Big water, little minds and things

So Allie beat me to it, with a story more interesting than mine, but here goes anyway... (this comment makes alot more sense once one gets to the end of my post and then looks at Allies)

It's been raining the whole week. Flash floods have been reported far and wide with many a news headline to boot. In fact, just this morning, 702 carried the story of a man and his daughter who escaped with their lives through a sunroof after their car was washed off a water-swept low lying bridge. I always wonder why people in 4x4's think they can cross over bridges under water? I drive a big bakkie and would NEVER even contemplate it.

And yesterday, I had a delegate of supliers here from Holland and the chap driving them around told me how the low lying brigde on route to the farm was under water. I cautioned him and he smiled whilst pointing at his VOLVO AWD and said; "It's fine - I've got a good car."

All I could think was "You're a fool man - DAFT!", but instead said - "Beware of the power of water..." and promptly regailed him with two anecdotal stories about folks being washed of bridges in their high end "4x4's". I hope that sunk in a little.

I digress.... again!

With all the rain quite a few creatures get to play outside of their normal playgrounds. I was walking the crops yesterday (as I do quite regularly), focussed on the health of the young plants in the beds and looking for things like early markers of Verticillium and it's ulgy sister Fausarium.

There, nestled quietly, amongst the plants was a little critter. If it were any other situation, I think I may have walked right past him, because with the amazing camoflauge he's almost invisible. But I, less so invisible, towering over him like the tallest skyscaper would me, must have startled him and he moved.

I promptly whipped out my phone and went in to stealth mode, slowly crouching ever closer and speaking gently to him, asking him to sit still for a picture. I think the talking was more for my own benefit, but it can drown out the deafening thumping of the heart when we're focussed on a thing in absolute silence.

In any event after numerous attempts and some interesting but phyically challenging balancing manouvres, I managed to get the phone nice and close to take the shot.

Cute hey - and to think I would have missed it had I just been cruising through...

Ah!! It's amazing how sometimes the little things make one step back and wonder: "Just why do we spend so much time just cruising through to the next destination, instead of stopping to see the little frogs on the floor?"

TAGGED

So I've been tagged by Rambler....

I obediently went to the 6th folder in my pictures folder and found this, the 6th picture....

Oh - this is such an exciting picture!! What yarn can I weave. What drama can I unfold before your eyes. Let me think for a moment... Eureka!!! Behold - my lyrical masterpiece:

The cuttings were bad.

We had to claim a credit.

This was the accompanying photo.

So with that dullness out the way - I took the liberty of searching a bit more:

Will the ninth folder, ninth picture do???

Date: 12 December 2007

Event: H2O

Venue: Wild Waters Complex, Boksburg, Gauteng

Time: Just after sunset

Subject: The Master producer / DJ - Fat Boy Slim (FBS), aka Pizzaman, aka Norman Cook, who produced amongst other things the hits 'Praise You' and 'Weapon of Choice' unfortunately the video embedding was disabled :( .

Anyway, back to the story... My landlord & friend JMcK convinced me that even though I was so over these big dance parties, this H20 was one not to be missed!! It was difficult to disagree.

He took to the decks at about 6pm that evening and from then the real party began. To my delight, every track was played from vinyl and his set was extremely diverse covering about 15 years of dance music.

I drank a tad too much, but thankfully was restrained enough not to loose my shoes / bag / shirt and goodness knows what else in the water, unlike my counterpart and our other friends.

The verdict: FBS was not a very technically good DJ - but boy did he get the crowd going!

Now, what am I supposed to do.... Tag six other people. I don't even know six other people in blog land!!!

Alrighty then - Allie, Mel-B, Shayne, Rambler, PurringCat and (the latest blog I follow) Absolutwillie are tagged... how do I inform them??

Verti-what?!?

With a blog called Blooms and beats and the bits in between, one would have imagined that I'd spend a bit of time talking about Blooms and Beats. To date, all that's been served up is kind of like the peanut-butter and jam without the bread.


