Some photos yesterdays evening walk.
Click to enlarge.
The mega pivot at work, each nozzle delivers about 15 gallons a minute. The middle of this pivot is out of sight over the curve of the hill.
I was always under the impression that centre pivot systems needed level ground to be able to work effectively. On this farm I found that is not so, this pivot covers some pretty rough ground. The pivot moves in an anti-clock wise direction, in the photo above that is to the right. From the point where the pivot is now it starts to go down hill, almost a 40 degree slope, it crosses several very big contour ridges but nothing stops this thing, it just keeps moving inexorably on.
A view of the pivot from the other side.
When I asked the farmer if all the wild ducks and gees that are eating his wheat bother him, he said; "no, it will soon outgrow them". Here only the heads of a pair of African shell duck show above the fast growing wheat.
Long shadows, there are hundreds of trees on this farm.
A good night wink from the sun.
This is our third or fourth snow fall on the Berg this winter, and winter hasn't really started yet. Must be global warming, I mean climate change, to be PC.
On Friday on Saturday we had heavy, almost non-stop rain, for 24 hrs, rain at this time of the year means snow on the Berg.
Looking west, a photo of snow on part of the Berg. Looks as if there is enough snow up there, (10,000 feet +) to ski, just don't ski over the edge. The farm in the foreground is the neighbouring farm just to the east of where I live. As you can see I live very close to the Berg.
Same scene just zoomed in a bit.
I took about 30 photos and every where you look you see trees. South Africans are great tree planters, the Worlds largest man-made forest is in SA, and this forest is planted in our largest city, (strange as it may seem) Johannesburg and it's suburbs. Other cities in SA are not far behind, Pretoria,(the administrative capital)* is known for it's hundreds of thousands of Jacaranda trees, a sight to behold in October when the whole city turns purple.
*South Africa has three capitals, (not counting provincial capitals, 11 of them) Cape Town the parliamentary capital - parliament meets there-, Pretoria the administrative capital, and Bloemfontein the judicial capital, seat of the *Supreme court.
* Supreme court, not the same thing as the US supreme court, our equivalent the US Supreme court is our Constitutional court.
Took this photo on Saturday afternoon, two photos actually and blended them in the Gimp editing programme.
Click to enlarge.
At the moment I am visiting family in our capital city Pretoria. Left home yesterday at 5:30am and arrived here at 11am, a distance of 500km +-, this included a half hour stop for breakfast. Beautiful four lane highway all the way, until you hit the outskirts of Johannesburg, where you have six lanes in both directions, the size of the highways still leaves this country boy dazed. Johannesburg and Pretoria are only about 60km apart.
South Africa has three capitals, Pretoria is the administrative capital, Cape Town is the Parliamentary, (legislative) capital and Bloemfontein is the judicial capital, seat of the supreme court. Every couple of years some politician starts rumbling about the costs involved, (as if they really care about wasting money) and starts talking about moving everything to one central point, until it's pointed out how many billions that will cost. Will write more about this strange set up in a later post.
Pretoria is known as the jacaranda city, with thousands of jacarandas lining the streets.
Jacaranda trees around the Union building, seat of government in Pretoria, built circa 1910 to house government departments, it's mainly symbolic now as it is to small - although it's a huge building - to house the bloated modern government departments, they are now scattered all over the city. The President does have his offices here though.
.
No fishing today, it's cold,wet and miserable outside. The dogs, Cat, and I are all snug and warm inside.
Took some photos while fishing yesterday, of trees reflected in the water.
Flourishing tree above.
The trees on the left are dead, the flat topped thorn tree on the right is just starting to show new buds after it's Winter sleep.
