I usually plant African daisies and dianthus each year that we are home in Provo. Then winter comes and they die. But here  in South Africa they seem to thrive during winter – at least this winter. The pot of daisies hardly had a decent bloom during the summer and fall but now with winter it is alive and beautiful with them. The dianthus has been blooming since the day I planted them and even now they are full of color. I look at them often because by the time we get home it will be fall and so I will have to wait until April 2016 to plant these beautiful flowers again.

We had load shedding again last night and it was all my fault. In the morning as we were getting into the car, I said to Mary that we had not had any load shedding – that is when the power goes off for 2 to 4 hours – in a long time. As soon as I said it I realized that I had just hexed us and so I knocked on wood. Unfortunately I was too late  – the power went off at about 6:00 and did not come back on until about 10:00  So we lighted the candles, got out the emergency lighting and had a quiet evening. Unfortunately Mary was in the middle of baking a batch of sugar cookies when the power disappeared and the oven is of course electric. But on the positive side the oven stayed hot enough to finish baking the batch and as you can see they came out fine. I will not mention load shedding again – at least not while we are in South Africa.