But, I spent today as a researcher. Searching for information on Verticillium (this is the Wikipedia link) or more specifically V. albo-atrum (this is the Britannica link). Now if any one out there likes gardening, put down your cup of tea and start making notes.

Verticillium, I was reminded, affects too many plants and trees to even start mentioning and we have a few beds in one of the greenhouses that have been affected. We'd love to treat the plants to make them better - but all the reports I found were very gloomy. In fact the one remedy went so far as tto say: "Remove the plant, roots and all and destroy it. If you're going to replant in the same space, wait three years and choose a plant that's resistant to Verticillium."

Three years - that can't be? I read it again to be certain and sure enough - that's what they said, "Three years" - they must be nuts!

Terribly disheartened by that news, I started ferreting through numerous books, databases and the web to find some short course remedies. I spent ages critically evaluating all the data on hand, some of it conflicting of course, seeking a solution that would allow us to replant when the beds fall due in about three weeks.

But before running away with myself a bit here, let me backtrack for those of you who actually are ready to take the aforementioned notes: Verticillium albo-atrum as the Wikipdeia link says in slightly fancier English than I'd care to use is a soil borne fungus. To date there are no certified remedies available and as mentioned before affects numerous trees and succulents. They forgot to mention tomatoes on that list.

A vicious little critter, V. albo-atrumit works it's way up the plants vascular system, often killing one side of the plant from the roots up. In succulents the leaves will often turn yellow and die back, hanging pathetically on the stem. And to make matters worse, it tends to strike in the latter stages of plant growth. Cool and damp conditions are the time to keep an eye out for it. The result is ultimately, how do I put this gently.... death.

Looking forward again, my intense research began to pay off as I started putting a remedy puzzle together.

I found an interesting research paper from the University of Florida, dating back to 1985. There appears to be some remedy in changing the pH of the soil. Dropping the pH of inoculated soil from 7.5 pH to 5.5 pH, reduced the incidence of the disease from 90% infestation to a meagre 17%. That kind of result makes one pay attention! If I ever have it at home, I'll have to consult my best gardening books / the greenie okes at the garden centre to see if there practical way to do it there.

Another suggestion came from a textbook by Ball Publishing, which suggested a fungicide drench. So we're also going to try and use Rovral Flo (iprodione) which is normally used as a foliar spray for Botrytis cineria (most commonly seen as pink spots on your rose blooms) as a drench in order to suppress the symptoms in plants we're not likely to remove. There seems to be no conclusive evidence that it'll work, but we figure it's worth a shot - rather than throwing away thousands of plants.

We're also going to get our hands on a chemical fumigant called Metam-sodium (Herbifume - from Plaaskem is one of the brand names). This 'safe' and easy to handle fumigant apparently kept the disease incidence as low as 7%.

The commercial growers the best remedies are Steam Sterilisation for which you need a boiler and a licence, or fumigation. For domestic growers (i.e: gardeners) few remedies exist - but there is some hope at hand.

Some practical tips are:

• Loosing the plant is almost always inevitable, so the sooner it's removed and destroyed the better . DO NOT COMPOST the affected and try your best to remove all the roots. In fact burning is strongly suggested.
• If the plant is in a pot, get rid of that soil, wash the pot thoroughly with bleach solution and rinse it well.
• Cut ALL nitrogen rich fertilizers into the affected areas, but bolster the use of PHOSPHORUS based fertilizer in the immediate area.
• If you're dealing with a garden bed try to find an economical way to drop the pH of the soil.
• Herbifume may well be out of reach to the domestic user now that I think of it, but you'll never know if you don't ask... Obviously any fumigant will kill any plants in the ground.
• Finally, select Verticillium resistant plants when you do replant. Your garden centre specialists should know which plants are safe.

