Springtime At BlueGumsFree

The long winter with abundant rains is behind us. The mountainside at Castle Rock is looking splendid – barring those sections where invasive alien stands are ominously in bloom. But where the invasives have disappeared there  are splashes of outlandish colours, as recently matured fynbos celebrates the arrival of spring.

Here are some random photographs of flowers around the Stone House at BlueGumsFree, with a focus on the plants that thrive after fires. This will give a sense of the symbiosis of fire and fynbos on the cape peninsula.

We are safe if we use its Afrikaans name – Suurknol. When it comes to its actual taxonomic name we are on shaky ground: Watsonia Borbonica.

Well, at least I know the dog is a border collie (named Arrow). Athanasia? – help please.

And of course any Peninsula Mountain fire worthy of the name leaves a profusion of these rubies in its wake: the fire heath – erica cerinthoides.

 Family Lobeliaceae

And just a reminder: this is what it looked like before we removed the mature stands of alien trees.

 And what it is likely to look like again …

 If we don’t apply herbicide to several hectares of new growth, stimulated by the fire in July.

The Baboons and the Experts who are Managing them to Extinction

“We have been living here for 10 years, and the baboons have only taken over the place on three separate days during all that time.”

That was Rosalind’s famous statement in 2009 in response to the perennial question we get about living at BlueGumsFree: “but how do you cope with the baboons?” Once or twice every fortnight the Miller’s Point troop roosts on the cliffs directly above BlueGumsFree about two hundred metres from the house.

 

Baboons near their roosting spot above BlueGumsFree

They have two trails from their roosting spot to the main road to Cape Point. One passes about twenty metres to the South of BlueGumsFree, the other one goes directly through our small plot of land.

Baboons Guiding Baboon-Monitors Along Cape Point Rd just Below Blue Gums

 

They make frequent attempts to raid our house and their arrivals and departures are times of action and excitement – for us, our dogs and the baboons. There are times when it can be annoying, and when they do manage to get past our defences it can be irritating and rather frightening. But for the most part they are a pleasure to have as neighbours. They are intelligent, engaging, and entertaining, with senses of perception that put our comparatively retarded eyesight, sense of smell and hearing to shame. Their agility and dexterity are a marvel to witness and their capacity to scale up sheer rock faces in the blink of an eye are a source of amazement and envy – especially for an ageing bipedal, who takes half-an-hour to cover the same distance that they traverse in minutes.

10 years or 3650 days, and while the baboons had been passing nuisances on a fairly regular basis, they had only caused serious problems on 3 separate occasions.  That translates into 0,0003% of the time that we have been sharing their space. And by serious problems I mean taking over the house, running amok inside, ransacking foodstuffs and leaving a very unpleasant mess, but no injuries, no damage of any significance, no ugly confrontation. Even our dogs and the baboons have fine tuned their territorial battles into a well orchestrated choreography with each group of mammals respecting well defined boundaries. If the baboons come within metres of the house, the dogs see them off with a mixture of posturing and real aggression, but when the baboons cross invisible thresholds the engagement becomes a virtual pantomime of the ancient struggle between canids and primates, with the dogs walking a safe distance behind the troop and the baboons all but ignoring them unless they come too close until they are forced back with a bark, a rolling of the eyes and a dramatic flash of canines.

“Force”, now condemned to die, notices the dogs have gone for a walk and tries to pay a visit,but the door is locked and baboon proof, so a raid becomes a photo opportunity.

This amicable co-existence continues for the most part, but since 2009 things have taken a turn for the worse. This minor but noticeable downturn in relationships between ourselves and the baboons can be traced to their rigorous exclusion from their foraging grounds north of Millers Point, thereby dramatically reducing their range, and to the awarding of contracts (for whatever reasons) to baboon monitoring groups besides Baboon Matters.

Why has this happened?

Well for a start it has happened because the challenge of baboon co-existence with humans on the Peninsula has been reduced to an issue to be addressed by science and bureaucracy in their most negative forms: science as theory based on induction, and bureaucracy as a blind adherence to rules even if they inhibit actions designed to achieve the desired goals.

