12TH MARCH. 



SINCE MY last entry we have had alternations of devastating 

 heat and south-easters. The south-easter is just the essence of 

 dryness. Sometimes it blows for two or three days : then our 

 skin feels parched, our nerves on edge and our heads splitting. 

 The trees and plants look as if they were feeling the same way ; 

 they are treated to every kind of indignity, and before they 

 have recovered from one onslaught they are bowled over 

 again. Leaves, twigs and branches go flying, acorns rattle 

 down, and dust is carried for miles. Suddenly it ceases, and 

 utter exhaustion prevails. Then we get a day or two of intense 

 heat with never a breath of wind until we long for the south- 

 easter back again. 



Yet through it all we realize that we are nearly at the end 

 of our troubles. The first belladonna lilies push through on 

 the cool side of the kloof, and here and there a Haemanthus 

 coctimus glows red among the dried-up bushes. Every year 

 they give me to wonder. The ground is so dry and hard that 

 it would need a pick to break the surface, and yet these delicate 

 blooms find a way to emerge. There has been no rain to tell 

 them that autumn is on the way, and yet they come about 

 the same day by the calendar every year. There is a tiny delicate 

 Gladiolus (G. brevifolms] which also comes through just at this 

 time. About nine inches high, it too grows in the hardest and 

 driest ground : how it manages to push its way through 

 remains a mystery. 



All of these plants have no leaves until the rains come in 

 April ; these do their work in winter, storing up food to allow 

 the bloom to get ahead of all the hundreds of winter and spring 

 flowering plants that we shall welcome later. 



37 



