Sunrise brings a watery radiance, the promise of rain, as two hyenas chat to each other in subdued voices across the Save River and as I relax with coffee, in the chair on my veranda at Chilo, a young owl flies off the beam right over my head where he has been sitting, and the wind from his gentle wings flutters my hair………
sunrise with hyenas calling…
Baobab pulp at breakfast is tart, delicious, sprinkled on natural yoghurt and sweetened with honey….
baobab powder and yoghurt breakfast….
with a list of medicinal and health uses from time immemorial, the Baobab Tree has a fascinating history….we will try cooking biscuits and cakes with this powder from the baobab pod, in place of creme of tarter and bicarb. Yum.
baobab pod
After start like this, the day is guaranteed to be a good one…lots of painting done and jobs achieved, with a body full of vitamin c and va-va-voom from the rich baobab pulp!
The end of the day, looking downriver towards the East, brings a golden glow to the sand that perfectly sums up a happy day’s work…
late afternoon
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, prolific Italian painter and printmaker from the Republic of Venice, comes to my mind this late afternoon as I turn from the eastern river view and gaze up at the luminous Tiepolo sky above me…
Tiepolo sky
His paintings have always hovered, elemental in the clouds of my mind…strong shadings of light and dark, coupled with a genuine dramatic feeling, such as this gorgeous painting, “Olympus”…
Olympus by Tiepolo
those angels bearing up the darkening clouds could well be imagined in this sky above me now…
dark Tiepolo clouds…where are the angels…?!
Dark falls, Tiepolo’s angels fade, and our delicious open-air supper of cheese, biscuits and local mangoes is also enjoyed by a cheeky moth that comes to slurp up the juices from the mango on Clive’s fork!
Moth and mango
wine and wild dogs 