Tuesday 19th April 2011
Five past midnight and I’m sitting in the door of the hut with only a candle sputtering behind me on the desk. A tumbler with a little Old Brown on standby against the creeping winter chill while I write this on my cell phone.
Again, I spent a fair chunk of the morning “in the Office”, updating various web sites and starting the bi-monthly VAT-grind. I soon tired of that, impatient to spend at least some of my time here treading the land which I hope will become home. I’ve set Jeffrey to hacking out the sapling stumps left from last year’s clearing operation. In spite of the dry season, all have coppiced furiously, covering the cleared area with pernicious green shrubbery already waist-high in places as half a dozen new saplings sprout from the stump. I knew this would happen, but it seems Jeffrey has had to see it for himself to realize that simply sawing down the saplings is a one-step-forward, two-steps-back exercise. At the very least, the new greenery has to be hacked off again to starve the stumps of nutrition and allow them to rot away. The very hardiness of Hackia, Port Jackson and Blue Gum is what has allowed these Australian invaders to become a problem throughout South Africa.
Although I had Technical Drawing as a Matric subject and have an advanced set of plans on CAD, I’ve decided to have plans of the existing house and proposed restoration drawn up locally.
The tattered Cape reed ceiling once common in vernacular houses of the Cape
I’ve mentioned the confused jurisdictional situation before, but in the interim the Caledon Town Council is not allowing the opportunity of dishing out unreasonable fines to pass, so I’d rather spend the R5,000 to R16,000 on building materials and labour. As it is, getting the plans passed is going to cost a few thousand Rand. I took some more reference pictures of the house and asked Jeffrey to trace the route of the main Eskom supply cable while I scribbled down a few more dimensions of the existing structure.
Jeffrey has a picnic lunch against one of several piles of potential firewood accumulating around the plot
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Since my cabin is in the woods on the Western half of the plot, my view of the mountains and distant farmland is rather restricted, so I packed a picnic lunch and joined Jeffrey to sit on a low bank to enjoy the view for the last time in several months, probably.
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A view across the lower field, gradually being cleared of alien trees
My bag is packed, edible food is stored on the car seat to keep it cool since I’ve returned the fridge – and also to encase it in steel, the only thing proof against field mouse incisors.
I’m leaving for the City again later this morning with a mixture of feelings in my heart.
I’m eager to be with Christa again – I’ve missed her more on this truncated trip than on any other. I know she has also found it more difficult, for various reasons. On a mundane level, just as I left, the few projects we had all went into some kind of crisis. At the same time, new work started coming in, adding to the pressure.
On the emotional level, neither of us predicted the impact on both of us of being apart on a sad anniversary – the death five years ago of Christa’s beloved Big Sister a day after Sybille’s birthday. We had cared for Sybille together, preparing ourselves for a long haul of precious time, which fate ended too suddenly for loving goodbyes.
The time at Boggy Pond has been unsatisfying and unproductive, largely because I took a job which was not what it said on the box, so I was unable to achieve my personal goals here. Of course I still feel that I have failed, but I am somewhat comforted by Christa’s observation that we are both too old to waste time doing things that we do not enjoy.
The world has also changed under our feet in the two years since we started looking for a place such as this. Whilst the idea is still very much alive, realities have changed or simply become apparent, so the time has come to reassess just how we are going to go about achieving the goal of a lifestyle which sustains us, yet leaves us time to do more living than working.