On 19the September 2015, at my sister Lizza's suggestion we visited the Darling Wildflower show. The flowers and the wheat suffered from the drought. There were lots of daisies, blue flax, arums in the wet ground, and some chinks, but diversity was low. Stephan came for the first time as a 'tourist'. For the last two decades he has gone to sell our Fynbos table cloths at the show. One of the florals was based on Darling flowers. These arums were in a display at the show, the chinks at Tinnie Versveld reserve, close to our maternal grandmother's birthplace. Then we went south along the coast road, turned onto the red dust road to Hilda's Kitchen, at the Groote Post Cellars. Finally we headed home, and the flowers were facing us all the way.
some elements of the sensory experience
H. pinnata was Growing along the road in masses. The rather lame description on one website as 'honey scented' does not capture the scent, when fresh somewhere at a point midway between old dark red roses, narcissus and gardenia... but delicate....
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Hermannia pinnataI was delighted to find when googling that its commercially available at
www.plantzafrica.com/planthij/hermanniapinnata.htm www.newplant.co.za/product/hermannia-pinnata |
perfume |
flavour
At Hilda's Kitchen, named after the famous West Coast gourmand Hildegonda Duckitt I had Darling smoked ham with Hildegonda's relish. The relish was the only item originating from Hildegonda's cookery books, as we heard her other recipes were often too lavish to fulfil in this type of context, whole pigs on the spit and such like. The relish had a typical Cape country flavour of dried fruit, vinegar and tumeric. It was scrumptious with the parma style ham. Lizza had lamb shanks which also tasted very traditional, reminding me of childhood meals in the Karoo, and Stephan had pork belly and noodles with sweetish mildly spicy sauce. On the way home in the car, we ate some Rumanian "Chorizo" sausage we bought at the show, (it is called something else in Rumania, but the seller chose to give it the Italian name people are familiar with). It was loaded with garlic and something tangy and green like fenugreek greens, couldn't really place it. I wish we'd been able to afford more for future meals. I did look for konfyt (waatlemoen slices) which one usually finds at the show. I wanted it to pair with smelly cheeses. However this traditional gooey glazed melon skin was missing, giving way to all kinds of Italian stuff.
A verbal description is not adequate to the perfume of Hermannia, neither does the camera do justice to the colours of the deep purple Carpobrotus, the fields, tinted many shades by flowers, the redness of this earth, the crisp pattern on the Nguni cows, or the blue day's sky with turquoise seas in the distance. I'm so happy we went together to the show. It may be the last time for many years, as Stephan intends to return home for good this year.
A verbal description is not adequate to the perfume of Hermannia, neither does the camera do justice to the colours of the deep purple Carpobrotus, the fields, tinted many shades by flowers, the redness of this earth, the crisp pattern on the Nguni cows, or the blue day's sky with turquoise seas in the distance. I'm so happy we went together to the show. It may be the last time for many years, as Stephan intends to return home for good this year.