So tomorrow is action day one. We get out drenching machine and a few watering cans and start drenching like crazy. After the harvest we'll fumigate the affected beds and after the next harvest we'll steam sterilize the entire greenhouse (an annual event). Here goes to getting rid of the Verticillium!!!!

Curiouser and curiouser

(picture 'courtesy' of Disney)

It's been a very strange day today. So much so, I thought I'd write it down in the hope of getting it out of my system.

There's only one way to describe how I'm feeling right now: 'WIRED!!!!'

It's got me somewhat confounded 'cause I can't for the life of me figure out why. I've had no more coffee than usual and I haven't taken any medication.

Unfortunately I've also got all the side effects of consuming to much coffee or a handful of semi-legal diet pills...

I'm a bit hyperactive, fidgety, emotional and I dare say bordering on irrational - the only difference is my appetite is monstrous!!!

Any ideas!?!?!?!

The only thing that I can think of that's even remotely different from usual is I have had a couple of days of 'tapped' into my emotional side.

First there were two movies I saw this weekend: Apt Pupil and Happy Endings... to which I had unusually emotional responses, but for vastly differing reasons. Then there was a letter I wrote to an old friend, who I sense just needs someone to talk to and has no where to turn. All of which has been marked by dreams that have been remarkably vivid - including a scene in which I was playing baseball (don't ask, I couldn't tell you).

Then today, there was CV's intimation that being in Jozi has left him feeling torn. We've discussed it a number of times before, but today I got a little weepy when I got his e-mail about it and read the subsequent post.

And finally - just a few moments ago, I lost my cool. I won't go into details other than to say that if I had a penchant for violence, someone would have been hurting right now.

Could it be that being around people that are naturally more emotionally involved in their daily lives is causing me to be the same? If I were in a bar, I'd be boldly declaring that someone spiked my drink!

How curious!!!

Anyway, I'm going to head off to gym and do some cardio till I can't anymore - hopefully that'll settle me down. A long chat with CV will probably help to... ;0)

LOST

For those of you who love TV series - I hear Season 5 of LOST has started airing in the States. My freind JoneS is beside himself with anticipation. But that's not what this post is about.

This is about losing stuff. It drives me round the bend when I loose stuff. It's irritating, especially since I'm very good at perpetually only losing specific 'classes' of items.

Keys, cellphones and wallets are all safe with me - but give me a 'flash drive', data card or an ID book - and I'll loose it.

In the past three years I've been through as many ID books and no less than six Flash Drives.

The other day, I brought the SD card for my digital photo frame to work so I could load up selected pictures from the recent holiday CV and I took to Cape Town and Fanschhoek. I even went so far as renaming the specific pics on the card, so that the pictures would be displayed in some kind of meaningful order.

As I was leaving work to go home (via the gym), I made a point of picking it up and even thought to myself, I should pop this tiny little thing into the USB hub thingy I've got. Of course, I got momentarily distracted and not only did I not pop the card into the USB hub - but I have no cooking clue where I put the damned thing!

Replacing it is not an issue - a 1GB card comes in at less than R100.00. It's the fact that I lost the thing in the 1st place that gauls me - and now the digital photo frame is back to square one - BLANK. Argh!

Chances are I'll stumble upon it again some time in the distant future and be overjoyed - but for a short while to come, I'll be irritated by this inconvenience.

As a footnote, it's an election year - I've managed to hold onto my current ID for the past few months - lets see how I fare till then.

Oh my THUNDER!!

Picture the scene, Sicily 1922... Ok, now that the Golden Girl fans have done that - scrap it altogether ;0)

After all my commentary about the wind in Cape Town, I'm forced to concede that Jozi has been having a bit of a tempestuos time herself since I got back. It's been cool, overcast and rather like - London in the Summer, I guess (I`ve not been there yet) - but with one notable difference. The Highveld Thunderstorm.

So picture then this scene, Bapsfontein farmland, 2009 - It's about one o'clock in afternoon and I'm quietly preparing my wholesome low everything lunch of lean meat, veggies etc. There are no decent shops (and consequently temptations) nearby.

