My trip to Mzoli's Place

Mzoli’s Place is a typical “Braai” located in a dumpy area of the Cape Flats. Apparently, it’s the real deal on a South African style barbecue (barbecue=braai). Left at 11:30am to pick up two of Ryan’s research buddies. Ryan, Moe, Corona, two other guys and myself all packed into Ryan’s Volkswagon Polo as we made our way to Mzoli’s. When we arrived, the neighborhood was really…poor/dumpy. Not quite shanty town status, but trash all over the place and everything seems old and decrepit. Dudes were openly pissing on the side of buildings. When we first got out of the car, some guy just drops his pants and starts talking to us while he’s peeing. Gross. It seemed like everyone had the manners of someone homeless or WAS homeless…then we got to the restaurant and was a mix of people.  

So a little more description on Mzoli’s. It is a Braai restaurant that is part butcher shop (where you order the meat), part bbq area (where they cook the meat), and part outside/tented eating area with tables, chairs, dance floor, DJ, and awesomeness. BYOB; so it looks like a college party with all the hard alcohol and beer on the tables. When we arrived, we stood in line for awhile just to order our meat in their sketchy butcher. We ordered beef, lamb, and woerst (sausage) along with pap (maize meal). Afterwards, we brought the meat into the back to sit on a counter for an hour before the cooks put it on the fire. It took about an hour to finally get our meat but it was darn good. Especially with the Windhoek draft and Tahir beer to wash it down. So filling.

Everyone who has been to this braai said it is fairly touristy. This was true, but it’s kind of hard to agree with this statement. There were foreigners, but a lot of them weren’t tourists, if that makes sense. Most of them were people in Cape Town for work purposes or studying abroad. I actually met this girl named Porsche who’s from Atlanta, Georgia. She was there for an extended amount of time for her job and was still a student in the states. There were plenty of locals present as well.

When we first went into the back area, I was really shocked to see how bumping it was. There was a sizable college aged crowd dancing to the DJ’s African-electronic mix. Our friend Moe wasn’t going to join us, but after teasing him enough, he finally agreed to go if I wore my Laker’s jersey. Figures, he had the most fun out of all of us. We all danced and talked with the people around us. Shockingly, there were a lot of people interested in talking about the Lakers with me. I figured most people around here didn’t follow the NBA. This one guy really wanted to exchange tops before we left…that didn’t happen.

Funny story. All the guys in my group were checking out this girl at the end of our row (the row was 10 tables long). Beautiful, young, nice body, black. Pretty solid fashion sense, but a little skimpy. Then I look to see there is this old, mid 60’s white dude sitting and next to her, checking her out! Before you know it, he’s wrapping his arm around her waist and she’s sitting on his lap! She was with him all afternoon. We noticed her two other friends across the table had skimpy outfits and flashy make-up as well. They were totally prostitutes. We are pretty sure the old dude was their sugar daddy. It was pretty funny if you ask me. I never see this kind of stuff.

Anyways, after being there for about 3-4 hours, we left Mzoli’s and went outside to a packed street. Redbull was there with a big DJ van outside also playing music, plus they had their typical mini cooper with the big can on the back. Obviously, we snagged a free redbull from the two beautiful girls and danced some more! I don’t have the picture yet, but I talked to one of the redbull girls for a little bit. I named her Holland, because she’s from Holland. She was in South Africa studying at UCT. She had the most beautiful blue/green eyes I have ever seen.

We stood out there to dance a little more and walked around before taking off. Watching the locals and bums dance to the music in the middle of the two lane street, while cars were trying to leave, was priceless. We had a lot of fun at Mzoli’s. I don’t know what was more enjoyable though. Mzoli’s or the much needed nap afterwards.  

Unfortunately, I did not have a camera with me. But here are some photos from other people that I found online to help illustrate Mzoli's. 

The Spare Time Dilemma

After my usual work day, I go to the cottage where I do a number of little things to occupy my time. Mostly, I study. But since I moved into my new place, I have acquired a collection of movies which have helped entertain me; I try not to watch too much. I also have Rant and Haunted written by Chuck Palahniuk which are a couple of fantastic books for a guy who doesn't read enough. In case you don’t know who Palahniuk is, he is the writer of Fight Club and many other dark, twisted plot lines. I absolutely love his stories. Completely unpredictable and always something new. 

