When I think back to the place, all I hear is birds – flitting about, chirping at dawn before we were ready to go about our days. I hear the unending process of weavers building nests for their mates and these same nests being ripped apart by unsatisfied yellow brides.
A Valhalla sunset (September 2018).
Hibiscus
I’m groggy and the light is so soft and so lilac across the blackened silhouette of the hibiscus outside my window. The hibiscus flowers red through the burglar bars against the glass: my grandfather’s favourite colour glowing through one of his most ambitious welding endeavours. Its blooms are folded in on one another, scrunched into infinite whorls of scarlet, much to onlookers’ dismay. They had wanted a hibiscus which unfolds only one bud from each green tendril but this triple-flowering strain became a consolation prize once it had bloomed and all concluded that it was too mature to rip from the soil.
Nasturtiums
Nasturtiums curled from the flower bed near the front door. Dappled blood and tangerine and custard petals pull away to reveal voluptuous lily pad leaves that catch the water droplets in perfect luminescent spheres. The stressed crystal droplets were prodded by grubby little fingers until they slid atop the pale leaves, rolling about, leaving veins of moisture in their wake.
I remember being called outside by my uncle one evening: intrigued, I watched him measuredly scoop the knotted stems aside to reveal the first glow worm I had ever seen. I remember my father calling me outside and gently prying a flower open, exposing a small jade nub, and being told that this is what a caper looks like.
The nasturtiums always signified wonder to me… They hid vulnerable sparkling worms and organic nodules ready to be salted and pickled. Their leaves seemed to fossilize the very water meant to feed them and the edible blooms exploded into fragmented colours annually, no matter how the plant may have been forgotten. The dogs took to reclining in this low-lying flower bed so the flowers were replaced with prickly succulents and sprinklings of peri-peri in an attempt to deter their illicit leisure.
The Wisteria & The Magnolia
The garden fence had been welded by my grandfather and once sported turquoise paint but masqueraded a more dignified deep green hue for most of my life. Given the opportunity, and sometimes even not, my grandmother would unashamedly chastise my grandfather for pruning the floaty wisteria that clung so desperately to the garden fence despite its aloof appearance.
The poor wisp of a plant had been hacked to within an inch of its photosynthesis more times than she could count, and this bred a deep and lingering sense of protectiveness in her. The defence of the gnarled wisteria was rivalled only by her vehement guarding of the tatty magnolia she tried with all her might to train up to the sky.
The magnolia’s leaves were perpetually rusty and frail, always seemingly inhaling their last breath, but the untrustworthy skeleton would produce fat purple flowers yearly, much to everyone’s surprise (except my grandmother who advocated for the strength of this skinny tree beyond explanation).
Trees
Trees had always been a contentious topic on this erf in Magnus road. My grandfather famously planted an invasive witstinkhoud when my grandmother wanted an oak which would take decades to mature. My grandfather, being a man of many ideas and little energy, argued that the stinkhoud would grow much faster, thus ensuring shade sooner. What resulted was the infinite invasion of witstinkhoud sprouts and the death of the sun-hungry grass in perpetuity.
An ash tree sheltered one gate post and served to disappoint me to no end. Ashton: a given name derived from an English surname derived from a place name meaning town of ash trees. The ash tree smelled musty and laced your hands with rank odour if you were to brush by it. Even by traditional ash tree standards, this tree was scrubby and small, spreading horizontally and draping itself in hard inedible berries resembling peppercorns. Why couldn’t my name smell like magnolias instead?
The garden was permanently shaded by the little forest that had accidentally shot roots up the side of the house. No grass grew in this damp coolness; instead, a dense carpet of stinking emerald moss and hardy wild ferns are the clothing covering the shards of dolomite that used to lay nude and ugly. The ground is hard and largely infertile on that side of the house – no aloes or irises or peaches succeeded there but all were planted with the best intentions.
Fruit
Decaying peaches, loquats, mulberries, and pomegranates stained the soles of our feet and attracted every gnat in the larger Pretoria area. The romantic notion of growing our own fruit became overshadowed by the insatiable appetite of putrid clouds of non-biting winged punctuation marks.
The peach and pomegranate trees were never sprayed, more out of forgetfulness than some underlying moralistic stance about killing the humble bumble bee, and so we never got to enjoy their inevitably insect-infested fruits. The loquat trees often only bore fruit on their sun-struck upper branches, thus leaving me to scrounge around their bases for any ripened fruits the birds may have missed.
The mulberry tree nourished many a silkworm lugged home in a tattered shoe box much to my mother’s dismay. The mulberry tree also nourished many a hadeda – the screeching fowls then proceeded to shit purple down the sides of the house until kingdom come.
Irises
More than anything in this world, my grandmother wanted blooming irises. I watched my cumbersome grandfather plant dozens of the pistachio-painted bulbs in little holes grudgingly dug and filled with bone meal.
The Dutch irises stubbornly refused to bloom for her no matter how hard she willed them to. Short of praying a hole in the ground, my grandmother did everything she damn well could despite knowing that they supposedly 'thrive on neglect'. The more she tried, the less they did.
After she died, some bulbs were transplanted and at the first whisperings of spring, they sprung forth sporting flamboyant beards of amber and aubergine.
Daisies
It was here that I learned that the dried daisy stems are topped with black splinters and these splinters are seeds. The hedge of unassuming, self-sacrificing yellow daisies lined the way from the back door to the post box. They died every winter, sowed themselves, were feverishly hacked down, then proceeded to light your way to the mail a few months later once they had forgiven the cold.
My hope for the place is that the daisies continue to sow themselves, the wisteria persists through many more lackluster attempts at its life, the bitter ash tree asserts itself even further horizontally just as I have done, the peaches carry on trying and ultimately decaying pointlessly, and the nasturtiums shelter many a lonely grub just as my grandmother did.
My grandparents bought this wonderful home in Valhalla, Pretoria in late 1960. My gran lived there until she died in 2018 at the age of 80. During their decades-long ownership of the property, they housed anyone who needed a home, the strangest historical memorabilia, and a fridge always stocked for multi-generational snacking.
My grandparents in their youth (circa 1960).
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