Die Arche/ The Ark

On my daily walks I came across the most amazing and beautiful garden. Plants I had never seen before, enormeous old old trees, wild and overgrown like a djungel. I always stopped and admired this wild garden which seemed to be from another time and pictured myself living there, even it was quite dark and shady. I LOVED this garden.

But one day, the garden was gone. Someone had slaughtered it and left an ugly empty, dead spot with masses of dead tree trunks lying around. I was shocked. My heart almost stopped. How could anyone do this?
I changed my walks in order not to break out in tears every time I pass this house.

The other day I met a lovely lady who turned out to be the neighbour of the “arch” this was the name of the house. She was as upset as I was and told me the story about the garden. She knew the owner 20 years ago, he was already an old man. This garden was his life work. He collected plants and seeds from all over the world of all plants which were mentioned in the bible. He said, he would never leave his garden.
He was very active and still in his eighties he cycled from Standford to Hermanus and back (more than 20kms). But the traffic  increased and his hearing decreased and so he got killed on this road.
A couple bought his house and used it as a holiday home for many years until they moved to Begium and sold the house to a plastic surgeon from Belville who wanted the place to look more like the security village he lived in.

Lexie, the neighbour told me, she lived in the “ark” for a short time and a ghost had appeared to her often. Even a friend who visited her once confirmed the appearance. She said it looked like a pale  light in the shape of a man.

Seeing what they did to his garden, must have broken the heart of the old man, if he still had a heart. But maybe he is finally able to leave this place and move on, since his garden doesn’t exist anymore.

Mein Lieblingsgrundstück war das. Es liegt an der floodplane, in Flußnähe. Ein dichtumwucherter Garten, mit meterhohen alten Bäumen, Palmen, Aloen. Ein botanischer Garten, wie aus einer anderen Zeit. Das Haus heißt die Arche. Es ist nichts besonderes,  aber dieser Garten, ein Zaubergarten. Ich blieb jedesmal stehen und bewunderte ihn lange und nannte ihn meinen Garten. Ich sah nie Leute dort und immer blinkte das blaue Lämplein der Alarmanlage, das signalisierte: niemand Zuhause. Ich träumte mich in diesen Garten und machte Pläne für ein Leben in diesem Haus, auch wenn es ein wenig zu dunkel war.

Dann eines Tages war der Garten weg. Abgerodet, abgeschlagen, Berge von abgesägten jahrhundertealten Baumstämmen lagen herum. Ein kahler, grosser hässlicher Fleck. Das Haus stand in der Sonne. Ich stand unter Schock. Jemand hatte meinen Garten ausgerissen, abgetötet. Fassungslos, wer so etwas tun konnte. Ich wählte einen anderen Spaziergang um nicht jedesmal in Tränen ausbrechen zu müssen, wenn ich daran vorbei kam.

Neulich traf ich eine Frau, die sich als Nachbarin der Arche herausstellte. Sie  erzählte mir die Geschichte der Arche. Ein alter Mann war der frühere Besitzer. Er hatte Samen aus aller Welt zusammengesammelt von allen Pflanzen, die in der Bibel erwähnt wurden und daraus diesen Garten gepflanzt. Er war sein Lebenswerk, und er sagte, dass er diesen Garten nie verlassen werde. Das Haus hatte er aus Fundstücken selbst gebaut. Er war ein Klavierbauer. Noch im hohen Alter von über 80 Jahren fuhr er die Strecke Stanford Hermanus (über 20km) mit dem Fahrrad. Weil diese Landstrasse mit den Jahren immer mehr befahren wurde und er nicht mehr besonders gut hörte, wurde er eines Tages von einem Laser überrollt. Nach seinem Tod kaufte ein Ehepaar das Haus, sie benutzten es viele Jahre nur als Ferienhaus, bis sie nach Belgien zogen und der neue Besitzer, ein Schönheitchirurg aus Belville, den Garten niedermetzelte.

Die Nachbarin erzählte, dass sie nach dem Tod des alten Mannes für kurze Zeit in seinem Haus gelebt hatte und seinen Geist erschien oft in der Nacht. Ein Freund, der zu Besuch war und in einem anderen Zimmer schlief, bestätigte die Erscheinung. Ein fahles Licht in Form einer menschlichen Gestalt.

Es muss ihm das Herz gebrochen haben, zu sehen, was mit seinem Garten angestellt wurde, falls ein Geist ein Herz hat. Aber wer weiß, vielleicht kann er ja endlich in Ruhe gehen, jetzt da es seinen Garten nicht mehr gibt.

