From dry red earth and a long parched lowveld winter, these starry, scented shrubs burst forth at Our Kaya Nyala homestead in Mahenye ….. glistening against the cloudless cobalt sky.
In Gonarezhou and at Chilo Gorge Safari Lodge, every walk or game drive this week is a sensory delight as we are enveloped in a seasonal burst of magical fragrance and crystalline white flowers.
Stunning gardenias are out and everywhere we look is a symphony of white starry flowers, impossibly seductive scent and fresh green leaves. Van Gogh would have painted this if he could…!!
Gardenia resiniflua
This is Gardenia resiniflua is an indigenous shrub or small tree native to Zimbabwe and several other southern and central African countries. Known commonly as the gummy gardenia, it has distinctively sticky, resin on its growing buds. A gentle perfect beauty, each flower nestles in sap green leaves and different bushes yield different style flower forms, some rounded as in my previous photos and others more windmill-shaped, whorled, as in my following photos…
windmill shaped beauty
Painters delight, I need to get this onto canvas….
Mopani scrub holds russet winter leaves, framed by the freefall of white gardenia flowers as a natural wild wallpaper…
Mopani scrub holds russet winter leaves
This on my list to capture on canvas, and the tender green mopani leaves that are unfurling ….
tender green mopani leaves
even as the glowing rust red and yellow butterflies persist from last season… butterflies poised to take flight with the next storing gust of wind…
mopani leaf butterflies
My painting, Mopani Leaf Butterflies diptych, acrylic on stretched canvas, each 61x 91 cm, embellished with metallic copper and gold (for this and more of my art please visit https://wineandwilddogs.art/art/)
Lin Barrie
The Save Valley Conservancy stretches along the upper reaches of the great Save River in the south east of Zimbabwe. The Gonarezhou National Park laps against the southern banks of the Save River and between these two nestles the Malilangwe Wildlife Reserve. These three celebrated wildlife areas form part of the Greater Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area, (GLTFCA)- a unique wilderness jewel which is home to the “Big Five” (endangered Black and White rhinos, elephants, buffalo, lion, leopard) and the ”Little Six” (Klipspringer, Suni, Duiker, Steenbok, Sharpe's Grysbok and Oribi). Endangered African wild dogs, Cheetah, Brown hyena, Bat-eared foxes and a host of special birds and plants contribute to the immense variety of this ecosystem. Communities around the GLTFCA contribute to innovative partnerships with National Parks and the private sector, forming a sound base on which to manage social, economic and environmental issues.
This is home to artist and writer Lin Barrie and her life partner, conservationist Clive Stockil.
Expressing her hopes, fears and love for this special ecosystem with oil paints on canvas, Lin Barrie believes that the essence of a landscape, person or animal, can only truly be captured by direct observation.
Lin Barrie states: “Through my art, and my writing, I feel an intimate connection with the natural world, and from my extensive field sketches of wild animals, people and landscapes, I create larger works on canvas.
Lin's work is in various public and private collections in South Africa, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Australia, England, Canada, Sweden and the United States of America. She is represented by galleries in South Africa, Zimbabwe, England, Kenya and Florida, USA.
