This Incessant Heat Makes Me Rethink Next Year's Decorative Flowers.

Heat hotter than February in Durban.

It's been so hot that we don't know how and where to sleep at night. Oh sure, the temperature cools down at night but a reduction of 10 degrees still brings us to around 30 degrees without a breeze. Sleeping outside on a sun-lounger has been scrapped after seeing the fox use our garden as its living room.

The lawns are browning ( that is those whose owners have buckled to the neighbourhood eh, watch ) and the flowers are wilting dreadfully. Ours are at least due to the lack of an outside tap and the resulting manual filling of watering cans from the bathroom makes one less than generous with the watering. Walking in the morning I see lots of hose pipes being pulled about green gardens, but as nice as they look one tends to wander if it isn't a waste of a precious resource?

Don't get me wrong, I love coming home to the cheerful red window boxes and the odd planted gardenias but in these hot conditions they perhaps shouldn't have been planted.

Next year our windows will be a treasure trove of herbs and heat resistant plants. In fact the more I think of it, having a window sill filled with the purple splendour of a lavender bush seems heavenly. One window lavender, the next thyme interspersed with rosemary and sage.

Reading up on it, I have now learned that they don't need as much water as those decorative beauties seen all over the village but they will be a delightfully aromatic addition to any home. Imagine, planting only lavender in the boxes on the ledge outside our bedroom windows...the whiff of aroma alone will ensure I'll have a restful sleep. New adventures ahead!

Biggi