Hope For Autumn Garden

Found this guy running through my office at night. Eeeek!!!

There are many joys to be had for living close to nature. The problem with living close to nature though, is that sometimes you are too damn close to nature! As evidenced by this guy on the ground, who ran a marathon past my desk chair in my office, at night. Luckily I was in the office and he was making so much noise I noticed him.

Of course I screamed bloody murder. And Nephew1, came running and squashed him with one of my running shoes. My hero!!

I read up on the scorpion and based on the Google picture search, I think this is a Parabuthus Transvaalicus, which Wikipedia says is a species of venomous scorpion found in dry parts of Southern Africa. Hard to say I'll be careful next time, because as previously mentioned, I do live near a river on the edge of a small forest. Add the fact that someone has been authorized to mine near the mountains nearby and they are scaring the wildlife into the village.

So far, there has been this snake (killed by my cats), a monkey that walked into my yard from the back gate and out through the front entrance (it didn't look panicked, so I thought it was familiar enough with the village and left it alone), a wild pig some guys in the village chased through my yard (and yes, they killed and took it home for meat) and plenty of squirrels that are being a nuisance. My formerly feral cats keep harassing the squirrels though, so hopefully they won't stay. So ja, a bit of unexpected interaction between man and nature has been happening around here lately.

Other than that, very little is happening on the gardening front. Temperatures were as high as ever. It rained a couple of nights. Enough to give me hope that my Autumn crops might do well. I'm still holding off planting, mostly because I'm rethinking the way I grow food to optimise for drought and scorching temperatures in summer.

I also got a quotation to replace all the gutters on the house and to install a rain harvesting system. So far it looks doable, especially if I also use some resources I already have. We might do the job in February, giving me enough time to still capture some Autumn rainfall if it happens.

So ja, gardening may resume this Autumn. If it doesn't, it will only mean I wait until I have most of my anti-drought systems in place before I begin growing again.