Why were we able to develop a life of co-existence with the baboons and why has this balance been disrupted in the last 3 years? I think it is because we were able to find a blend of deterrence and tolerance. The baboons and ourselves worked it out in practice. The baboons learnt that we would not tolerate their invasion into our space and that barking dogs, loud noises and assertive behaviour would, for the most part, enforce a respect for boundaries. And at the same time a tolerance on our part for their presence whenever they were not presenting any threat (which was most of the time) meant that they discovered where they could go about their daily lives in peace.

 

This began to change when baboon monitors, operating under the instructions of experts, began to hassle and harass the animals in order to keep them away from the main road, from restaurants and from built up areas. Not only did this force them into smaller spaces, with fewer targets for high calorie food, but it inured them from the deterrents that worked so well in the past.

And as some of the baboons become bolder and unafraid, they sign their own death warrants and sooner or later are shot by the authorities operating under the direction of the experts. And then they blame the activists who have tried to develop strategies and solutions that are contextually specific and seek a more nuanced solution. And so the blame goes on and on. The scientists blame the baboon activists. The activists blame the scientists. It’s not like either one of them has done much good for the baboons whose fate appears to be sealed one way or another. But it is rich indeed when a Professor of Anthropology  from UC San Diego can say:  “The epitaph of these baboons will read: ‘Met an untimely end because activists could not face reality’’.

‘Fred’ at Castle Rock. He has already met an untimely end.

 

When the crags above Blue Gums Free fall silent; when the rising sun is no longer greeted by the barking of the waking baboons; when there are no more youngsters carousing on the cliffs, it won’t be Baboon Matters, but those who chose to respond to this challenge by shooting the likes of Fred  (with Merlin and Force soon to follow) who will earn the curses of Blue Gummers both past and present. And you can be pretty sure that Jane Eliza will curse louder than the rest of us. She lived here on this mountain with the baboons for over thirty years and although she fired her shotgun in anger on the odd occasion it was always to deter and never to kill.

Two Adult Males Above BlueGumsFree

Return of the Geophytes, Bulbs, Corms …. and a New Generation of Invasive Seedlings!

We are at BlueGumsFree a lot less frequently these days. The only upside is that every moment here is savoured. After three weeks absence, including a weekend in the magnificent Kogelberg, we came home again on Friday.

The Splendid Kogelberg

Part of the Kogelberg Across the Bay – as Seen from Blue Gums’ Deck.

It is now six weeks since the fire. The heavy rainfall has produced a green carpet of new growth as the seed-bed, stimulated by fire, has exploded into life. On the upper slopes where near-moribund protea and leucondendron stands, over twenty years old, were thinned out by the fast burning flames, a carpet of indigenous seedlings is beginning to adorn the slopes. The thin strips of vegetation along the watercourses are already flecked with fast growing ferns.

New Life at BlueGumsFree

An Arum Lily Rises from the Ashes

But as you head down the slopes to the sections dominated by calcerous sandstone, where infestations of port jackson, hakea, spider gum and black wattle formerly strangled the mountainside, there is a potpourri of seedlings. The vast majority, though, are invasive. They pre-determine our working weekends for months to come. As soon as the rains have passed and the banks are a little more stable we will undertake the back-breaking task of rooting them out.  

A Mixed Bag of the Good and the Bad, the Old and the New

Whenever we tire of this burdensome chore, we can look around us, to areas where we have already eliminated almost all specimens of invasive plants, to see what regnerated beauty awaits in merely a season or three.

One Year Ago the Slopes in the Foreground were almost as Bare as those in the Background.

Fynbos and Fire

This series of photographs provide a graphic demonstration of the fire risk caused by invasive alien infestation.

 

Things to notice in the photograph above, taken in 2010: In the top right hand corner stands of spider gum. Below the stand of gums, going down the slopes towards the road -recovering fynbos vegetation growing in  patches in areas cleared in 2008/9. In the middle of the picture on the slopes to the right of the Blue Gums dwellings – stacks of biomass that had been cut down in 2009 but not yet cleared through controlled burning.

 

 

The same photograph taken this week – one month after the fire. The invasive stands of spider gum that were in the top right hand corner are now gone: consumed by the flames. Below the burnt patch going to the road, the fynbos vegetation, now more mature, has acted as a fire break, and is virtually untouched by the fire. In the middle of the picture on the slopes to the right of the Blue Gums dwellings – the stacks of biomass have been burned during the winter of 2011 and the fynbos is returning.

