No place like your family home! Now plant a Tree! ~ Mariella

The culture shock upon arrival in Gauteng for another Gem and Mineral show is lessened by the knowledge that we get to play catch up with family. And my family home is the stuff of dreams, well, my dreams anyway! The image above shows my parent's house from the front, don't worry, I can't see it either! And the entire property is like this. When my parents moved onto the land in 1982, there was a house with a fence around. They started planting trees and established a vegetable garden almost immediately.

Yip, that's me on the right, with the pigeon-toed cowboy boots on! The open range you see in the distance is now well developed. Good thing they don't keep cows anymore!

Their vegetable garden is now smaller, but they still eat out of it everyday. Lettuce is a Winter crop but the birds are so hungry for fresh young leafy greens that my parents cover their crops with shade netting, leaving the sides open for quick access.

If I were to think on what eating habits I have most impressed on others, it would have to be the size of my salads! Every night, for dinner, we all ate a salad of fresh lettuce and herbs out of the garden roughly the size of any other family's family salad!

They also planted an orchard. I have great memories of climbing peach, apricot, plum, lemon, pecan nut trees in season and eating them warm in the garden. If we all planted fruit trees on every property we lived on, whether we were renting or not, we'd all be picking naturally grown, fresh, healthy fruit from our own gardens. 

My mom's lemon trees hang heavy every year and my daughter decided to make lemon rind to sell at my Food Market in Plettenberg Bay. 

http://oldnickmarket.weebly.com/

This is a hibernating apricot tree, it's huge and still bares enough fruit for my mom to make enough jam for a year at a time! 

Spring is on it's way and this Nectarine tree is clearly feeling optimistic. There is an old Chinese Proverb which says it all: “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”