It's the last day of 2011, and this seems like a good time for my monthly post! As usual, too much has been happening to even begin to blog about, but I do have many colourful reminders of the month gone by..

These gorgeous pincushion lilies were late bloomers this year, but they certainly did not disappoint with their dramatic November appearance.. These are completely wild plants, which live in the overgrown bush area at the bottom of our driveway, reminding us of their flamboyant presence only once a year!

The breeding activities in our garden have been very dramatic, with paradise flycatchers and  fork tailed drongos both raising their hatchlings in very obvious places in our garden, under our constant observation. Sadly, we are helpless and powerless against the forces of nature, and could not prevent tragic losses of baby birds due to all the aerial, arborial and terrestrial predators which frequent our rather jungly garden. Here is the beautiful male paradise flycatcher on the nest, in happier days!

 

At last - photos of some of the warthog piglets around town! This photo was taken a while back, in the height of the dry season.

These little fellows are growing well, and are actually quite large now, compared to these shots. I am pleased to say there are still four babies in this particular group of hogs!

This is the time of year for mangoes on the farm where we live.. I took a walk with the dogs a few weeks back, to check on the mango progress, and found them looking rather decorative and impressive on the trees. At this point they are busy harvesting and packaging what looks like a bumper crop - good news for our neighbours!

Our beautiful kitten ... met with an accident... but made a miraculous recovery, losing one of her proverbial nine lives! Her name which I neglected to mention in the last post, is Naledi (meaning Star in Setswana) Here she is about to type some nonsense into my laptop, and of course posing next to an apple to show how she has grown!

Around the end of November, another little street kitten found us and adopted us.. His name is Nuvi, and he is pretty much the same age, only a negative image of his adopted sister. Now we have two inseparable and boisterous youngsters to keep each other busy, and us entertanied. They love their long suffering big brother Ash, who allows them to sleep with him on his special blanket,amongst other kindnesses!

Christmas season is always a bit of a challenging one for us, needing to try and run our business whilst all our suppliers are shutting down for the long holiday period. A sudden urgent job in Francistown, our nearest city, caused a last minute pre-Christmas dash 500km south, to sort out a customer there. En route we over-nighted at Elephant Sands, and were lucky enough to experience this rather festive looking sunset in the unspoilt bush... 

Normally we would avoid any cities like the plague at this time, but there was no choice - if a customer calls for help during the height of the Christmas shopping mania, so be it! I usually like the opportunity to purchase things that are not available back home, but when I shoved my way through all the festive shoppers and found that I literally could not move inside any of the supermarkets, I turned tail from the retail frenzies and sat in the car and caught up on some reading instead!

On our return, I was thrilled to find a package in the post: blog friend Angela in Germany (letters from usedom blog) decided to play Christmas fairy and sent us some of her amazing German biscuits, particularly the alphabet biscuits, which have featured in her blog! I also loved making the acquaintance of Shaun das Schaf, in confectionery form - apparently this little sheep is very popular over there.. what fun, to have a bit of European flavour in our Christmas this year!

Our ancient Christmas tree had to be suspended from a roof rafter, to keep it above kitten height! Happily, we even managed to install my beloved Christmas lights on the tree, and the best the little ones can do is to meow longingly at the shiny objects dangling alluringly above! Maybe next year they will have calmed down enough to allow us to have a low level tree once more...

We got back from our business trip literally minutes before our family members arrived to stay for Christmas, so all a bit frenzied, but we managed to close shop for 4 days, and enjoy a very relaxed family Christmas. In between that, and a bit of a crazy time at work in between the holidays, there is always the river - our haven, five minutes away from home. To quickly launch the boat and float away into our own special place where nobody else goes is a unique and incredible privilege.

Here is the magical golden light of late afternoon - looking down river.

As the sun sets, the cloud formations are thrown into relief and gold starts to glow on the surface of the water..

Eventually, gentle pastel colours dominate as we turn back towards home, checking carefully for hippos on the move.. this lifestyle close to nature really makes up for any stress caused by trying to make a living in a fairly remote part of the world, and we try to never forget it!!

I thought I should end off with a few more warthogs, since I have been rather slack on the warthog photography front lately.. this cute youngster hangs out near our office, and I can watch this family from my window!

Here the piglet is learning how to get down on its knees and root around - a true miniature warthog!

I will end off here, and would like to say thanks to all reading this, for visiting and showing interest in my crazy blog journals during this year . Wishing everybody a fantastic, prosperous and truly fulfilling 2012!