Anyway, I digress. The clouds off to the west are ominously dark and threatening, but seem to be about an hour away. Then, quite suddenly the wind picks up something crazy and within minutes, it's bucketing down, at nothing less than 50 degrees off vertical - so much so that visibility dropped to less than 10meters and I had to close the windows for fear of them blowing out the frames.

And then, almost as swiftly as it belw in, it was over - just in time to go back to work!

Out on the farm here, it's pretty flat. The wind can get mighty nasty and storms are (quite litterally) electrifying. I have some pics of a storm brewing earlier this year that shows the kind of stuff that brews out here in Bapsfontein - here's one of them.

Beautiful don't you think?


I do love the highveld for her Summer storms!

Back to work :(

Sadly our holiday's come to an end...

I'm back in Jozi, which is presently being lashed by the wonder of a Highveld thunderstorm, with complimenting (but now all to familiar) high winds.

I've started drafting Blown Away Pt2, but will have to leave it till the weekend, when I've got more time to re-size a whack of pictures that go with it...

Good bye Cape Town, it was a pleasure getting to know you better.

Blown Away

There are a number of things that have struck me on this little get away. I hope to get them all down on 'paper' before too long and there's definitely more parts to this post still brewing...

One of the first things I picked up on was the 'South Easter' that has prevailed from the time I set foot in Cape Town and has not let up since. I spotted Cape Argus headline declaring "Winds batter Cape Town" on one of our drives around town on Monday, so there is some solace in knowing that it's obviously usually not sustained for this long.

As a Jobur'g boy, I associate this kind of wind with exceptionally cold fronts in winter, so if I were driving through the area and never got out the car - the dry vegetation and strong winds would lead me, by default, to bundle up with at least three layers before exiting the car. It's a bit of a mind warp, to say the least.

Almost every tree is more dense on one side and the stems on the Agapanthus I've seen seem to be on steroids! I think I now understand why the endemic vegetation is so darned different to the rest of the country.

Maybe my jaded Jozi ways make me less inclined to see the hospitality of some of the gestures I've seen, or perhaps it's my overly pragmatic approach these things, but the locals all seem to take personal responsibility for The Cape Doctor. Now, unless there's a huge affinity for baked beans and broccoli in the region - I can't for the life of me think why they'd apologise for the winds. Perhaps we Gautengalengers have embedded a perception that all we could do in Cape Town is sit on the beaches a soak up every last ounce of solar radiation that we can. One and a half hours on a private deck was sufficient for me than you very much!

There's tons of stuff to do here. The fact that CV and I must have spent a total of 15 minutes on the beach at Hout Bay in an experience mildly akin to sandblasting has made this holiday no less enjoyable. We have spent time at so many wonderful places and engaged with so many amazing people, the wind although omnipresent was the least of my worries. I've had a wonderful time and leave considering retiring into a career of viticulture near Franschhoek, nestled amongst the majestic mountains in this area - I just gotta come check it out in the darkest depths of winter.

The fairest Cape has won a place in my heart this week, I've been quite literally been blown away!

Something about storytelling (pt2)...

When I started DJ'ing in the mid nineties I kept telling people how it had changed the way I would listen to music forever. As a House DJ, listening to music for the mix became a multi-layered affair.

First there was the TEMPO: Seamless mixing requires that the two tracks being played are perfectly beat matched - so they can be played over each other without sounding like the 'charge of the light brigade'.

Then there was KEY: As a person with no real proper music training, key mixing remains an elusive wonder. Sometimes I get it and sometimes not. But essentially each song or track has it's own key. And as you know if two keys do not compliment each other, perfectly mixed songs will sound off.

And finally there's TRACK SELECTION and PLACEMENT: This is the 'art' of it. Reading a crowd and taking them on a musical journey that stirs emotions and in the context of a dance floor - brings everyone together to a place of mass bliss! If it's done right, the dancers on the dance floor feed off the DJ's energy and in turn the DJ feeds off the response of his audience in a cycle of reciprocal enjoyment.

