Sweet sweat as two mates arrive on the project site
Monday. I have the blues. How can that be? Here in my Covid-19 rustic refuge deep in the Camdeboo, amazing things have happened to me.
The nigh-constant ache in my knee is a dark reminder of perhaps having pushed a little too hard.
Context is everything. Let it be known that two mates arrived on the project site on Friday.
It was good enough just to see them again. As months have turned into years, I realise that after sharing thousands of kilometres through our spectacular landscapes on our adventure bikes, we are starting to now share deeper experiences, health scares, crashes of the bike and heart, ageing, retreating, and focusing on what really matters.
Look, we don’t have consciousness therapy sessions and hug crepuscular bunnies, we like to ride, far and wide.
And with high age, AKA death, approaching, we can be cranky, deaf as a sneezewood pole, and talk over each other in a mansplaining extravaganza whose only saving grace is that there are no feminists present. But we are softening.
This weekend my buds came roaring in amped and with as many boy toys as they could pack into the bakkie.
Out came power saws, a drill, a grinder, a pruning chainsaw, bush-cutter, any amount of screws and bolts, and wholesome food by the bag load.
The women who love and tolerate them had packed in a few items, a stack of crockery that matched!
And a bag of moringa superfood powder.
But more than that, these okes were ready to rumble.
By lunchtime Saturday they had fettled, sawed, screwed and philosophised a kitchen table into existence to fill the echoing heart of the home with the sounds of a ploughman’s lunch being devoured on that very table.
It all becomes a blur: the farm junkyard which sits in a wavy blond grassland on a hill surrounded by grand Karoo peaks, gave up a treasure trove of rusted, grizzled artefacts.
An old plough disk became a bird-feeder on the stump of a conifer taken down by the master of garden sculpting, a massive sneezewood sleeper and gum post became a kitchen bench, a large old, rusty spiked ripper was mounted in the hallway as a bikers’ and gardener’s coat and hat hanger.
Swathes of blackjack and steekgras and old metal landmines were cleared. The outbuilding and dak where Delores is parked, was given a styling haircut.
There was mirth and mayhem when a snaggly wit karee which hangs over the herb stock was given a brushcut to bring in the light.
My job was to catch these gritty, prickly branches before they crashed into the herb littlies struggling in their hundreds to break earth and sprout into adults whom I intend to sell for bucks to humans, who will devour them.
The sleek, meneer chainsaw was sending a shower of fresh sawdust and the only way to snatch the branches in midair was to put on my fullface bike helmet and draw down the visor!
There were a few casualties among the pots but the workmanship was at the level of a professor of art.
My beautiful cuzz Den handed me a brass bell mounted on an anchor which hung at the front door of her parents’ Dennis and Genevieve Clarke’s house. What a gift.
The mates took this as a challenge, worked out how to loosen the bell’s bolt to allow for it to be screwed into the front door-frame. Once in place they promptly rang it and renamed it the Wilde Tannies’ bell!
At night, seated around the blazing kaggel, the midget tomcat kitten, overlord of Avonleigh, received an inordinate amount of affection and human gnawing time.
He even broke into a purr, an emotion which seems to take his aspirant warrior soul by surprise every time.
They worked so hard and long on Sunday, until the penny dropped. They really did not want to be plucked from the scratch post and have to go home and be responsible cats.
Even when they did depart they left their beds, bedding and some clothing! They will be back.
Until then I have enough food and toys to make it through this wartime.
Time to put on my game face. Cuzz Den will be here soon for a day of truly professional garden development.
She is an extraordinary woman of the Karoo and all of this joy and hope she has made come true.
Out came power saws, a drill, a grinder, a pruning chainsaw, bush-cutter, any amount of screws and bolts, and wholesome food by the bag load