When I’m not reading or watching a movie, I could also be found writing these blogs, working on other writing assignments, or becoming a master at all the solitaire games and minesweeper. I’m just about an expert on them all. To accompany these activities, I have come to "fancy" a cup of rooibos tea every morning and night. Rooibos is the national tea here and can be found worldwide. It is pretty big. It is supposed to be super beneficial by helping prevent cancer, protect the liver, boost the immune system, relieve allergies, and treat digestive disorders. I gave in and purchased some “biscuits” or cookies to dip in the tea. Actually, the locals have a special biscuit called rusk. Rusk is a fairly stiff, thick, heavy block of a cookie. It’s actually really good but it clearly is made for dipping, otherwise it’s a bit hard and dry to bite into if you don’t.

On the weekends when I'm not busy being rained in, I choose to hike the mountainside. After I hike, I usually do Insanity-Cardio Abs workout which has become an every other day routine, typically on the days I take my baths because I have one towel and it needs to hang dry. Anyways, the cottages I am staying at are right on Kirstenbosch estate. The estate consists of the garden along with the surrounding mountainside. I generally go up and hike contour path which stretches across the middle of the mountainside. It seems like flights and flights of stairs to get up to the path but there are a lot of great views and trails that split off to take you up the mountain or down to the gardens. Last time I went, I had to bring my camera with me to photograph some cool stuff like the view of the Cape Flats, some shelf fungi, and obviously the native flora I encounter. Not too many insects to be found for me to really include them in the list of things I was observing. The coolest thing about this mountain is this specimen here:

This is Erica hirtiflora. It was on our plant list in week 1 and now I can really understand why it’s so important. If you look up at the higher elevations of the mountainside, you can see it is painted with pink. Kind of difficult to see in my pictures, but in person the pigment is very noticeable. All the pink on the mountainside is Erica hirtiflora. This is one of the erica’s with remarkable panicles of urceolate flowers which create bright dense structures of color. Similar to Erica formosa, which actually make a shaking sound in the wind. Absolutely stunning to be able to observe them up close and personal.

One weekend I am planning on hiking up skeleton gorge with Corona and reaching the top of the mountain. I think that will take place in a couple weekends. We are waiting for the rain to let up and the path to be less slippery. The pathways up the mountain are seriously just staircases.

I also go to the stores every now and then. We mostly go to Claremont which is a pretty nice area with a sizable mall. In the mall they have all sorts of food shops, apparel stores, electronic stores, vendors, the typical things you see at the mall. We tend to go mostly for the Pick n’ Pay (grocery store). I have stepped foot in Woolsworth, but that store is a little pricier and displays a fewer selection of food but a larger selection of clothing and other accessories.

Pick n’ Pay is a fairly standard store with a few minor exceptions. First off, when you select produce, someone weighs, ties, and price stickers the bag for you. Get this, 20 Rand for 5 massive avocados. It’s like saying, 2 bucks for 5 softball sized avocados. Yeah, I’ve been chowin’ down on those. Next, the bread section is consists of 2 options: Brown or White. That’s pretty much it. They do have a bakery section for fresh baked goods, just like the have a meat department and pharmacy as well. Here’s the third interesting change at this store, alcohol sales. In the store, you can buy wine, everything else is sold in an extension/Pick n’ Pay liquor store located just outside of the main store. Okay that’s not too bad. The big change, alcohol is only sold between 9am and 6pm, Monday through Saturday. No sales on Sunday. Apparently alcoholism is a big issue in South Africa and the Western Cape is the only region to implement this law.

The other day, my cottage had a dinner party where we cooked woerst and beans with pup and chakalaka. I guess this is a typical South African dish. The translation of that is: sausage in beans, with maize meal and…chakalaka. Chakalaka is like a spicy and delicious veggie stir-fry with onions, carrots, chilis, tomatos, masala, and peppers that can be a side dish to your meal to add flavor and kick. The meal was super good. I definitely got that recipe togo. When Ryan and I went to the mall to get the drinks for our party, he also took me to a biltong vendor. Biltong is similar to beef jerky but the meat is uncooked before you dehydrate it. It’s like eating jerky shavings. I got springbok, kudu, beef, and beef with chili. Really delicious stuff. Ryan actually bought some ostrich biltong and beef woerst…something which is like a dehydrated sausage. It looked funny, but tasted great.

