Even when nothing happens........

The thing with blogging is that it is a true commitment, you start and you have to keep it going. One often sees bloggers feeling just a little bit guilty if they do not blog regularly....and we all admire Nancy Medina and Kelley MacDonald and all those busy little bees who will post every day as sure as the sun rises!

Back at the ranch, being away and having illness in the family, spring cleaning and gardening gets in the way of posting. But "even when nothing happens", things do happen and here are a few for your amazement and amusement:

1. My "blog book" arrived, beautifully printed with the first 160 posts. How does one feel when you unpack it? I thought that I felt fairly flat, like a student who made a nice little assignment and now what? Send me an e-mail if you would like to page through it online!

The little sapling of Sutherlandia (see previous post) had so much rain, and as I went out this morning this tiny plant had flower buds all over, so we may be drinking a health brew in future!

We visited my children in Durban for 10 days and spend a weekend caring for the menegary of 3 dogs, 5 hamsters and 8 rabbits. What fun! The black rabbit, Benjamin, stays in the girls' room in the day and goes out in the garden at night, being nocturnal! Snowball, very white, is the mom of 5 girls. They live with Dad Peter in the enclosed and sheltered rabbit garden. My daughter was happy about the female rabbits, as sterilizing males are very expensive ! I painted some bunnies in watercolour.

My friend Tatyana Binovskaya has been wanting to paint me for a long time. The end result was a wonderful surprise! Tatyana is so talented!

There is an oil painting of boats on my easel.....if one cannot travel, there are always older photos to work from! So the next post will be about the real West Coast again!

Sutherlandia frutescens or Cancer Bush

A wonderful perk of travelling is getting to try the food of different nations! I think armchair travelling is the same and I found much joy in all the comments I received about waterblommetjies, a traditional dish of the Cape! Now, from food to medicine as I introduce the amazing centuries-old cure, Sutherlandia frutescens, locally known as cancer bush.

Having heard so much about this bush and having noticed it in health tablets, I set off to !Khwa Ttu to buy the plant for my garden. I was lucky, there were saplings for sale! Not only that, but in the indigenous garden the plants were in bloom. The restaurant at !Khwa Ttu also had pots of them as flower arrangements, nicely labelled with info about the plant.

According to the booklet "Gathering Fynbos" written by San experts 2 handfuls of dried leaves and young stems should be added to cold water and boiled for half an hour. One should drink a small glassful once a day. It is claimed to be a great immune booster and beneficial as preventative or cure for pancreatic cancer, aids, kidney disease, diabetes 2, arthritus, fever, gout , urinary tract infection and for treating the mother after delivery. Remember, the San and Khoikoi people for centuries survived without Western medicine!

I needed some good neutral opinion and was pleased to find a very informative website official-looking and honest and never trying to over- glorify the plant. I took this paragraph from their site.

Quality-of-Life Tonic

There is preliminary clinical evidence that Sutherlandia has a direct anticancer effect in some cancers, and also acts as an immune stimulant, but Sutherlandia should not be recommended as a so-called “universal cancer cure”, but rather as a quality-of-life tonic.

• Mood
  Sutherlandia decreases anxiety and irritability and it elevates mood.
• Appetite and weight
  It is an established fact that up to a third of cancer patients succumb to the wasting syndrome, rather than the actual tumor mass. Appropriate doses of select chemotypes and varieties of Sutherlandia dramatically improves appetite, and weight-gain can be expected in wasted patients. The first 5 kg gain is common after six weeks of treatment. In patients who are not wasted, weight-gain is not usual.
• Energy levels and exercise tolerance
  Sutherlandia typically improves the energy levels and exercise tolerance of patients, and gives an enhanced sense of well-being.

The website has all the newspaper and medical reports one can wish for, for those interested in more info about Sutherlandia. If you come across it in health tablets in the States or UK or anywhere, I would love to know! I hope my little plant will thrive so that I can brew some elixir!

The painting was done in watercolours on 300gms watercolour paper. Those rhythmic little stems and the large pea-like red flowers were a tempting subject, tempting enough to make me reach my watercolour paints.

Waterblommetjies (Aponogeton distachyos)

Waterblommetjies also known as Cape pondweed, Cape hawthorn or Cape asparagus, is an ingredient in one of the most loved traditional dishes in the country called waterblommetjie-bredie (This word is a mouthful!!!!) While I lived briefly in other provinces of South Africa, I had to rely on the tinned products to make the popular stew. Here, of course, I am so close to many traditional food sources: only 90 km from where the bokkoms are harvested and a 3 minute walk from crayfish and other seafood. The nearest dams for harvesting waterblommetjies are on Lelieblom Farm in the Darling district. (The farm where I get so much material for my blogs!!)

I find that they appear in the markets more and more and this might mean that they will soon be available in fresh form all over the country. The ones I painted here were from a large fruit and veg market. The first people to utilize these greenish hard little flowers growing on long thin grass-like stems, were the Khoikoi people. They used it in stews, mostly with mutton, onions and potatoes and flavoured with salt, pepper and sorrel. Sorrel, of course grows in springtime so it is available at the same time as the waterblommetjies, and it is used to give a slightly acidic taste to the dish. I do not use the common garden sorrel at all, as it is much safer to have the plant positively verified by an expert. In fact, we will only eat it if three experts point them out! The little sorrel flowers on my cooked dish was placed there briefly for the photo!

Recipes? Just do what comes naturally. I always fry some onions first, then some lamb knuckles, add cubed potatoes and water, stock or wine and prepare for a slow simmer. Add the sorrel only if you know your garden weeds! The waterblommetjies are added last and steams on top of the dish as they soften and break up quickly. Mixed herbs, a little salt and some white pepper are a must. We find this dish filling and would eat it with salad things only, but rice is the traditional accompaniment.

For soup: Steam the waterblommetjies with potato and onion in a little milk and vegetable stock. Flavour with garlic and the usual dried herbs/salt/pepper. Liquidize, serve and enjoy this healthy vegetarian soup with some warm crusty bread.

I was unable to visit a waterblommetjie harvesting, but in the background I painted a man, knee-deep in water, harvesting the plants and putting them in a floating dish.

(Thanking South African Tourism for the photo of the harvesters)

Master and Commander

A large part of the West Coast consists of farm lands and countryside. In between you will find our beloved small towns, fondly known as "dorpies". The atmosphere is rural, to say the least! I often visit Lelieblom Farm and there I have met some other farmers too. I need to see the milk farms especially because the products from Darling Dairies are well known all over the country in food stores. I also needed an excuse to paint a colourful rooster, so here it is!

The picturesque roosters at Lelieblom Farm are known to rush through the house to reach the front garden as soon as a door opens! I chose to paint this colourful red guy! In the painting I placed him in the foreground so that all else will seem small. Look at that assertive stance! As a little girl I was chased by a ferocious rooster, they do that, don't they? I call my painting "Master and Commander", because of the bossy attitude!

My West Coast Calendar and some Websites

My WEST COAST CALENDAR is now available in the year of your choice and can be ordered from RedBubble.

Here is the link, and for book readers, here is the site to find it: www.redbubble.com/people/marietheron/calendars/7661685-west-coast-chronicles. RedBubble calenders are printed on excellent paper and the images (all 13 of them) may be framed afterwards.

Here are some websites where my work can be seen:

To find my blog: http://artistmarietheron.blogspot.com

My fashion fun blog: http://frenchbelles.blogspot.com

Viewing or buying original art: www.Southafricanartists.com/home/marietheron

Calenders, cards and prints: http://marietheron.redbubble.com