Sweetpeas, Kookaburras and Hippos

Sweetpeas

Trying to copy photo from Picasa this time to see how it works ! Title of photo needs to go above .. mmmm .. can't remember what I did! Will get there, slowly!!!!!

I was going to chat about 'sweetpeas', one of my favourite spring flowers - love their beautiful soft and sometimes vibrant colours, and the fragrance is just so lovely. I always plant some in the garden, sometimes the tall climbing variety and, like this year, the short knee high ones. Spring went straight into summer - very quickly - and we have had extremely hot days lately (well over 30 degrees C). Poor sweetpeas have wilted already, except for the ones I planted at the back which are somewhat sheltered ...

.. but - when I woke this morning, I had a tune stuck in my head. I must have dreamt about Kookaburra's - why - have no idea - we live in South Africa and it's an Australian bird! There is a very pretty kiddies song about Kookaburra's and it's on one of the many kiddies CD's I have. I have loads, some in the house and most in the cubby hole of my car. Great for singing along with the grandchildren, while we go 'here and there' everyday. It really is a pretty song and is sung like we would sing 'Row row row your boat gently down the stream' (when one person sings a few bars and then another joins in, and so on). No idea what that's called but we used to do that in singing lessons at school - way back!

So I woke this morning, singing to myself about Kookaburra's whilst our usual garden birds twitter their morning songs!

Singing kiddies songs reminds me of a braai (barbeque) over a weekend some time ago. P (hubby) had several colleagues over here on business (from Columbia and Belgium) and they love our braais - relaxing in the garden, sipping very good South African red wine ... ! We had never had the chappies from Belgium before here and they were interested in what I did .. as my house is strewn with toys etc. After proudly showing them photos of the grandchildren (as all good grannies do!) and telling them that I look after two of them so the conversation went on and turned to kiddies songs ... remember we are sipping glorious red wine! I then had to sing to them the song about the hippopotamus - in the deep, slow voice just like on one of my CD's!!! I cringe to think about it - these are work colleagues of P's but hopefully they've fogotten about it.

Just imagine, memories of a traditional South African braai with the hostess singing about hippopotamus'!