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Published: October 19th 2007
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KIRSTENBOSCH NATIONAL BOTANICAL GARDEN
PLEASE, PLEASE, FIX THAT TYPO
It is perhaps the longest running uncorrected literary error in history. I checked at the offices, with a number of people, but they all denied any involvement or culpability.
“It apparently didn’t get picked up by ‘Spell Check,’” I was informed.
“Oh, what a lame excuse,” I snorted. “Do you know that she’s here right now, right here, in the gift shop sweeping her credit card through the air like a saber? She’s not going to be happy.”
They looked at me blankly. They didn’t understand.
But it turned out that Kristen didn’t mind. It didn’t seem to bother her at all.
Maybe it’s really me who is so disturbed by that transposition of letters, I thought,
it just looks so terribly wrong, so terribly, terribly wrong. I still think it needs correcting, but I have accepted the fact that it is unlikely to happen. I am but one man. But my sour mood does nothing to diminish the wonder of this place.
Large Stone Age axes have been found here. In 1652 the Dutch East India Company surveyed the forests above the
garden. In 1659 ten thousand Muscat grapevines were planted. During the 2nd British Occupation in 1806 private owners bought the land. The last was Cecil John Rhodes. He wished to protect the eastern slopes of Table Mountain from urban development. What a guy.
So we are smack in the middle of Cape Town, South Africa, in one of the most remarkably landscaped gardens one can ever imagine seeing - Kirstenbosch. The little word “garden” cannot adequately describe this place. Would you call a perfectly cooked Coq au Vin, eaten in Paris, a chicken stew?
The land rolls down the slopes of the rocky mountain, and during the length of a day you can wander higher and higher on stone paths, past a natural spring, through the shade of camphor trees, past millions of flowers that are bursting yellow and red and orange, like fireworks.
Go back to the car and get the picnic lunch. Pick a shady spot and eat. Read. People watch. Listen. The sun is so deliciously warm and penetrating. The air is perfumed. Some barefoot kids are chasing two guinea fowl around on a huge lawn.
If you want, you can take one
of the trails that start in this comparatively tame place and climb into the rough and tumble country found in Nursery Ravine or Skeleton Gorge, both drainages of Table Mountain. It would take the word “juxtaposition” to new heights.
On the upper edges of manicured Kirstenbosch you can look back at Cape Town as it sprawls out below you, the two cooling towers looming, their waistlines pinched and perfectly matched. In the far distance the ghostly mountains that edge wine country are barely visible in a haze.
Lower down in the garden there is a display of stone sculpture, some pieces standing naked out in the lowering sun, throwing long shadows on the green grass, others tucked in among orange origami thickets of Birds of Paradise. They are all African in origin, modern, voluptuous, with full lips and hips that make a liar out of the hardness of stone. Some of the stone is polished, glistening, and looks as if it is wet, as lips might be. Other parts are left rough, as if people are emerging from the boulders.
Next to the spring that Colonel Bird had walled in to make a beautiful pool, tree ferns
and a wide variety of shade loving plants make up a miniature jungle. Suddenly an owl swoop past your face and you can feel the movement of air. He lands on a branch just above you and waits, unperturbed. His eyes are orange. Then he lifts off and gracefully floats to the stone walk landing just a few feet away. He studiously looks at his talons, then reaches down with his hooked beak and plucks up a small black snake. Making sure he has the serpent securely fastened, he then spreads his wings and disappears into the dark tangle of limbs and leaves above you.
The owl is gone. And of course, so is the snake.
The sun, just before it sinks below the rim of the mountain, x-rays the petals, stamens, and leaves of the flowers, lighting up veins and flower flesh in a magical display of color.
People flow off the mountain, draining down the dozens of paths like rainwater after a shower. But others are arriving, for in a place such as this, Kistenbosch, the coolness of the evening brings with it its own fragrances and moments of wonder.
All this despite the
typo.
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