Flora & Fauna (pt 2)

Many moons since the last post.  Probably not, in reality, but it feels like it - much has happened.  I had my first day of teaching, Alyson's gone off to Johannesburg to swindle ze Germans negotiate a formal job offer for the job they're creating for her, and the beginning of semester whirlwind is starting to blow through town.  More on all of those things later, surely, as they continue to develop.

For now, mundane observations about the natural world in our roughly 3-square-kilometer sphere of existence.  By which I mean the route I've taken to and from the office, where I am busily working away when not at home.

1) Update from last time: my Jacarandar is in need of recalibration.  These are bougainvilleas:

This is a Jacaranda:

But from not-so-up-close, they look like this:

...at least at this time of year.  Apparently all the drama happened 2 weeks ago, when they all bloomed at once and they go from green and boring to dangerously purple.  I guess we'll have to stay here another 11 months and wait to see it.  Rats.

2) African pigeons appear to operate in the same manner as their North American counterparts:

Further observations will be needed to confirm for sure.

3) Did you know that I am endlessly fascinated by ibises?  Well now you do.  They are like enormous pigeons with weirdly stretched-out faces.  And are far larger than any of the birds I used to see on a regular basis in NJ (={pigeons, starlings, cooked chickens}).

4) The leaves are bigger here too.  On like pretty much everything.

I want to say this is like a banana plant because it looks familiar, but I think that is me being ignorant and plant-racist rather than knowledgeable.

5) Here are some pictures I took of our back yard manor estate. 

 These are figs.  I'd ask how we know when they're ripe, but Alyson tells me they're full of worms anyway, so there go our grand fig-marmalading dreams...

 Our apple tree also generates worms quite productively.  Also it looks kind of weirdly silver.

 ...but what looks even weirder is this pointy space-kudzu thing that appears to be strangling it.

 This too is a thing that I have no idea what it is.  Garth the mead guy (meader?), without seeing it, guessed that it was a .... 'bugberry', I think?  Anyway, he said it was extremely poisonous, and that's when I lost interest in it.  Thank goodness I stopped Alyson from popping one into her mouth the first day we saw it.

Finally, here is an interloper who apparently frequents our garden: 

I assume he does some useful things like killing gigantic hairy spiders (yet to be confirmed), so I'm not going to stop his trespassing.  But, since I am allergic to cats, I have forbidden Alyson from naming and/or befriending this creature.

I was hoping he'd remove our death-snail from the window, but then it turned out he was not even remotely interested in it anyway.



6) And then there's whatever the hell this is.

I think it might be a cycad?  Someone told me they're like living fossils, and highly endangered.  Wikipedia seems to confirm that they might be, and indicates that they, too, are highly poisonous.  Really, I was hoping it might be an oil palm, because palm oil is (a) delicious, and (b) turns out to be hard (impossible?) to find here.  Good thing I didn't have time for that crazy scheme either.




And now, it's off to the grad student welcome party for me.  Stay tuned!  Next time, maybe a tour of the linguistics department...


Update: I forgot to include this bizarre car-alarm-esque bird call we heard on our first morning here.