What is a Cape Winter like?

These pics are a view of a break in the hectic rains!  The sunshine is deceptive as the sky is usually sitting on top of your head so grey and pregnant with rain there seems to be a perpetual dusk.  The howling wind drives the wind so ferociously I have often been left wondering how the roofs remain on top of the houses season after season.

The picture directly above is of our swimming pool.  It's a swampy green colour with a eucalyptus scent due to the storm winds blowing  loads of Blue Gum tree leaves and stems and branches into the pool.  There is also water that seeps down from somewhere up the hill through the bricks and into the pool, (There's a huge puddle across the length of the bricks and all the green you see in the picture is soggy.  The brick bit to the right side is our braai area (Bar-b-que area!).  The smoke in the middle of the picture at the back?  Wait... remember we live in a third world country?  Well...that is smoke from a shack.  There is an informal settlement outside our fence/gate.  There are possibly 30 shacks in that area.  Hm...I should take pics of that too for you?  It's really beautiful actually.

Here is a picture looking down into the garden dam.  The wind as I said before is WICKED here.  So the previous residents put a raised garden into this unused dam.  It's about 16m (about 48 feet?) diameter. The picture actually isn't fabulous as the sun is over exposing the picture!

This is from the other side of the garden.  I was standing on the wall (it's only about 6-7 feet high) but I'm scared of heights so I clicked quick!  That is all standing water from the rains in the cross walk.  The pole against the brick pillar is for my sons to climb up and then they perch at the top.  Clearly they are not worried about heights.  All the green in the upper right is my "green manure" crop.  Mustard, alfalfa, and buckwheat - I feed our chickens the mustard greens!  The blue door is propped there for the moment as the winds have blown it off it's hinges.  No...no irrigation except a hose and sprinkler.  I know.

I just love this Zebra striped Land Rover!  It's our neighbors - they say it belongs to a friend.