Three Days to Go!

Three days before we move into the house and I’m already dreaming and imagining getting out into the garden!

I’ve already binge-shopped Amazon. After getting waylaid from my initial search for practical South African gardening books before I’d even chosen anything, I ended up downloading  English books on using herbs and plants for making household goodies like flavoured oils and hand lotions. Then things took a more-sinister turn when I delved into Nicholas Culpepper’s Complete Herbal and Maude Grieve’s Modern Herbal. I actually scared myself with some of the stuff. There seems to be quite a bit of scope for accidental poisoning!!

Interestingly, it seems that quite a few of the plants we already have are potent at keeping witches away, so I think my starting focus will be to find pretty flowers for attracting bees and other insect life, and cultivating some veggies for the pot.

All this focus on plants is to avoid thinking about the inevitability of the great unpacking! Monday morning, the plan is to arrive early and clean and polish floors before Kurt arrives with the first load of our ‘stuff’. Then it’s going to be a full on mission organising where things go and what to unpack when. As well as what we shipped from Hong Kong, we also have a containerful of what was in the house before and what I brought over last time, so there are now likely to be triplicates as well as duplicates of clothes, kitchen equipment and bedding.

My big worry is what has happened to my books. We had a lovely big bookcase (with ladder!) when we were last here, filled with books spanning from my mother’s childhood to the present. But when Kurt rushed to Hong Kong at the start of Covid, it was left to friends to organise packing it up, and I’m not sure they loved them quite as much as I do. It’s been over four years now. I’m praying!

All will be revealed on Monday!

Easter weekend is not a great choice of timing for a move. We headed to Makro this morning to buy what we’ll need for the cleaning, and it was closed for Good Friday. So tomorrow is mop-buying day. The list of what we need is long! Hong Kong was amazing for having shops which seemed to be permanently open. Here shops close at 8pm, and on holidays and Sundays they have shorter hours. Quaint, but annoying. But the plus side is how awesome the shops are. I have always loved hardware stores, and here I can spend hours just walking up and down Builder’s Warehouse looking at paint colours or taps, or lighting, or drills. I missed that in Hong Kong.

Makro is great; It sells everything, from colouring books to garden furniture, food to wood burning fireplaces. And it sells in bulk. The last time we were there, we found huge glass bottles of Tabasco, amongst other things. Even if we didn’t like Tabasco, we’d have to buy one, just because the bottle was amazing! Maybe that will be our housewarming present to ourselves.

One thing which I know is going to hack me off is that I think the beautiful pink rose near the pool got cut down by one of our tenants. I can’t for the life of me imagine how anyone in their right mind could ‘accidentally’ manage to cut what is clearly a climbing plant. But I also can’t imagine how anyone in their right mind would actually want to cut it down, so I have to assume the damage was accidental. With luck, it’ll come back, and it might be even better for the drastic pruning, but until I see it properly I’m festering in advance, with resentment. (only three more days to fester!) The spot where it grew is beautiful. A peaceful spot for sitting, where birds would nest in the twigs that poked down from the patio canopy, probably attracted by the insects the rose drew to itself…

But let’s remain positive. I might get a pleasant surprise on Monday, and this time next week, we should be reasonably settled, if not completely unpacked. And I can go and look for a practical African gardening book!