Organic Seeds: Christmas Came In Very Early For Me

Aren't they just pretty!! Lots and lots of varieties in this box.

Today it's a lovely day in Johannesburg. Sunny, but not too hot after the endless rains. I missed the rains in Gauteng province after the arid climate of the North West province where my home in Phokeng is.

Now I can grow vegetables without worrying about how I will keep them watered, especially with drought conditions in other parts of the country like the Western Cape, where the City of Cape Town is frantically trying to plan for Day Zero, when the municipality could potentially run out of water to supply the city. Honestly, reading the articles makes me think of apocalyse-type novels.

It's also surreal for me, because while there are plenty of writing(creative) jobs in Cape Town, I have refused to move to that city because I didn't like it. Ja, ja, I know it's pretty and cosmopolitan and has a beach and the work would be plentiful for me there, but back when I worked for a non-profit organisation in the early 2000s, I used to spend a week a month there and I was miserable because it rained so much then.

I remember one July, sitting in my hotel room, sobbing like a five-year old and just wanting to come back to Johannesburg because it was so wet there. I vowed there and then that I would avoid that city whenever I could, and when my employer later moved the head office to Cape Town along with my job, I opted for retrenchment. Oddly enough, the endless wet in Johannesburg does not bug me. It makes me happy instead. Go figure!

But I digress: today I walked to my friend Christelle's house - she lives just round the corner and up the block from me - and she had plenty of goodies for me, which included baked goods and a whole bunch of organic/ heritage seeds. There are a lot of veggies in there:

• Aurbegine (Egg plant)
• Squash (hubbard, gem)
• Butternut
• Pumpkin (Japanese)
• Tomatoes( moneymaker, floradale, Mixed T)
• Cabbage ( Chinese, drumhead)
• Tatsoi
• Pakchoi
• White maize
• Spinach (rainbow)
• Lima beans (Madagascan)
• Brown onion (Australian)
• Cumcumber (Poona kheera)
• Cape gooseberry
• Carrots (scarlet nantes)
• Lettuce (Lollo rossa, Great Lakes, Red Salad Bowl) 

So now I can happily expand gardening venture in the city. Happy days!!!