I figured I oughta announce what I’m drinking here too. I’m really trying to live the typical South African lifestyle while I’m staying here. Like buying local beers instead of imported. Things like Windhoek, Tafel, Castle, and Hansa. I have yet to try Black Label though which apparently gets you really wasted, really fast. I hear mixed reviews about it. As for hard alcohol, Ryan had me buy Sherry. It’s sweet and tastes a bit like a brandy malt drink. The locals drink that to keep warm in the winter. Another local favorite is Amarula. Amarula is a liquor made from the fruit of the Marula tree. It’s a thick, creamy liquor and is one of South Africa’s top exports. It tastes great in your morning coffee or, how we are drinking it, with hot chocolate. You can’t even taste the alcohol, just the taste of the marula fruit. Fun fact, the fruit falls off the tree and begin to ferment rather quickly. So all the wild animals hang out by the marula trees during the fruiting season to eat the fruit and end up getting completely inebriated in the process. The same guy that made the honey badger video on youtube has a similar post on this subject as well.

That seems to be the usual daily activities. Unfortunately, Kirstenbosch is a little out of the way for a lot of cool things and the weather has kept us from doing a lot of adventures as well, but hopefully it lets up in the next few weeks. 

Operation: Wall O' Succulence

7//24/14

This week I started planting the wall. Up until today (Thursday) the weather has been great! Sunny and delicious. Adam and I figured on these days I might as well start planting the wall instead of working on propagation; just in case by the time I finish propagation it won’t be too late or rainy. But now it is rainy and gray and days like this are perfect for working in the greenhouse. The bright side to the rain is I don’t have to worry about the succulents needing water.

For this post, I figured I would just show you what I’m doing and the concept behind everything. We are only starting with three species of Crassulas for this first round:

Crassula hannii

Crassula setulosa var diminulata

Crassula ‘Bright Red in Sun’

The last one doesn’t have a specific epithet that I know of. The only information I have on it is from the label Adam provided. Apparently that species turns bright red in the sun.

Personally, I like to have a point of origin for my work. For this project, it is the bottom corner of the arboretum. Unfortunately, I don’t have many species to work with, so I won’t be able to complete this area and move on from there. Instead, I started in that area and begin seeking out other random spots on the wall to just…throw stuff in. I looked for spots that featured a suitable location/environment for the plant and would aesthetically look nice for that species. When it comes to design and how I want to plant, it’s all about a natural, swoft-like appearance. Natural in how they would grow amongst the rocks and where, and swoft-like to make the plants blend in a soft, curving motion. Or at least that’s how I like to imagine it. Natural and curvy. Now let’s get to planting!

1. Find a wall.

2. Choose a plant. For this side of the wall I have chosen to supplement it with C. hannii. 

3. Pull the plugs out. I like to take out 10-20 plugs before I start planting.

Here is Adam testing out our “flip” method of releasing the plugs from the flats. These flats are clearly overgrown and have a lot of thin, tangled stems. It is incredibly easy to break and rip the stems apart so we were testing different methods of removal to reduce our risk of damaging plants. In the end, I still had a lot of stems separated from their roots. For these situations, I would bundle them up and continue to plant them with a plug. Because these succulents root so easily, I’m hoping the soil-stem contact will trigger some quick rooting action. 

4. Find a spot to plug in the plant. 

5. Using a dibble, make your hole. 

A dibble is anything that can make a hole. Below is a picture of Megan showing off our state-of-the-art dibble. Yes, I do go around and say “Pew Pew” while aiming it at my friends. 

6. Place the plug into the hole. 

7. Gently pack in the plant and soil around the hole.

8.  Admire Julio, the worm, and his other compadres who insist on poking out of the soil wherever I work.

That’s pretty much it. Here’s my final product!

To get the wall to quickly fill in, use more plants at closer intervals. Adding the additional material may provide us with more little plantlets. With that said, at the end of each tray I would also take the fallen succulent leaves and scatter them on the wall, especially in narrow crevices. I have seen succulents root without soil contact and in the worst conditions, hopefully these can do the same.

Below are some more pictures of planted areas.  

And more to come later...

My Third Office

7/14/14

My first office is the student office. My second office is the arboretum. This here is my third office...or at least me in it. 