 

In this photo above (2005) : at the top on the  higher slopes of the mountain see mature stands of fynbos – over 20 years old and overdue for a burn. Then see again the spider gum stands in the middle of the photo, with cleared land below, showing new fynbos beginning to emerge.

 

After the fire: the old fynbos on the upper slopes have burnt down. The stands of invasive trees are almost completely gone. The rejuvenated fynbos around the house (where invasives were cleared over successive years from 2001 to 2011.

And in my last post I promised a photograph of post-fire picture of BlueGumsFree taken from the road.

Expert Advice Spurs an Idiot into Action

After our first attempts at tackling the infestation of invasive aliens at Blue Gums I decided to call in some professional advice. My first port of call was Good Hope Nursery where Gayle and Roger Gray were already long-time local legends. Good Hope Nursery is on the Atlantic Ocean side of the Table Mountain range that runs down the spine of the Cape Peninsula. It is about 4 kilometres from Blue Gums, as the crow flies. And it has its own challenges with invasive alien trees. At that time the Grays were the only private landowners who had been clearing their land.

Blue Gums – Within Castle Rock Conservancy on the False Bay Coast (RHS) – and Good Hope Nursery on the Atlantic side (LHS)

 When I arrived at Good Hope Nursery I was directed to the Gray’s house. They were sitting on their porch surrounded by acres of recently cleared land. Primary colonizing fynbos was pushing through the white sands, providing a scattering of green all around the stacks of felled gums and pines. For the first time in weeks I felt a small surge of optimism. Perhaps we could do the same on the other side of the Peninsula.

I did not need to tell Gayle and Roger about the huge challenge I was facing. They knew the deep South Peninsula like the back of their hands. Tourists on the road to Cape Point might have looked at the green forests around Blue Gums and admired their beauty. Fynbos experts like the Grays knew they were looking at an ecological nightmare.

The Green Forests Around Blue Gums – How Can they Possibly Be Bad for the Environment?

“Sorry to tell you, but you are wasting your time” was the jist of their advice. “Those spider-gums have been there for decades. Even if you do manage to get rid of them they will have completely changed the chemical composition of the soil and nothing but invasive alien seedlings will grow there again.”

Eleven years later and we have pretty much disproved the skepticism of the experts. There is nothing very surprising about that. I can well imagine that the Grays, who had been sweating and toiling for years to clear their land, looked at me and saw me for what I was: a naive city dweller with no idea about the severity of the challenge that lay ahead; the dedication, the resources, the perseverance that it was going to take to win the fight.

The Stone Castle At Blue Gums, Nestled in a Powder Keg

On one level they were totally correct. Only the ignorant or the naive would take on such a daunting challenge. The topsoil had leached away. The mono-specific stands of spider-gums, interchanged with mono-specific stands of Port Jackson and hakea had indeed inhibited the germination of native plant species as a result of their phenolic compounds and their superior competition for moisture from the soil and the water table. Their abundant leaf litter and the volatile oils in their leaves had turned the mountainside around Blue Gums into a veritable powder-keg that required a single spark in the hot and windy summer months to explode into flames.

 When I first set eyes on Blue Gums, it was a love for the indigenous flora that inspired me to take on the insurmountable and decide to clear the endless stands of alien trees that surrounded the place. After my initial setbacks and the depressing advice of professionals it was the terror of an inferno and the need for a year round water source that forced me to attempt the seemingly impossible.

Fire On Table Mountain

Getting There in Body and In Mind

We thought we knew what we were in for when we first moved to Blue Gums. It took ten months before the property was transferred into our names and during that time we made several visits to our future home.

The house itself was the primary focus of our attention. It was in a pretty run-down state. Jane Eliza had done a sterling job of patching it up over the  years, but gradually the house and its owner slipped together into decline. We committed to retain the spirit, the character and the overall design of the dwelling but to extend our debt to make it a little more comfortable for a family with an infant child.

The Stone Castle as it looked when we moved in.

The Stone House after our initial renovations.

Those initial improvements were very basic, constrained by our financial situation. Indeed without the generous help of friends who put money into our project we would not have been able to do anything at all. Even then we had to depend on the voluntary inputs of Shawn Cuff our architect friend and our son Jeremy who was trained as foreman and project manager on the job.

