Let me tell you about the garden at the house. Remember I told you that the house had once been very grand when it was first built? It also had a lovely garden with beautiful trees that has been left to go to ruin just the same as the house.
The soil is mostly sand, quite fine, with a grey soil sub-base. However, the rain is so heavy when it comes that it has leached the soil so that nothing much grows on the ground. Other houses round us have only a sand yard with one or two trees planted, but we actually have some grass too at the bottom of the garden. It isn’t cut so you couldn’t describe it as a lawn, it’s just grass and it’s growing.
If you dare to explore the garden firstly, put on extra insect repellent as the undergrowth is full of hungry biting insects – not mosquitoes but the bites are itchy. Tread carefully and watch all the time where you are putting your feet as there are snakes about and all of them are poisonous, especially the black mamba!
There is a somewhat dilapidated metal link fence surrounding the garden and this is overgrown the whole length with delicious and exotic climbers like ipomoea (morning glory) and black-eyed susan.
Right behind the bottom fence is a stretch of open land, quite overgrown and then the banks of the Zambezi River – so we are very close to one of the most famous rivers in the whole of Africa. The river flows west to east (left to right as you look at it). It is wide and swift as it moves. It looks very deep indeed and the surface is smooth without ripples, just large swirls. I think it looks quite menacing and I wouldn’t be sure what lives in it – hippos and crocodiles I’ve been told! On the opposite bank you can see Zambia , which rises in very low wooded hill away from the river itself.
Back to the garden! There is the biggest cactus I have ever seen with many prickly branches reaching upwards. I’ve taken pictures of it but it just doesn’t look as impressive as in real life. There is a sandy terrace outside the back doors and what were steps leading down to a circular garden and cement built barbeque (derelict now). There is a very strange weed growing next to this barbeque which has red and green leaves. The red is very bright red.
There are many very tall trees and all of them are festooned in trailing bougainvillea in different shades of pink. Then there is a very, very tall tree which must have bright red flowers which you can’t see from the ground but you notice red blossom underneath the tree, look up to see where it has come from and still can’t see the flowers. There are large aloes with sharp points hosting a strange and very clever plant trailing through it. The flower of this plant (and I don’t know its name) has dark purple and cream markings with a deep purple cup for a centre. When the flower dies and the seeds form, the seed pod is a little hanging basket which waits until the seeds dry and fall out, very, very clever.
There are ants building small ‘dens’ everywhere like mini volcanoes, wasps in ground holes, pale yellow swallow-tail butterflies and the best bird of all, an African Paradise Flycatcher, which was hunting insects in the overhanging eaves of the house today. This bird has a dark head and breast, bright light-blue bill and eye ring and a chestnut back and tail. The tail was extraordinarily long, which is its breeding plumage (to attract the females). We also have several types of lizard and huge millipedes, very black, fast moving and about 20 cm long. I like them though, as it is fascinating how their legs move in waves along the edge of their body.
So it’s an interesting garden which is no longer loved or tended and I know it will return to the wild as no-one seems to care about our house at all. It can get very hot when the sun is out; you can’t sit out for long and you always have to be on your guard and on the lookout for what might come along next!
