PAARL AIR SHOW

Paper planes made of bronze, titled All right. And a selection of bronze feathers and other objects at Off the Wall Contemporary in Main Road, Paarl. One has to see them to believe them.

YSTERPLAAT AIR SHOW TWO

Jay was given some training while Ida was a helicopter pilot about to become a parachutist.

STILL LIFE WITH ARMED VEHICLE

YSTERPLAAT AIR SHOW

Ida and Jay went to the military air show at Ysterplaat Air Force Base, just down the road. Fortunately Ida has a hat with a flying bull terrier, and an aeroplane badge, and Jay has an Ysterplaat T shirt. Its the biggest air show in Africa.

BEAUTIFUL WORK

Want to see some really beautiful things? Go to www.sarelpetrus.blogspot.com to see a range of new works Sarel is exhibiting at the Aardklop Festival. He will also have works on show at Off the Wall Contemporary in Paarl next weekend. I am going to go there to take pictures and blog about them.

TWO LISTS

According to a little booklet on frogs, frogs are:

• everywhere


• entirely harmless


• not destroyers of crops or property


• not transmitters of human disease


• amphibians


• fascinating: they metamorphose from tadpole to frog, becoming a totally different creature in a matter of days. (Wouldn't it be marvellous if humans had the ability to become different creatures, even if it took a little longer?)

and yet, they are often loathed and feared. Me, I like frogs.

I was working on a paisley design in which I used two frogs to tie things together, so to speak; then I decided to start a new design with a frog as central image, and working towards the top, adding most, some or all of the following:

• lillies
• waterblommetjies
• agapanthus
• a mouse
• a bird
• clouds
• perhaps an aeroplane, or a
• hadida if space allows, which it ought to. (Mmm. Notice some repetition here?)

The images above are of the two designs. Neither has been completed, but I sure hope they both soon will be. On the drawing board they are black on white, but they will eventually be printed in different colours, no doubt.

FLORAL

This combination of floral pants and floral shoes was spotted in Somerset-West recently. Just look at those peonies! And roses!

IDENTIFY

I met a man selling herbs and other remedies on a Salt River street yesterday. Having recently read a book about commercial plant production for medicinal use in South Africa, I was interested in his business, so I stopped for a chat. Eric, as he introduced himself, explained the uses of his wares to me, and assured me that the two items I was most interested in would grow again if I planted them and watered them twice a day, once before sunrise and once after sunset. I bought them, and tried to identify them from Eric's descriptions and Medicinal Plants of South Africa (van Wyk et al). I concluded that the one on the left is a crinum bulb, and the one on the right a rhoicissus tuber. I may be right, I may be wrong; only time will tell, perhaps. Rhoicissus is also known as Bobbejaantou, so I am told, so I planted it right under a tree where monkeys will be welcome to tie knots, if they want to. If Paisley agrees.

KRUIDJIE ROER MY NIE

Happiness is having a melianthus go wild in one's garden. Sadie joined our menagerie from the Karoo (through the kind workings of Colette of KAPS, Karoo Animal Protection Society, who will be astounded if she ever gets to see little Sadie rushing into the waves when she goes walking on the beach).

BERNHARD AND CLIVIA

Amazing, isn't it, when one 'discovers' an author one never heard of when he was around and writing, and one was reading, at the time, all kinds of things but not his works. And he was famous, even then. Better late than never, so here's a page from my drawing pad dedicated to Thomas Bernhard. And the clivias have started blooming again, few things are more amazing than clivias.