No rain yet... - Maree

Life is full of beauty. Notice it. Notice the bumble bee, the small child, and the smiling faces. Smell the rain, and feel the wind. Live your life to the fullest potential, and fight for your dreams. 

- Ashley Smith 

 Ink sketch and colour wash of a scene in Magaliesburg in my Moleskine Nature sketchbook

It's the first of October, heading for mid-summer here in South Africa and we've had no rain yet. Normally we have the winds in August clearing up old growth and our first spring rains early in September, but the wind has been blowing right through September, seemingly blowing the clouds back to whence they came from.

I'm having to water my garden every day, we've had some very high temperatures, but nothing seems to give life like even just a couple of millimetres of rain...

::

After the rain - Maree

All was silent as before -
All silent save the dripping rain.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

We've had some beautiful rain to end the season - for the past couple of weeks we've had heavy afternoon showers virtually every day and the ground is so saturated that puddles collect next to all the farm roads. We've had this before, with rains carrying on well into May and even June, which is peculiar for us, as Gauteng (South Africa) is a summer rainfall area.

Just some roadside scene... Maree

You say life is a dream where we can't say what we mean
Maybe just some roadside scene that we're driving past
There's no telling where we'll be in a day or in a week
And there's no promises of peace or of happiness
- Extract from "Life is a Song - Patrick Park

A gravel road leading through Spring Farm, about 3kms from us on the way to Magaliesburg for our Christmas breakfast. This is one of the short-cuts I often taken instead of the main road, which has lots of trucks, traffic and a railway line to cross. Going this route I see lots of little animals. Happiness moments...

Nature, Nature, please don't go away... Maree

Nature has so much beauty, so much to teach us. Mother Nature has inspired the greatest poets of all time to write unbelievable prose.

Nature, Nature,
Please don't go away...

We over polluted and any day, now, any day
It might die forever
And just go away

We are transmitting from the future
2115, I think
We lost count at 2079
When the world was on the brink

Look Larry
Look Sue
Look Harry

It’s 2011 according to the machine…
Those trees are green!
The sky is blue!
The fields are beautiful
And even the people are, too!
Look everyone!
Look at the screen!

Look at when nature, nature
Was such a fragile creature
With such delicate green features
By John Murray

Tea landscape - Maree

"Of all the wonders of nature, a tree in summer
is perhaps the most remarkable; with the possible
exception of a moose singing "Embraceable You" in spats"!
- Woody Allen



A friend's drive-way leading up to the house - nothing spectacular, no colourful, flowering borders, the road is not even brick-paved - but somehow the trees flanking the one side of the drive-way and some shrubs on the other side caught my attention. I mentioned to her that I would like to sketch those few trees and she accommodatingly carried our tea down the drive-way, where we set up a couple of stools and chatted away in between sips of our tea.

Now here's the thing - we forgot to bring water and instead of walking all the way back up to the house, I poured some left-over black tea into my cup and used that instead! I'm sure it contributed to the nice hues of brown the emerged here!

A farm road - Maree

“I haven't a clue as to how my story will end. But that's all right. When you set out on a journey and night covers the road, you don't conclude the road has vanished. And how else could we discover the stars?”



One of the farm roads on Spring Farm bypassing the little dam where the cattle get together for most of the day, quietly grazing or lying in the shade under the trees. You can see the dam more fully in my post HERE.

Road through Broederstroom - Maree

“The road leading to a goal does not separate you from the destination; it is essentially a part of it.”
- Charles de Lint



This is the road to Harties through Broederstroom, a village located in the foothills of the Magaliesberg, 35km from Pretoria, situated on the Crocodile River (where I sketched the open gate) and overlooking Hartebeespoort Dam from the East side.

The many routes we have as an option to Harties are equally as fabulous as the destination. Leaving the tar road, there is this short-cut over the mountain and virtually only fit for off-road vehicles, but the scenery and the wild life crossing our path more than makes up for such a bumpy ride.

Road through Hartebeesthoek

“Remember that happiness is a way of travel -- not a destination.”



Another one of the roads we meander along on our way to Harties. This one goes through Hartebeesthoek (a Hartebeest is a type of Gnu, and "hoek" means corner), where the Radio Astronomy Observatory (HartRAO) is situated, and it is the only major radio astronomy observatory in Africa.

The Observatory began as Deep Space Station 51, built in 1961 by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the United States of America. The station tracked many unmanned US space probes. These included the Ranger, Surveyor and Lunar Orbiter spacecraft which landed on the Moon or mapped it from orbit, the Mariner missions which explored the planets Venus and Mars and the Pioneers which measured the Sun's winds. The station was handed over to the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in 1975 and was converted to a radio astronomy observatory. In 1988 the observatory became a National Facility operated by the Foundation for Research Development (FRD). In 1999 the FRD was restructured as the National Research Foundation (NRF).


The observatory is equipped with a single 260 ton radio telescope with a main reflecting surface diameter of 26 metres. The telescope is equipped with radio receivers operating in the microwave band at wavelengths of 18cm, 13cm, 6cm, 4.5cm, 3.5cm, 2.5cm and 1.3cm.