.

Bush love

Today I decided to cross the road in front of my house for the first time (surprising, isn't it?) and, only a few meters farther, beyond a raised bank, I discovered a beautiful pond, complete with water lilies;

giant papyruses (more than 1.20m/4ft high);

and all sorts of water plants I haven't been able to identify yet.

I love life in my corner of the bush!

Statuesque cattle

There is more to Baboonland than baboons only. These days, I'm loving cattle. They cross my property, graze and provide me with manure. And they are beautiful.

This is what I see from the large windows and porch south of my house. It feels so right to live there. I can't wait to move permanently!

Long time, no post!

I can't believe it's been almost two years since I last posted! Lots of things happened, as usual. I don't have so much time to sit down and blog, and there are so many things I'm (more) interested in that blogging had to take a back burner position.

A short update: I bought a small piece of land in the bush, close to Shai Hills Resource Reserve. Because of the numerous baboons one can see on the road, I dubbed it "Baboonland". I'll start building a little retreat this year and hope it will be completed by mid-September. I'll welcome the change of scenery, the isolation, the newness of it all. Actually, I can't wait to be there! More space for the (now 3) dogs, the opportunity to have an orchard (mango trees abound in the area, but I also plan on having lime and orange trees, avocado pear trees, guava trees, pawpaw of course... and probably many more!), a kitchen garden (I even found online a nice trick for my lazy back AND to protect my herbs from 3 male dogs marking, see here!).

Back to the dogs... It has been a long time since I last wrote or published pictures of my dogs or of any indigenous dogs. I was asked last month to write a piece for a U.S. dog paper and online magazine. I was happy to be contacted, and wary too, for the same reasons that led me to stop "advertising" the indigenous dogs. I decided to write the article anyway, complete with an explanation of my reluctance. I will see whether it is published and if so, how much it will be edited. Another aboriginal dog fancier, of the less normative type, also asked me to send an article for the Primitive and Aboriginal Dog Society's journal, whose interests are closer to mine. I intend to gather more information, especially about hunting with dogs, before I finalise my contribution.

Again, a lot of very different things to do, a lot of interests to weave into my already quite full life... But I've never been comfortable with idleness, so I won't complain!

To be continued!

Good news out of small and major disasters

My computers have been giving me a lot of headaches over the last few weeks but while scanning my various backups I discovered a gem I didn't know I still had: all the pictures I used for a website on Ghanaian aboriginal dogs (subscription lapsed years ago). What a treat!

They are all here: http://tinyurl.com/Avuvis.

Some of the dogs are mine (the two red ones in a European setting, from the 2-year stint I did in France 6-8 years ago), most are encounters I made in 2004 around Batsonaa, a suburb of Accra, Ghana.

A friend in South Africa told me about an interesting initiative. Read about it here: http://tinyurl.com/Funda-Nenja.

Teaching less fortunate kids to handle their dogs as a way of introducing them to the human and social values of compassion, gentleness and care is a brilliant idea, one that should be replicated elsewhere, to help make our world better.

To those who would find this endeavour shallow or useless, or that one should concentrate on human beings rather than dogs, I'll say: Kakrabia nsua. Every little helps. Our world does need compassion, gentleness and care. A lot.