To this day, even when I'm making one of those compilations CD's for my car, I still make a significant effort to get a sort of musical journey in the track placement - it's a more personal journey usually - but a journey nonetheless.

Here's a sample of a mix I did last year - all be it a promo for an event with four different dance floors - I think it gives you an auditory sample of the basics described above. (NOTE: I did the audio only, and lay NO claim to the amazing video...)

In my first ever blog I spoke about how I thought storytellers are special because they're able to "recount the seemingly mundane events of daily life and and etch lively textured images on my minds eye".

Becoming a blogger has been like that journey into music. I'm no longer just living each day as it comes. I'm actually making an effort to look at the details. Each day, has it's own TEMPO, KEY and PLACEMENT on the tapestry of my life. I'm seeing things in an entirely new light, so much so that at this point, I feel like the simple decision to blog has quite simply changed the way I view life forever.

Obviously the fact that I'm on a Holiday makes for boodles of good 'material'. And there's a three part summation of the holiday brewing in my head, which is why there's no 'story' today. ;0)

I have no idea if my zeal for finding the 'story' will be as great when I get back into the daily grind of growing flowers, managing labour and such. But I'm pretty certain, that even if the daily routine of things does somewhat overwhelm at times - I will still be searching for little snippets to make each day it's own - rather than one bundled mass of days, weeks, months an years.

So this post goes with special thanks to Rambler, Allie and Mel, who in their own way (but without ever demanding it) have inspired me to find the TEMPO, KEY and PLACEMENT of each day in the mix of my own life.

Chasing Shadows

CV and I finally got to spend some time catching rays beside the semi-private splash pool en-suite, but he's got the scoop on those details - so catch his blog.

So with a very good sun block on hand (chest, face and legs), we ventured out into the sun, pleased that the walls enclosing the patio helped keep the howling winds at bay. I grabbed my book - a frivolous novel revolving around the Hollywood entertainment industry - and promptly plopped myself onto the deck chair hoping to erase my farmers tan and balance the hues of my lily white shoulders and chest to my far darker forearms.

It didn't take long. A mere hour and a half later, three layers of that cream I now reluctantly call sunblock down and I was starting to feel a little toasty. I retreated into the suite to don a T-shirt and my boardies. But alas I was too late! That slight red hue I observed on my thighs and abdomen was later to reveal itself as my impersonation of a lobster - with a ridiculous white stripe!!!

Sunburn is NOT my friend, and he does come to visit at the most inopportune moments. I can deal with the stinging that follows every movement when the fabric of whatever I'm wearing brushes over my skin and I can even deal with the need to hyper-moisturise to avoid the inevitable reptilian shedding to follow.

What kills me though, is this sad fate: For the rest of our time here in the fairest Cape, I'm going to have to spend my time chasing shadows, ducking the wickedly enticing sun to avoid any further damage...

Sleeping in..

I'm presently on a little getaway in the greater Cape Town area. I'm generally an early riser and CV's... um... well lets say there's times he'd like to be the spokesman for Slumberland. Anyway, when the dawn throws the first slivers of light through the curtains of a room, my body reacts like a good farmers should and I wake up. Six hours is about all I need to feel fresh and ready for just about anything.

Make no mistake there're times I regret that. There have been times I'd rather lie in and let the day slowly pass by - alas, I can't. My back gets a little sore, and I'll toss and turn and then in the interests of preserving our relationship and his good nature, I'll have to get out of bed so he can carry on sleeping.

Right now is a case in point. I'm perched precariously on the top of the bunk bed, merrily typing up this post in the second room of our suite, whilst he tops up on his good nature in the king size next door.

