breakfast light

There we a few teething problems with the new mailing list software last week (I'm actually surprised there were just a few, considering I was feeling my way around phpList with a white-tipped cane). Anyway, for those who couldn't see the guest pic last week, it's on the previous post now, as well the links to the extreme ironing items.

Oh! It was also the third birthday issue, which, in my exhausted excitement that I had actually finally managed to get the thing to work, I completely forgot to mention! Pic of the Week has grown from a little email to keep my far-flung family and friends updated with what was happening in my little corner of the world (and also to air some of the pics that would otherwise just get e-mouldy in the e-bowels of my pc) into a fair-sized, uh... slightly erratic, sort-of-weekly e-pressie! I'd like to keep growing it, so please feel free to forward it on to whoever you think might enjoy it. I really enjoy receiving your quirky comments and pics, so please keep them coming (if you want to make them public you can always post a comment on the blog). I also want to feature guest pics more regularly now as well, so please keep sending your lekka photos :) Ok, enough babble now!

I went for coffee and croissants on Elsies Peak with my friend Roy the other day (who's brain got seriously picked for database/php info last week!). Near the top of the ridge we were admiring the quality of light when I suddenly realised that not only was it was just right for a shot I've been wanting to create for a while to pair with this one I took previously in Silvermine, but happily I was in the right kind of fynbos too.


Path leading up to the summit of Elsies Peak (and breakfast!) The bushes with the white flowers have an odd, not entirely unpleasant, scent of honeyed poo...

Guest pic this week
by my sister Vanessa Nixon

V does a lot of work for the community, and one of the projects she's involved in is the Peacock Educare Center, a crèche in Masiphumelele. The aims of the project are:

• to fund the building of a decent day care centre to replace the current little shack that has been a day care for pre-school kids since 1997
• assisting with improvements such as securing regular food aid (from local sources), running & maintenance costs and teachers training
• find innovative ways to make the centre self-sustaining
• where possible, to use local labour and skills for the building & to generate income in Masiphumelele

Have a look at peacockeducare.blogspot.com to see the latest on what's happening there, as well as some great photos


Four little faces (look closely at the hole on the left!)

Extreme Ironing

Extreme ironing - "the danger sport that combines the thrills of an extreme outdoor activity with the satisfaction of a well pressed shirt."

You might think that loading an ironing board with a pile of laundry and pressing it whilst dangling on a rope from a helicopter flying hundreds of meters above the ground would be a very silly, purposeless thing to do. Well, the local mountain rescuers think so too, which is why we stick to stuffing our cold-weather laundry into rucksacks and pressing them onto stretchers while training for useful things like picking up people who come unstuck in the mountains.

But it would make for a great photo opportunity... ;)

(Surprisingly, this decidedly non-Olympic sport has taken off around the world, with South Africa's very own Troye Wallet winning the Rowenta Trophy for his flamboyant ironing session over the Wolfberg Cracks in the Cederberg - have a look here for more info and here for the winning pics...)

Without an iron in sight, a pair of mountain rescuers (far too creased to actually be allowed into AMS's spiffy Squirrel) are shorthauled out of a simulated accident site on the slopes of Table Mountain. While the pilot cannot actually see his human cargo dangling 25m below his aircraft, the crew keeps an eye on them and the terrain while pattering the pilot into position to insert or extract them.

More search and rescue images can be found on my website collections

Guest pic this week
by Pam Tilley, who lives in Aurora on the Weskus

I thought this shot was apt for this laundry-themed missive. Pam said she spotted this at Paternoster and couldn't resist as the shack was amongst all the larnie new "fisherman's cottages"... progress and development?


laundry and salted snoek
(for all you buitelanders that's salted, dried fish pronounced with gutteral rolled 'r's)

old roses, new spiders

Who says flowers don't last? This gift arrived fresh in delicate shades of death with a tinge of pink and of course I had to photograph them! It took a couple of weeks for the correct planetary/solar/weather alignment to coincide with a suitable break in my work/play/sleep alignment, but one morning I woke up to find that the rains had headed North to bother the Vaalies and that the sun was reflecting off the house next door, bathing my kitchen garden in a wonderful warm glow that created the perfect natural lighting conditions to make my flowers last. I had noticed that a spider had spun her web around some of the roses early on, but it was only when I looked through my micro lens that I could see the teeny specks of hundreds of translucent baby spiders and eggs...

mood enhancing

One of the great things I love about living in Cape Town is being able to get out for a walk in the hills, even if you only have less than an hour to spare, which I always find is the perfect mood enhancer! I dashed up to Silvermine just before sunset yesterday eve, and got so carried away with taking photos in the wonderful evening light that I only remembered that the car park would close in 15 minutes when I was still a 20min jog away! But I managed to grab a few more shots, pack away camera and tripod, bundu-bash my way back to the path (it's always more interesting off the path ;-) and dash back down the hill with seconds to spare...


Table Mountain, flanked by Vlakkenberg to the left and Devil's Peak to the right, with Constantia and the Southern Suburbs below.

muizies peak

Before the week runs away from me again...


One of the very pleasant views from my home in Muizenberg

breakfast?

Ok, a bit of a hiatus there for various reasons that I won't bore you with, but I did warn you that this is a sort-of-weekly email! Anyway, I still haven't been able to take any decent pics lately, but I decided I'd better send something to your inboxes before you all think I've dropped off the planet, so I had a quick trawl through my archive, a fiddle in the lightroom and came up with this one from the lion and rhino park...


...breakfast?

Earth Hour 2009

Most of you have probably already heard about Earth Hour 2009, but just in case you haven't, this Saturday, 28 March at 8:30pm local time (wherever you are in the world) you can show your support for our planet by switching off your lights for an hour.

Earth Hour 2009 is a global initiative by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), which acts as a worldwide call to action to every individual, business and community to take a stand against Climate Change. The lifespan of our planet, the very place we call home, is facing immense danger. Having said that, by standing together, we can make a difference.

By signing up, you are pledging to switch off your lights on Saturday, 28 March 2009 at 8:30pm. Your name will form part of a 1 billion-strong petition (that's more than one seventh of the world's population!) that will be sent to the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen at the end of the year to put pressure on governments and world leaders to pass legislation on climate change.

Sign up now by visiting http://www.earthhour.org.za/sign_up.php?refer=65fd03f185e7c645ac01c68123c16f1c and become part of what could be the single most powerful demonstration of global solidarity.

2009 is the year we decide the future of our planet. Your name will make a world of difference.


The Moon and Venus hanging in the sky after sunset in the Cederberg (taken on good old Fuji Velvia slide film - yummy!)

whale ship

I'm back! Not that I went far, just down the road really, but it still involved lots of packing madly, and then of course madly unpacking a chaos of boxes on the other end. I'm still in Muizenberg, just on the other side of the vlei now in a lovely Victorian house that was built around 1901! Needless to say life has been a tad busy and I haven't managed to take a photo for pic of the week, so here's one I took a while ago from Glencairn.


Humpback whale blowing & a three masted sailing ship (I'm sure one of my sailing friends will let me know what the correct term for it is!)