January arrives rather quietly this year with a family game night and our traditional New Year’s afternoon tea in the veld, beside one of the farm dams.  The festive season is over and a new year begins. Attention is turned towards the school trunk.

Various new garments need name tapes and there is a gathering-together of supplies such as toiletries and tuck. Tuck, for those who may not know, is a word used to describe the extra food snacks that children take to boarding school with them. (It comes, I think, from the Australian word tucker, which means food.)  As always, clothes for school are laid out on the spare room bed before being packed and ticked off on the laundry list. The packing up of my daughter’s things always fills me with a mixture of melancholy, excitement for her new milestones and satisfaction once the job is done. Except for the wretched socks. We never seem to have the same number we had the term before. In fact, my daughter is not in the habit of losing her things, except socks.  In spite of being labelled, into the great sock abyss at school they go, never to be seen by us again.

This year, the usual pattern of the back-to-school season has been disrupted with a last minute change to the timetable and school is to start later than usual. I’m not complaining because our girl will be home with us for longer – an absolute bonus –  but this also means online-teaching for my teacher sister-in-law which is frankly awful news. Some changes to the usual routine are not welcome for everyone.

Routines are something I myself am not very good at. I hardly ever follow the exact same sequence in my daily tasks, except wake up, have tea, get up. That’s about as close as I get. I may still be in my exercise clothes when the man comes home for breakfast – especially if there is a craft project on the go. I feed my dogs in the morning, but it may be before my shower and it may be after.  Fortunately dogs don’t wear watches.

In Nature, routines and patterns are commonplace.  The Spider Lily flowers always appear almost as soon as the new year begins and in the veld, a wild herb with lovely violet flowers, delicate and beautiful – Murdannnia Simplex – appears in the long wild grass as it does every January. There are beautifully scented flowers on the wild jasmine and the veld, as is usual at this time, is green, green and did I mention green? 

Slide show below:- It’s January and Wire-Tailed Swallows gather on a power line, Southern Province, Zambia.

But some routines are learned, even in Nature. In the garden, the little Blue Waxbills have quickly become acclimatised to the fact that my husband puts seed out for them daily, and every day they arrive, a little heavier than they were the day before. Some days, honestly, they appear not to perch so much as squat heavily on their haunches, whilst they gobble up the seeds they like best.

The Wire-Tailed Swallows which we see almost all year round, always grow in numbers in January and some days the sky is filled with them as they dive and swoop towards their insect quarry. They like to gather together too, most often on the power lines near our house, where they sit tucked up close beside each other in the late afternoon.  From a distance the sheer numbers of them alters the outward shape of the lines, making them seem much fatter and bumpier than they really are.

Toadstools have now appeared and in my garden, this causes a certain amount of confusion since I often stop the gardeners from cutting the grass so that I can enjoy the fungi for a few days. This hiatus in the routine can be a head-scratcher for them. Still, I hate to see toadstools hacked straight away. After all, they do not live for long and for a few days I can enjoy watching them as they develop and grow. 

Slide Show below:- Toadstools which start off as cup-shaped and slowly expand to the size of a small dinner plate, growing in a fairy ring. I thought they might be an Amanita but cannot be sure. Anyone reading this who can let me know, I’d appreciate it! In my garden, Southern Province, Zambia.

One species has made its own pattern, coming up in not one, but two fairy rings, which are a thing of great joy to me.  I take great delight in them. I find a clutch of toadstools here and then another further around the bend. Even though the fungi are not evenly spaced, nor have completely closed the circle, if I look closely, I can see the ring, for the grass beneath them is much darker than that which surrounds the toadstools and this complete circle of dark green is particularly noticeable. It is fascinating and reminds me that the portion of fungus we see above is only a mere fraction of what lies beneath. But that, after all is pretty much Nature herself.

Nina Simone took the song “Feeling Good”, a song written in 1964, to new heights when she covered it in 1965. The lyrics match my mood, and the beginning of a new year with all its possibility ahead. Watch a feel-good video with a beautifully lithe dancer to complement the voice of the incomparable Simone.