Garden Centre

After a good morning in Macassar I decided to call in on Michael in Chris Nissen on my way home to see how his gate is holding up and just to enjoy being with my mate.

One of the things that never fails to amaze me about our friends there is just how generous they are and this morning I left Michael's feeling like I'd been to a garden centre.

My garden is going to be looking great by next summer!

60 Years!

Sunday was an important day for Tree Of Life as we celebrated the 60th wedding anniversary of Oom Paul and Aunty Molly.

They are an amazing couple and I have had the privilege of sitting with Oom Paul a few times listening to his life stories. Forget about Kindle or any other form of interactive e-book, spending time with someone like Oom Paul is spending time with a truly interactive living, talking history book!

Blogging From A To Z Challenge - Review

The Blogging From A To Z Challenge was a lot of fun!

I've enjoyed the discipline of blogging every day and giving the blog some long overdue attention. I think the best bit though has to have been meeting loads of other bloggers from around the world, sharing posts and comments and reading blogs that I might otherwise not have got to see.

Perigee Full Moon

The moon is currently 28000km's closer to earth than normal leading to this amazing phenomenon know as the Perigee full moon which means it appears up to 14% bigger and 30% brighter than when it is furthest from the planet.

It's quite a spectacular phenomenon and I was quite pleased with these photos of the moon this evening.

Read more about it here on the BBC News.

*Facepalm*

We just received this from our 'friendly' neighbourhood watch. sometimes I'm just so embarrassed to live where we do amongst the people we do. It's the last line that makes me hang my head in shame. Get a life folks!

"This week was a quieter week in our area although we did discover vagrants bedding down with their household goods on the field opposite Cherrywood Gardens in Bizweni Road.

May The Fourth

Sorry, couldn't resist!

Gateway To..

I don't get to spend as much time as I used to getting involved in practical projects and just generally helping to bodge fix things together again. So I was chuffed when Michael rang for a bit of urgent help yesterday.

A few moons ago Michael and I put a gate on the front of his property but at the time he was short of hinges (some might say he was unhinged asking me to help!) so he bodged fixed the gate to the post using the upright as the hinge.

Meanwhile, back in April...

In the midst of playing about with the A To Z Blogging Challenge we've neglected the regular side of the blog, but it's May now so here we go with normal service being resumed.

With the five day weekend over I have to admit to enjoying the blissful peace and quiet in the office, no kids running around, making a ton of noise and being exuberant. Thankfully it's only short lived as they'll be back after lunch but the brief respite is very very welcome!

Weekend

Today is the last day of a marathon five day weekend which has been a lot of fun.

Friday was Freedom Day, a very important day in South Africa's history and today is Workers' Day so most folk also took Monday off to make the most of it all and we've certainly made the most of it though if truth be told it will be nice to get back to some semblance of normality (whatever that is).

Blogging From A To Z Challenge - Z

Z is for Ω

At least it is in the Greek alphabet.

"I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End." Revelation 22:13. The Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end, outside of God there is nothing.

I try to live my life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, though I know I often fail. This may be unappealing and a bit of a turn off if you don't profess a faith but I can't help that. I hear all the arguments for and against God and increasingly hear the vocal anti-Christian lobby of Dawkins et al and find myself even more convinced of my faith.

Blogging From A To Z Challenge - Y

Y is for Yowza!

OK, so it's a bit tenuous but I'm still expressing my surprise at having completed the A To Z Blogging Challenge. Yes yes there's still Monday's post but that's already written and scheduled to post.

I've had a lot of fun doing it, I've met some great new cyber friends and visited some really good (and the odd strange) blogs. I'll definitely be doing it again.

One of the highlights for me has been the encouraging comments and hearing that one or two folk have been eagerly looking forward to see what the next letter would be about. I hope you've enjoyed it too.

Blogging From A To Z Challenge - X

X has to be for X-rays

Not that I'm passionate about these things but we've had our fair share of them done in our eight years in South Africa.

