Tag Archives: sharing my world

#justsaying, House and Home

This time of year is such a joy

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This time of year is such a joy! The weather outside my window is worthy of inspiration. It’s a serene afternoon – warm, not too humid with a gentle breeze playing through the trees. Summer is my favourite time of the year.

The grass is green – carpet-like in the front garden and verdant in the back. The trees are lush and tending towards overgrowth, muffling the sounds beyond the garden.

I hear the sound of a light aircraft in the distance probably on its way to land at the Rand Airport. The subdued whoosh of cars on the nearby road is broken by the invasive rattling of a motorbike speeding to clear the traffic light before it turns red.

I hear the voice of my neighbour who has arrived home – the car door slams shut, the sounds of footsteps getting fainter as he moves towards his house. A hooter across the road hails the attention of the house occupants. A bakkie with a trailer laden with gardening equipment dashes up the road – garden service for the day is over and it’s time to drop off the rubble at the dump.

The radio is softly playing in the kitchen – a musical accompaniment to the business of the day, that is moving towards sunset. A microlight passes overhead. A lawnmower starts up. Chè taking is advantage of the coolness of the late afternoon to clear the long grass growing outside our window.

The cats come in asking for food. They’re better than any alarm clock – when it comes to food they keep time better than anything and anyone I know.

I close my eyes and try to discern how many different bird sounds I can hear …

Dinner time is approaching and soon delicious aromas will waft in the evening breeze from the kitchens close by. Perhaps someone will have a braai making the smells more tantalising. I wonder what everyone is having for dinner?

 

Lockdown life, Sharing My World

2020: Lockdown life September in review

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This is part of my year in review. Writing one post will make it too long, so I’m breaking each month into a separate post. This is the latest instalment of lockdown life.

I’m plodding along and not getting discouraged with the fact that it’s the 7th day of January 2021 and I’m still reviewing 2020. I’m seeing it as characteristic of 2020 – a plodding kind of year. What I mean by plodding is that it was slow and we needed to get through it, and the best way was to plod. Come to think of it … 2021 will be a plodding kind of year too, especially given that the earliest we’ll see a vaccine in South Africa is April which will cover only 10% of the population. We have a bottleneck – the government, which I hope will resolve itself soon in the hopes that they will realise that they can’t do this on their own and need help from the private sector, businesses and other interested South Africans.

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Spring is here! It wasn’t exactly warm on September 1st, but it got warmer during the course of the month. It was another low key month characterised by loads of work – I’m working longer hours from home than before Covid: is anyone else experiencing this as well?

I started the UCT Copy-editing course this month, something I’ve been looking forward to! I’ve done editing of school books but I want to expand my knowledge, and this short course had my name on it 🙂

I did a webinar on the Five Essential Skills for Successful Collaborative Relationships. It’s a longish video but my webinar was 30 minutes; the rest of the time was responding to attendees’ questions. I wore make-up and work clothes :). I can’t remember if I wore shoes.

I took a vacation day on the 4th and Chè and I went out to pay the vehicle licenses that we weren’t able to do during level 5 lockdown (which is when they expired). And why is this significant? Because I wore shoes (and jeans for the first time in months).

My Mom’s orchids are flowering but not mine …

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Check out August.