Replacing the Windows Facing the Sea

We moved into Blue Gums on February 21st, 2001. The months leading up to that fateful day were very difficult months for me. As Bob Dylan said: ‘I felt like the whole world  got me pinned up against the fence’. It was Roz who kept things from spiraling out of control. I will never forget that first night in our newly renovated but still extremely rustic home. There was a full moon rising over False Bay as I stepped out onto our deck. I stared at the thin line of orange city lights on the horizon, following the shoreline. I imagined our home in the suburbs, left behind forever. I watched the flashing lights of an airplane as it took off from the airport over fifty kilometres away, then made a steady arc northwards over the Cape folded mountains, and flew out of sight, into Africa.

Full Moon Rising Over Blue Gums Free

Even though I had slept in the wilderness and especially the mountains of the Cape on many, many occasions I was overwhelmed by a feeling of mystery and intrigue. This was not a camping long weekend. This was now my home, my future, my life. The moonlight caught the rocky massief of the mountains behind the Stone Castle. Without any light pollution and without human-made structures to break or blemish the skyline I felt like I was in a primeval place. The anxiety of the previous months evaporated into the warm night air. It was a still night and I could hear the ocean lapping gently against the shore. Besides its gentle murmurs the night was completely silent. For the first time Blue Gums cast its powerful spell on me.

The Mountain Behind the House

For a few brief moments my anxiety subsided. I may have moved to a lonely house on a mountainside, with candle-light for lighting (solar came  a few weeks later),  a mountain stream for erratic water supply and a bucket for a night time toilet, but there was the moonlight, the gently heaving sea, and the towering mountain cathedral to bring a profoundly peaceful feeling to the heart.

What Happens When Someone Makes A Cup of Tea at Bluegumsfree.

Blue Gums is off the grid, which is why it has such a small ecological footprint. Water comes from the mountain stream. Energy comes from sunlight and, for now, septic tanks take care of the sewage.

Water and sunlight- these two basic elements – define Blue Gum residents seasonal clocks, and much like pre-urban human beings the changing of the seasons means a change in the natural forces that Blue Gummers have to worry about. In the winter months we can use water generously but if we are not frugal with our energy consumption we will be punished. In the summer months we keep a beady eye on the weather patterns, dreading the south-easter for its relentless assaults but welcoming the cloud bank that it stacks against the mountain ridges, because that generally means that by morning the water tanks will be filled. But the summer months bring an abundance of energy, with long hours of bright sunshine ensuring that our batteries overflow as readily as our reservoirs do in the winter.

The Agulhas Cloud Bank Backs up Against the Mountain Causing Enough Condensation to Keep Blue Gums Reservoirs Full in the Summer

The last few winters have been on the dry side at Bluegumsfree, with slightly below average rainfall, and as a result we have had to endure a few days when the storage tanks were ominously low. This is not a new challenge at Blue Gums. Jane Eliza wrote a great deal about the dry summers and the sheer hard work that was required to keep the watercourse open and to channel precious trickles from the waterfall, some two hundreds metres away, to the storage tanks.

When winter comes, even the relatively dry winters of late, water presents a very different challenge. At least two or three storms every year bring sheets of water down the mountainside, flooding the house and ironically clogging up the plumbing. And as Jane Eliza said “We do not call the loo the plumbing here. What we mean is the water supply.”

And what an extraordinary water supply we Blue Gummers need to maintain – as the min-photo essay depicts.

Tea is very much part of the Blue Gums Ethos, whether it be Jane Eliza’s Comfrey, Roz’s morning cup of Ceylon Tea or Thandi’s Rooibos.

Whenever someone turns on the tap to fill the kettle, gravity forces Table Mountain water – earthy in texture, full of minerals but deliciously clean – through 40mm pipes,

 

 

 

 

 

 

That lead down from storage tanks with a maximum capacity of 12,000 litres. 

Before the water gets to the storage tanks it passes through three settling tanks and one gauze filter.

At the head of this simple but intricate system is a mini weir in the watercourse where the water is captured and fed through a very basic filtration system into the start of the 40mm pipe. 

 

 

 

 

 

Blue Gums Weir and a night visitor – lesser spotted genet. Excess water gets diverted back to the watercourse and flows out to sea.

This simple but intricate system has been in place since the days of Padre Green, although of course there have been changes and a few minor improvements, but it remains one of the most special features of the place. It is Blue Gums’ umbilical chord linking it to the mountains, the sea and the and the sky.