It all begins with chest x-rays for immigration to prove that one is clear of TB, which is a bit of a joke as the Western Cape has one of the world's highest prevalence rates of TB and some medics reckon that everyone living in the Cape carries TB.

Blogging From A To Z Challenge - W

W is for Walking The Dog.

One of my boys favourite activities has to be walking Rosie. We're pretty slack at it and don't walk her anywhere as much as we should but when we do it's a lot of fun.

Rosie adores being out and about, exploring the park, chasing the Ibis and Egrets and occasionally gets to play in the stream if it's been wet enough.

Blogging From A To Z Challenge - V

V is for Veteran Bloggers.

If you're visiting our blog for the first time or arrived via the Blogging From A To Z Challenge we'd like to welcome you to our little corner of the web.

We've really enjoyed running this blog over a few years. In fact if you take a look at our Archive you'll see that we've been blogging since the 10th of July 2004 when we were preparing to move to South Africa from Blighty. Back then the blog was called Adventures With God but we rebranded the blog a while back, see our About tab for more on this.

Blogging From A To Z Challenge - U

U is for Unicycling

Just because this is one of my passions doesn't mean I'm very good at it and trust me, I'm not! I do enjoy it though.

It all began many moons ago when I asked Paula for a unicycle for my 30th birthday. I was really into juggling and wanted to try something different. I was blessed with a DM Ringmaster and despite several attempts to ride it it got neglected and largely forgotten. Then in 1999 we went to All Nations for a year and one of the students had his giraffe uni there and with a few tips I decided to invest in learning to ride my Ringmaster.

Blogging From A To Z Challenge - T

*Update* Tree Of Life is now defunct

T is for Tree Of Life

It is a complete privilege to be leading Tree Of Life and especially to be leading it with such a great bunch of guys!

Blogging From A To Z Challenge - S

S is for Spiloxene Capensis

I've blogged about this flower a couple of times before here and here and still maintain that it's my all time favourite flower.

The Spiloxene Capensis is also known as the Painted Peacock Flower and is actually classed as a weed. I have to say it's a particularly stunning weed!

Blogging From A To Z Challenge - R

R is for Rosie

Our ever faithful guard dog and friend, she's half Rhodesian Ridgeback, half Border Collie, the latter part making her a very busy dog but she is beautiful!

She was named by Joel though he has no idea why he chose the name or where it came from.

Blogging From A To Z Challenge - Q

Q is for Quarrelsome

Before I get myself into trouble let me state that my amazing wife is NOT a quarrelsome wife!

I've chosen Q for quarrelsome today to highlight some of my favourite verses in the bible, or perhaps I should be clearer and say that I'm highlighting some of the verses that I think are funny.

Proverbs 21 verse 19 is a great place to start: "Better to live on a corner of the roof than share a house with a quarrelsome wife." I love the humour of this one and so too did the psalmist as he put it in there twice, see 25:24!

Proverbs 27 verse 15 is also in there twice and is also quite amusing. "A quarrelsome wife is like the dripping of a leaky roof in a rainstorm;"

Blogging From A To Z Challenge - P

P is for Photoblog

You might not know, but we also have a photoblog. It's called Finnie's In Focus and can be found here.

I'm not as faithful at posting on it as I once was, due largely to the fact that my DSLR is very old and tired now and I rarely take it anywhere with me. I long to upgrade it but that remains a distant dream for now.

Blogging From A To Z Challenge - O

O is for Obrigado

Obrigado means Thanks in Portuguese

I first heard this word in Zimbabwe when we were working with a street kid centre in Harare. A few of the kids were from Mozambique so we regularly heard Portuguese being spoken by them.

One of the things that amazed me was despite how tough life had been for them either at home or on the streets these kids were very well mannered, always thanking people whenever something was done for them. They could certainly have taught many others a lesson or two in good manners.