I mean how many people can there be in life that have perfectly synched body clocks that they'll wake up within seconds of each other both looking and feeling like a million bucks. Life is not a Sealy advert after all! When you're in your own home, you can plan around the sounds you know you'd make, oil the hinges and pad the door frames, wear your sheepskin pantoffels inside out - so you can glide over just about anything. But in a hotel suite it's different. You're in a foreign space and they never seem to take the potential for wildly differing sleep patterns into consideration into the design brief.

So there I was at 6:20 a.m. padding as quietly as I could around the room looking for a way to quietly sneak outside for a cigarette and find a place to write. Desperately trying not to wake my slumbering partner seemed to be a fruitless plan. My feet sounded like stone crushers on the carpets, the tumblers on the door lock like a jackhammer and the door handles creaked with the intensity of a rushing train of an action sequence presented 5.1 Dolby digital surround. So when I made it back into the room and he asked me why I'm waking him up a sheepish; 'Sorry' had to suffice.

I'm not complaining of course - I don't regret being an early riser. My creative energies are at their peak and I do my best writing and music production early Sundays. And anyway there's far more to relationships than sleep. It's just that when I'm out of my personal space, I notice these things far more acutely, 'cause I don't have any plans laid out and my coffee machine a good few walls aways from the bed unlike this suite.

As a bachelor, it's easy: wake up, get out of bed, do breakfast and get on with whatever I'd like to. But the moment there're other body clocks involved in the same time and space, a special effort needs to be made to make to preserve. That of course means the sanity of those slumbering around me and of course myself - from grievous bodily harm.

Well, that's not entirely true, I suppose. My friends with young kids would be laughing at me talking about the wonders of sleeping in - 'cause young kids show very little mercy for their parents need for sleep.

This terrible misfortune of not being able to sleep in has 'plagued' me for years. I recall being on a school camp a million years ago and promptly waking up the the crack of dawn, declaring the wonder of the morning to my fellow campers. Without digressing too much, let's say I was on the receiving end of a bit of schoolboy abuse. So from that day all those years ago, I learnt that my zest for life in the early part of the day is shared by few and I should never ever aim to include the sleepers in my early morning routines.

It's now nearly three hours after sunrise and the pumping wind of the past few days seems to have died ever so slightly. The sun's shining and I'm starting to itch to get going. I lie, the need for another smoke is already starting to gnaw at me. I think it's time to try to gently raise a sleeping beauty from his slumber...

Something about storytelling...

It's always amazed me how some people can remember the little details of a conversation weeks ago, or manage to recount the seemingly mundane events of daily life and etch lively textured images on the minds eye. I call these people 'the Storytellers'.

To date, I don't consider myself one of those people, not because I don't think I can write - I think I can... Sadly, it's because I can barely remember what happened 5 minutes ago - never mind tell the story.

I recently became involved with a wonderful man who's been inspirational in more ways than one, blogging included. In engaging with him and some of his fellow bloggers that I've met on our recent travels, I've drawn the conclusion that a good 'story' is about picking out the details of our daily lives and finding something more than simple recounting of events. Unlike our dear local paper 'journalists' who weekly, will provide me with numerous fine examples (and I use that with some reservation) of painfully simple event recounting.

Of late, CV's been talking about some rather deep issues and in the past few day's I've heard comments like: "I've been following your blog, your last post made me cry." and; "I never saw it like that, it's completely changed my view on the subject."

I shan't steal his thunder on the matter 'cause we come from vastly different points of departure on the subject and I could never present it quite so elegantly anyway. But, you can (and really should) read more about it here.

And so with my 'keyword' for the year being FOCUS, I've finally decided to start a blog. Inspiration will be provided in abundance by whatever happens in the coming days weeks and years, fueled by a constant supply of creative energy on tap from my partner and whatever I'm reading at the moment may help me keep it at least vaguely interesting.

I guess a bit of 'copycat' writing styles may be dotted throughout. But hey - who gives a flying duck anyway it's not a competition. It's my blog, which I'll style how I want to. ..