Gumboots and garden ghosts

Of course, Murphey stuck his ugly head around the corner last week and ensured that my marvellous comeback was cut short, with Eishkom frying our computer on Thursday. Needless to say, Frankie's fun Friday fact had to be postponed. She apologises. But we're back up and running again, and hopefully no more electrical problems will hold us back...

So, last week I promised to introduce you all to our latest addition on Karkloof Farm. The fact that we're having a baby in less than 4 months time wasn't enough to put us off acquiring a new addition to the ever-growing animal menagerie that we love having around us. Would you have been able to resist this cute little face...?

Hence, this little black LabXRetriever has joined the gang. Dale and I have never encountered such a relaxed pooch! She is super chilled and has the most lovable character (ideal for babysitting we think). The day we brought her home, the first thing she did was crawl into a gumboot, and that was all we needed to christen her "Gumboots", or "Boots" for short. We are currently attending puppy training, and all she wants to do is play with the other dogs...and sit. She could sit for hours. You may think this is fabulous, but I think she might be a little bit doff. Oh well, at least she can get along with Guinness while Frankie and I are out farming!

Speaking of doff-ness, a rather amusing event occurred during loadshedding last night.

First of all, for those of you who are unaware of what loadshedding is - in South Africa they are currently cutting our electricity for 2 to 3 hours at a time, often more than twice a day, to ease the demand on the country's power stations. This is due to the fact that the nimrods who have been in charge for the last 10 years failed to see the maintenance of power stations as a priority. In short, our government is a bunch of right twats.

Anyway, I digress...

Back to the amusing event.

After work yesterday afternoon, I covered one of our saplings in the garden with the mandatory Winter frost blanket. (This prevents the plant from getting frosted and dying, a necessity in Winter here as temperatures can often drop below zero). Guinness, of course, had to stand and bark at it for a few hours to make sure that I was aware of the intruder in the garden, but after that I forgot about it.

As he usually does, Dale got home after dark, and we went about our evening business as usual. Loadshedding kicked in a 8:30pm, so we planned for an early night and headed for bed. Whilst I climbed into bed, Dale went through the house (in the dark) switching off all of the lights so that when the electricity came back on at 10, everything would be off. When he got to the kitchen, he heard Guinness barking in the front garden and grabbed  a torch to check outside. 

Of course, his light illuminated my recently covered sapling.

You can imagine the fright he got, standing alone in dark, old farmhouse, with this thing in his garden... Needless to say, after a short stare off with the "intruder", he realised that it was the tree, and headed back to the bedroom to relay the amusing little tale - although he didn't find it nearly as amusing as I did! I haven't laughed so hard in a long time, even the pip jiggled with glee!

So we now have a resident ghost and a dog that sleeps inside gumboots....whatever next?!