A couple of weeks back I posted saying that it felt like Spring had arrived, well this week I was certainly eating humble pie on that statement!

A huge cold front crossed what seems like the whole of South Africa and we woke up on Thursday morning to these views!

It was extremely stunning, but bitterly cold and there was a lot of rain around in the morning, which meant all the snow had vanished by the afternoon!

As a result of the snow and rain, our TLB work had to be suspended during Thursday, which was disappointing, but it wasn't a major problem. It just means we still have a bit of work for it to do this coming week!

The plus side of the snow and rain was that the blesbok herd have obviously found some new grass shoots peeking up on the areas where we did the fire breaks in July, and they have been feeding a lot at Kamberg Valley Hideaway the past few days!

This week has also seen the progress on the new cottage come on in leaps and bounds! We knew that rain was forecast from Wednesday, so Beaven decided to get the roof on the new cottage on Monday! That also meant that even if it did rain, the builders could carry on with the work on the inside of the cottage. Fortunately (from a building point of view) we were only hampered with rain Wednesday morning, so the painters and tilers were able to push on! Here are some photos showing the cottage as it stands today!

It has been another extremely busy week, but we knew it would be and it feels like we have actually achieved two weeks work in one, so we are edging closer to completion!

We have another hectic week coming up, but the photos next week will show even more impressive progress. I'm looking forward to posting them!

Hope you all have a wonderful week!

This past week we have again been busy with guests, but our builders, Ezweni Construction, have also been able to continue with our new self-catering cottage.

They have now finished plastering the entire building, inside and outside. Also, the floors have been screed and are now ready for the tiler (whom we think is going to be starting this week).

On top of that, we also now have the windows in! The cottage feels like it iS taking shape.

Here are a couple of photos!

This coming week is going to be a big progress week (we think)! The builders are going to put the roof on the new self catering cottage, the tiler is due to start the tiling of the floors and the plumber is likely to get the toilets in. There may even be some paint going in (we will have to see)!

We also have the TLB coming to clean out our small feeder pond and we also plan on getting help from the TLB to move the tree trunks from around the cottage, so hopefully the next photos will look less like a building site!

This week I also attempted to prune our fruit trees! Not sure how good a job I did, but they do look a ,to neater. Just like having a haircut really!

So this week August arrived and it definitely feels like Winter is leaving us behind and Spring is arriving. The evenings are a bit warmer (we didn't even have a fire last night) and it has started to get a little bit windy. A sure sign of the changing seasons. No doubt we will still have a few cold snaps, but even our plants and trees seem to think it is time for them to show their colours!

These week has also seen Ezweni Construction plaster the entire inside of the new cottage and about 80% of the outside, so we are very excited. Next week we should have the doors and windows in and maybe the roof on!

Also next week, once our guests have departed, we are going to be starting the work on cleaning out the smaller feeder dam. We had hoped to be able to do one last fire-break to burn the reeds in the area that has now dried up, but since there has been such little (well no rainfall) for months, we are unfortunately not allowed to burn anymore, so that meant some manual work was required!

Fortunately we borrowed a couple of guys from Beaven and they worked with Henry to chop the dead reeds from the area of the small dam that has successfully dried out. Once again the guys were incredible! We thought they might get through half of the reeds, but no, they chopped and raked and removed them all in one day! It has made such a difference and now we are ready for the TLB to come and work its magic!