i think i need a mud bath

cool quotes

sausage tree flowers

In the absence of a new blog post here are some lovely quotes that i have stumbled over during the past week. I hope you enjoy them.

It is time to develop a big ‘US’, rather than the old ‘us and them’ that lets us to exploit and bully others on a personal level, and on an international level to wage war. The East must see the West as part of ‘US’ and the North must come to feel that the South is part of ‘US’. We should include the entire world in our concern, wishing all humanity well. If we can do that there will be no room for hatred, thinking of others as enemies. And we will achieve this through education, not through prayer.

Dalai Lama (fb)

Love is the ultimate healer, a force that is stronger than an individual. All the loves in the world are like different rivers flowing into the same lake, where they meet and are transformed into a single love that becomes rain and blesses the earth.

Paolo Coelho (fb)

"That we close down is not a problem. In fact, to become aware of when we do so is an important part of the training. The first step in cultivating loving-kindness is to see when we are erecting barriers between ourselves and others. Unless we understand-in a non-judgmental way-that we are hardening our hearts, there is no possibility of dissolving that armour. Without dissolving the armour, the loving-kindness of bodhicitta is always held back. We are always obstructing our innate capacity to love without an agenda." ~Pema Chodron

When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.  John Muir

Hailstorm

whiteout

It came out of nowhere. Today started hot and dry like yesterday and the day before. The air was sultry and hot. We had to wade through air just to move.

Around midday we noticed the sky darkening in the south. There was thunder and some lightening, but our rain normally comes from the north so we expected to miss out.

We wondered whether to close the windows on the vehicle. We were still superstitious about chasing the first rain away.

hailstones on the stoep

The dark sky drew ever closer., and soon it started to rain. Hurrah! first rain!!

we thought. Then "oh a hailstone" ; then more hailstones and soon a total whiteout as hailstones, some as big as baby golf balls, splattered down all around; crashing on the tin roof so we could not even shout above the din.

torrents of topsoil

The ground was baked hard by winter sun, so the rainwater ran off the top forming raging foaming torrents that raced past our windows carting icebergs of hailstones. 

after the storm

Then it began to slow down. The ground was white with hailstones interlaced with rivers of brown soil. The sun came out. The granite boulders steamed and diamante droplets hung on the bare trees. The air was cold and icy, and a double rainbow was emblazoned across the sky.

Sunday Lunch

It is a hot sultry sunday.  Low clouds have moved in and the heat is building for some promised rain. I am outside pottering around my new planting projects and staring at the bottle mountain for the umpteenth time to see if i can come up with a creative recycling creation before Google Earth calls to investigate.  I am not moving fast. Nothing is.  Perhaps I will take my book to the pool for an hour.

Next thing, K is calling me from the doorway. It looks urgent. I drop what I am doing and hasten indoors. "There is a lion here!"  They were hunting the warthogs that were near the house.

 Another lion arrives. They greet and both stare fixedly at us from the edge of the treeline.  They settle down and a third lion arrives. This is the dominant male, some people call him Shaka.  He eases in to the shade and lets the other two be more watchful.

We stare at each other through glass and  across a space of some ten meters - maybe a bit more. One by one they move off, alongside the boardwalk, past the pool and the guest cottage, and on to the waterhole between the koppies.

Sunday quietens down again.