sun-daze

today i sweated up some back moisture at my desk, wearing a thin stripy shirt.

it seems i didn't have to wait as long as i thought for the summer heat.

i even had a slight heat-headache yesterday after a sunday picnic session at the pretoria botanical gardens.

for park acoustics.

but that might have also had something to do with the wine, a green slush puppy tequila margarita, and my apparent allergy to nivea sunscreen.

so i'm glad hein insisted on getting out of the sun, where i was blissfully consuming a chicken and lime mayonnaise salad from woolworths.

and burning.

we soon relocated to a nearby tree though, and shared some shade with two girls with a hookah pipe, who soon left us to lie down and spill wine on the slippery checked blanket, without the full force of the sun.

the botanical gardens did seem like they needed more rain than sunshine though, as some of the palm trees were brown, flapping and lifeless at the edges of the scratchy, dry lawn.

not that the foliage wasn't leafy enough to offer shelter to scurrying mongoose and aggressively scampering, biting-each-other-on-the-arse dassies.

but if my garden is anything to go by, the springtime rain/greenery isn't far away. in just a week, from a walter sisulu botanical garden visit to a botanical-garden-in-my-own-city visit, the heat has increased so much that the oak tree leaves outside in the garden have started to grow.

exponentially.

i'd love to have a slow speed camera, documenting the unfolding of the oak leaves like outspread palms on the previously barren, barky branches. i always try catch first few shoots every year, but every year the tree beats me to it, and sprouts it's springtime virescence almost overnight.

despite the dryness, the scenery at the botanical gardens was still hospitable, with the pretty blue gun's acoustic strums a melodious background to our people-finding missions and takeaway-sandwich eating.

and sun dodging.

until mozambican 340ml took to the thatched stage, with their upbeat, jazzy and soulful rhythms. the lead singer even played a mouth organ, which i'd never seen before, which looked like a mini keyboard-thing attached to a white worm-like tube.

while we drank beers with crazy pull-tops, and green mini-margaritas.

the guitar riffs were slick, like the band members. just like i remember them from cape town, forever ago.

i realized i'd missed seeing them play live, years later, after having been able to see them regularly at places like the independent armchair in observatory before.

it reminded me of a time when i had absolutely no idea about who i was, and was still thrilled at the novelty of being able to go out as late as i wanted to, without sending sms's to parents, or setting off house alarms at 3am.

but as it does, time has passed, and until yesterday i'd forgotten about 340ml, and their catchy lyrics.

but interestingly enough, i think i like their music even more now.

and if the jumping, arm-flinging and enthusiastic lyric-shouting crowd in front of the thatched stage was anything to go by, the music-appreciative sect of pretoria does too.