wine and wild dogs

Yesterday evening Clive and I planned a walk, to dust the cobwebs gleaned from a day of internet interaction. Descending the steep driveway to the base of our hill, atop which perches our Tsaven house, with hand-carved walking sticks as weapons and preceeded by two bouncing Jack Russells, we turned clockwise to perambulate around our hill. We did not get very far. A deep growling greeted us from the long grass, encouraging us to turn tail all and retreat. No sight of cat did we get, but we heard cat and felt cat. Anti-clockwise we went, and on approaching our waterhole we discovered the reason for cat presence-twenty buffalo, waiting to drink, stood watching us and then huffed away between the mopani trees.

Buffalo in the long grass

Discretion then being the better part of valour, we climbed back up our hill, set up chairs to watch the sky opposite the sunset streak with pink and watched the buffalo herd, now below us. Keeping her from rejoining the herd, a bull nuzzled and mounted a cow, intent on matters other than lions in the grass. A hyena yodelled. Scops owls and a White-faced owl called, intermingled by Freckled and Fiery-necked nightjars.

Crack! With the sudden arrival out of previously silent, darkening bush that never fails to amaze me, the elephants came in. Fast and thirsty, they ringed the waterhole but sniffed and inhaled in disgust, water not very clean…..
They drank rapidly, fussily, and melted away into the night.

Elephant trunk at dusk

All night long we drowsed to the intermittant mumblings of lion, and gentle whoops of hyena.

As far as we know, the buffalo all lived to see another dawn.

Night before last-Natasha Anderson of the Lowveld Rhino Trust spent an evening with us, sharing a bottle of Excelsior Merlot 2010, handpicked by her wine route-hopping friends in Cape Town. A delicious soft wine, yet with rich red fruit flavour, it went exceedingly well with the slow braised steaks which I had simmered in layers of tomato and onion for hours….

Tell your friends about Painted Wolf Wines, Natasha…they will relish meeting the dynamic Painted Wolf Pack of Jeremy and Emma Borg in Cape Town, who donate part proceeds of all sales of their excellent wines to wild dog conservation.

Natasha’s red wine, wonderful as it was, did not lighten our mood as we discussed the state of rhino conservation efforts world wide. Rhino horn poaching is on the increase, and try as we might, we are winning a few battles but losing the war. Time for innovative and daring thinking…..and strong education/outreach programmes. We shared the PACE environmental education films for adults and young people alike, most impressive.

early morning coffee with a view and the PACE booklet...

Children, Children, Children, with their natural enthusiasm and thirst for knowledge, are the way to conserving wild ecosystems for the future. But that is a long term investment, what about a quick fix now for the survival of black and white rhino species?

Plans to travel to Chilo Gorge lodge this weekend excite me. We will refurbish and re-open, re-invent and restore this jewel to the pristine safari wilderness experience it deserves to be.

Chilo Gorge sunset

“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to plan in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike.” -John Muir

I want to make an ALDO LEOPOLD BENCH to place on a rock overlooking the waterhole at our Tsavene House….

and another of these special benches to tuck into the trees on the edge of the woodland surrounding Chilo Gorge Lodge, (which we are renovating), so that bird watching can be fully indulged in….

To spy a Leopold bench in someone’s yard is to know something about the family who there resides. Even if you haven’t read Leopold’s opening lines, “There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot,” from A Sand County Almanac, you will appreciate this easy-to-build bench. If left untreated, this stable bench develops a characteristic gray patina, however, putting some preservative where bench meets ground will prolong its life. Its form, resting alone under a tree or in congregation around a firepit, reminds us of Leopold’s thoughtfulness:

“When some remote ancestor of ours invented the shovel, he became a giver: He could plant a tree. And when the axe was invented, he became a taker: He could chop it down. Whoever owns land has thus assumed, whether he knows it or not, the divine functions of creating and destroying plants.”

“The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, ‘What good is it?’ If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.”

Materials: One 2x6x33″, one 2x10x30″, one 2x8x10′, six 3/8″x 31/2″ carriage bolts with washer and nut, twelve 3/8″ x 31/2″ #12 or #14 flathead wood screws. Use Douglas Fir for your Leopold bench, if you can, and customize its size to suit you. The materials listed will make a 33″ bench, but you may choose to build out to 48″.

Tip: You may want to purchase extra supplies because someone is going to ask you to build them one when they see yours!

via Greenacres: Landscaping with Native Plants | Great Lakes | US EPA.

Drank unctuous red wine and ate aromatic red bean curry last night. Lucille, a PHD student from France, arrived with our friend and scientist colleague, Peter Lindsay, to spend the night. She came bearing a bottle of  Clos Saint-Martin, Madiran 2008, which we opened and savoured, accompanied by red sugar beans simmered all day on the open fire, spiced with mustard seeds, cumin and curry leaves….accompanied by my ‘famous’ samp and some roti flatbreads.

Lions had continued shouting all afternoon yesterday, perhaps on a kill nearby, but then last night were silent, much to Lucille’s frustration-this being her first visit to Southern Africa.

Four Redwing starling chicks, ready to face the big world, flapped and jumped around our bedroom all night, their nest in our beams abandoned. This morning the noisy and messy little creatures flew the coop and disappeared happily with mum and dad, leaving us to wake up to a quiet early morning coffee. Peace…but not for long…discovered a LARGE Boomslang curled in my bookshelf, below the deserted nest, anticipating a meal of baby bird.

Lin Barrie photograph

‘Home Alone’ at our Tsavene house in the Save Valley Consevancy, I lay awake a long time last night… the two jack Russell dogs, Mhisi and Nchila, lay at the foot of my bed as usual-was it Nchila who was gently snoring? I hoped so, because if it were not she, it was a lion breathing. Close by.

I sat up and leaned towards her…no, not her after all-the sounds drifted through the open window of my room perched high on granite boulders. A lion, close, and muttering under it’s breath….then the tell tale whine, rising to a whoop, of a hyena..and another….

As I drifted fitfully in and out of sleep the whoops and mutterings continued.

A long night, not much sleep, so that this morning when I rose and wandered outside to the fire pit in the  dawn light, to check the samp which had been slow -cooking on the Mopani coals outside all night, (no electricity, again), I was drowsy. Missed seeing properly the form of the spotted hyena that skulked around the base of our deck, and who quickly retreated down our stone driveway. Saluted him (her? hard to tell).

Samp-semi crushed Corn kernels, soaked in water for many hours the day before, and simmered on hot coals during the dark hours, now soft and creamy, needing only  chopped onion and garlic and the small red chilli I had harvested from my dear friend Bronwen’s herb garden in Mutare the week before.

Time for a cup of coffee brewed on the coals and then back upstairs on to discover the joys of blogging, once I had switched the inverter on to power up my old laptop.

what a great idea-interactive and creative storybook app on Conservation -view this! Somehow I would like to create a story book type blog, with paintintings and sketches, a page turner…

Shilo Shiv Suleman: Using tech to enable dreaming | Video on TED.com.

Here I am again, new to all this but enjoying the challenge of learning to Blog!

These photos from last year show me with Jeremy Borg of Painted Wolf Wines and the Giant bottle of his Pictus wine, which I painted a label for, to auction at our Safari Soiree 2011.

You will know what that was all about if you have visited the facebook page A Celebration ofPainted Wolves, which I posted in my last blog……