Good Bye

Happy new year to everyone!

Now slowly getting back into routine. I am almost a bit depressed today about that. So many things happened. So many plans had been made. And now as if nothing had happened we are going back to normal.
I like to get into this state of desiring something with all my heart and at the same time being completely happy with what we have and content to settle with it.
It is a good exercise.

We had a great holiday. Worked a bit, discovered the most beautiful wild beach behind our house. You only need a 4×4 to get there and we got stuck in the sand twice but only the last 50 meter. It is like in the first part of the surfer movie Endless Summer, when they walk over the dunes in Jeffrey’s Bay and there ist this empty, endless beach with this amazing blue sea.

We had a lot of happy time with friends and family. Food and fun.
We love this place. Even though we neglected our garden and never managed to plant a vegetables or flowers. Now poplars are growing everywhere. We both thought that for this year we want to settle down. Have a place as a home base from which we move. For years now every place has always been temporary and I am longing for a place that is home. A place that won’t change and where we always come back to.

Now, after nothing has changed I am thinking about cutting my hair short. I only let it grow to tie it up. Who needs that lot of hair.

And I am going to leave this place. It felt so lonely. I less and less wanted to go there, rather stay in real life. I realized I stopped emailing my friends and lost contact with them, and that was the opposite of what I intended. Good bye and thank you for your love and attention and beautiful and suporting comments.

Bye bye

Sick in Bed

Luzie and Hamsti

We all spent the last days more or less sick in bed. We had a strange headache flu. The weather was grey and stormy with occasional rain-showers. But the sun made a short appearance every day. The best place to be is in bed anyway so we all were quite happy.

We will leave for Germany in exactly two weeks. That was quite a surprising change of plans, which makes everything much easier. But it also came fast. I am not fully recovered yet and I fret the long flight, especially now, not feeling my best.

I talked to Debbie yesterday and she said, how she loves long flights, to look out of the window, to go somewhere far away and I thought, that is the right way to look at it. I always fret flights and maybe that is why they always were fretful. From now on I will look forward to this journey!

The kids and Sven haven’t been to Germany since three years. Anton is almost double his size now. They hardly speak a sentence without using an English word. I wonder how they will feel. Whether they see it as a familiar or a foreign place. They are very excited.

Both were born in Berlin, but they only lived there permanently for two years, since they can remember. A woman told me about her grand children who live in America. She said, they are so American now. When she visited them, they told her to let them do all the talking in the shops, because people might not understand her ( South African English). That made me think whether my children are more South African than German now. For me they are German with no doubt, but I wonder how they will see it.

Luzie asked me where we are going to stay. I said, we will stay with Axel in Kreuzberg. She looked at me disappointed and said: But I want to stay in Berlin. (Kreuzberg is one of the most famous parts of town). It is definitely time to take them for a city tour and make them get to know every part of their city of birth. Otherwise they might take away our German passports.

I am excited too, but I have mixed feelings. I always had; longing to go back to a place that used to be my home knowing it is not my home anymore. A place I love but where I don’t want to live. I have to change my attitude. I have to look at it as going to my most favorite holiday destination

I love to live in South Africa but I don’t like to think I will live here for the rest of my life. But I think it is more the thought that I don’t like, spending the rest of my life at one place.

Wehmut

Wehmut is a beautiful word. It is sweet and bitter at the same time. I had to look it up in the dictionary. It said wistfulness or woefulness. Maybe Wehmut is another word like Angst, which the English should adopt into their vocabulary.

My friend A makes the most beautiful children (and adults) clothes. I just read her blog and that reminded me again of the dresses she made for Luzie about 7 years ago, while she visited us in Bangkok where we lived at that time.

I looked at the photos and I was so sad that this little girl was forever gone. She will never come back.
Part of me is sad; part of me is glad.

Proteas, Pond, Guavas and Puppies

Autumn is beautiful. It is still warm, almost hot. Summerish. Only the light is soft and the days are short. There is this hint of Wehmut in the air, the end of summer, but still there are flowers blossoming and even as the vine and some trees loose their coloured leaves there is always enough green left. Not like Berlin, where in winter the city fades away into a rainy mud-grey.

Our friend Andries farms these beautiful proteas and exports
them to England. Look out for them!

The birch “hedge”

We have three huge guava trees and tons of guavas rotting so
dahin, because nobody wants to eat them

The pond

Still looking for loving homes!