This is Adam’s glasshouse located all the way down in Plant Production, across from my cottage. Here is where I am spending half of my time on this project of mine. Originally it was a house funded by Ball Horticulture. Before Adam became a Kirstenbosch hort., he was in a joint project with Ball to commercialize some of the plants in South Africa. When the project ended, a position just so happened to open up in the garden, which he was easily able to commandeer because he was already a part of SANBI. Anyways, this house features trees, groundcovers, and understory plants for the arboretum. Adam also keeps his personal collection of succulents, bonsais, bulbs, oxalis and other plants as well.

My primary business in here is with this bench.

This bench is a collection of alpine succulents containing Crassulas, Senecios, and Plectranthus species. They were originally acquired to be transplanted into a previously constructed living wall. Less than a decade ago the garden featured a sculpture artist and his intricate designs using metal to form half-man-half-animal creatures. The pieces were displayed around the garden and in a round silo constructed on one of the main lawns. On the exterior of the silo, a green wall. Fun fact, the plants of the wall were inserted into coke cans. Yes, coke cans were used to line that wall. Anyways, sadly enough the exhibit had to be prematurely terminated due to complaints by members of the community. The complaints addressed the demonic nature of the art pieces and made a case that some of the specimens were uncomforting for the garden. It certainly lasted long enough for the wall to be constructed and I remember viewing the display when I last visited Kirstenbosch! But you tell me if they look creepy or not; I think they do.

Anyways the succulents have been sitting on this bench for quite some time. You can observe overgrown succulents, undergrown succulents, succulents taking over succulents, weeds taking over succulents, or my favorite- moss devastation (where moss has taken over). On top of that, everything is somewhat scattered all over the place. A lot of the material I am using have full trays, yet still require some bulking up and propagation. To accommodate this necessity, I can use the trays and mother-stock to harvest cuttings.

So here’s what I am doing. First, I reorganized everything. The material with the blue flags require some form of work to be done. I moved all those closer to the propagation bench, then came the plants we’re using but do not need attention, then the extra mother-stock and unnecessary succulents.

After I organized, I started propagating. There wasn’t really a method to my madness when it came to choosing what to work on, it was more of a time ordeal. I don’t like leaving a task to be finished the next day. Since these are succulents, they are relatively multiply. In fact, they are probably the easiest. Succulents don’t even need auxin powder to root, but because we are hoping for a quick turn-around, we are going to use them. Some of the stock plants already have roots being produced despite their lack of soil or additional hormones. So the process is very simple. Here are my 5 basic propagating steps:

1   1. Fill: Fill the tray with a fine substrate consisting of about half organic material and half inorganic material (sand).

2   2. Divide: Take cuttings or separate plantlets from each other.

3   3.  Dip n’ stick: Dip plants into an auxin compound, then stick the cutting into/on top of the media.

4   4. Douse: Water the plants with a formula containing 2ml of Terminator fungicide and a splash of kelpak.

5   5. Make em’ cozy: Place them on a heated mist bench and forget about them for a week.

      

      The only plants we have requiring a slightly modified procedure are the Senecios. For example, Senecio rowleyanus, commonly referred to as string-of-pearls, is being placed in a gritty sand substrate and on top of just a heated bench instead of the mist bench. They also require a stem to grow instead of just a leaf. The cool thing about these pendulous ground covers is that they are in the Asteraceae yet the round ball like structures are the leaves. Much different than a daisy or sunflower leaf! To add more, their flower smells quite lovely. Crazy how diverse the Asteraceae family really is.

As soon as the cuttings begin to form a significant root structure, I can begin planting them in the wall.

Here are the plants I have begun working with and have identified for use of the wall:

·         Crassula pellucida

·         C. hannii

·         C. nudicaules

·         C. exilis

·         C. muscosa

·         C. setulosa var. diminuta

·         C. setulosa ‘Globe’

·         C. setulosa ‘Rubra’

·         C. setulosa ‘Grey’

·         C. setulosa ‘Witsieshoek’

·         C. orbicularis ‘Double Rossette’

·         C. orbicularis ‘Waterfall Bluff’

·         C. terreta

·         C. lainsburg

·         C. socialis

·         C. pellucida ‘Waterfall Bluff’

·         C. cordata

·         C. robinson

·         Senecio serpens

·         S. rowleyanus

·         Plectranthus purpuratis

We are also considering other plants like some Stapelias (which have these big stinky flowers and shown below) or other succulent Asters, but the list is good enough for now. 

Oh and I almost forgot! This is Tobela. He works in the glasshouse under Adam's directions. He helps out from time to time and is always smiling. He is my friend. :)