Aloe, Aloe, Aloe!

I love this time of year! The days are calm and still, the sky is that pale blue that heralds the start of winter, the mornings are still dark at 7 a.m and twilight starts at 5.45 p.m and it's dark by 6 p.m!! The fire is lit after our late afternoon walk with Alfie, and the soup pot takes its place on top ready for supper. We are ready and waiting for winter now, the garden is holding its breath for the rain that is becoming really necessary! As I write this the sun has gone, the fingers of mist are swirling and creeping between the houses but inside is warm and cosy!

One of the aloes in my garde.

Although our gardens are very dry, even with the heavy dew that we have every night, all is not drab! The aloes are in full bloom and are absolutely stunning!

Aloes lining the road.

Some of our roads are lined with their spectacular colour and visitors stop regularly to take photographs.

These are covered with birds and bees.

The sun birds are constantly on them, both the lesser double collared and the malachite, but the other birds appreciate them too. The cape weavers fight over who drinks first and the tiny white-eyes wait their turn. I am always happy to see that there are lots of bees too, filling their leg sacks with the golden orange pollen before heading off wherever home happens to be! One of our quite distant neighbours has beehives that he places around the area, and the honey is strong in both colour and flavour. I like to think that some of it has come from my garden!

A wonderful story, you must read it!

This morning while I was washing up, I was staring through the kitchen window when I noticed a beautiful spider web with dew drops along every strand, woven in the lavender bush. It sparkled and was very noticeable and it reminded me of that wonderful story 'Charlotte's Web' written by the American author E B White, where Charlotte writes messages in the web in order to keep Wilbur the pig, alive. I think I read that story a hundred times or more to the various classes that I taught, the Grade One's loved it, and I cried each and every time!

Now, how on earth did I manage to veer from Aloes to spider webs??

Easy!