Let it grow, let it grow, let it grow!
A BOOK that extols gardening with indigenous vegetation to feed butterflies has won a University of KwaZulu-Natal award. Bring Back Butterflies To Your Garden is written by Charles and Julia Botha, both of whom are thrilled that the award was made while COP 17 is deliberating in Durban.
The book lists more than 500 indigenous butterfly larvael food plants. It is a follow-up to an earlier book they wrote – Bring Nature Back To Your Garden – which also won a UKZN prize.
We should all of us support initiatives to bring nature (including butterflies) back to our gardens. It's the bottom rung of the climb to planetary sustainability.
Ignorant people decry it as laziness, but I have long followed the dictum: If nature decrees there shall be jungle, then jungle there shall be! No more mowing of lawns, planting of flowerbeds. Let it grow, let it grow, let it grow!
The humble abode is shaded by wild figs, flatcrowns and fever trees. My gardener of long standing has given up trying to counter this mlungu madness. No more topiary work with the clippers. A tiny patch of lawn remains to be mowed.
The pool has gone khaki-green. A crocodile lurks in the deep end. A Goliath heron paddles on the steps.
Butterflies? They swoop like condors and take you by the scruff of the neck. Nature is back!
Tim Patten
THE RANKS are thinning. Last week Tim Patten, one of the characters of South African newspapers, died in Cape Town. He had been the old Argus company's man in Brussels, then a gallery correspondent at Parliament for The Star – where I worked closely with him – then part of the London office, then an assistant editor on the Cape Argus before retiring.
He was a man of joie de vivre and panache. He was also a demon fast bowler for the parliamentary gallery cricket side.
Soon after Tim returned from Brussels, he was stopped by a speed cop. His car still had Belgian number plates and he responded to the officer's Afrikaans with voluble French. The cop decided he didn't want to get involved in this prosecution and let Tim off with a "vriendelike waarskuwing".
At which Tim seized him and kissed him on both cheeks. The cop fled the scene.
As I say, panache. When the parliamentary opposition parties were in talks aimed at uniting – a process which led eventually to today's Democratic Alliance – highly accurate running reports started appearing in the newspapers, some of them quoting the participants verbatim.
As the negotiators were holed up in a Johannesburg hotel suite, there were suspicions on all sides of deliberate leaks.
But it was just Tim. He'd booked into the room next door and was sitting on his balcony, nonchalantly sipping a gin and tonic as he took notes of the discussions next door, which he could hear clearly.
Another character gone, another pro, another friend.
Hillcrest hi-jinks
IAN GIBSON, poet laureate of Hillcrest, has this to say about the COP 17 negotiations:
Sex Workers have descended on Durbs,
Especially on our pristine suburbs;
Were it not for the cops,
They'd pull out all stops
To join ICC delegates in herds.
Wow, really? It seems Hillcrest is the place where the action is!
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Tailpiece
AN ITALIAN, an Irishman and a Chinese are hired at a construction site. The foreman points to a huge pile of sand they have to move.
"You're in charge of digging," he tells the Irishman. "You're in charge of sweeping." He indicates the Italian. "And you're in charge of supplies," he tells the Chinese. "Now I've got to go off for a bit. I expect you to make a dent in that pile."
Two hours later he returns. The heap of sand hasn't been touched. The Irishman and the Italian are standing there looking sheepish.
"Wha ..."
"We didn't have a shovel or a broom," says the Italian. "You put the Chinese in charge of supplies, but he disappeared as soon as you'd gone."
Just then the Chinese springs out from behind the pile of sand.
"Supplies!" he yells.
Last word
Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.
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