Residing in our beautiful, quaint city of Nelspruit is a serious delight and privilege for us. Seriously, think about it! We are surrounded by absolute beauty.
All roads leading to our awesome little city promise the traveller amazingly breath-taking sights. No matter what route, you are sure to be in for a treat. From our regal mountains that embrace our city – to the lush green valleys that stretch across our landscape.
We are a hop skip and jump away from the ocean – the Big and little 5 are right on our doorsteps!
Seriously what more could we Nelspruiters or should I correct myself: what more could we Mbombelians want? Some of us are even privileged enough to have our very own Enchanted Gardens!
Besides our unique and diverse Botanical gardens we have our enormous nature reserve that is situated perfectly in the middle of our awesome city. I would even go so far as to say it is perfectly positioned to enhance some of our gardens.
For many years we lived on the border of the nature reserve and at night we had no idea how our garden came to life. Until one night. The neighbour’s dog was barking incessantly so Gary decided to investigate. “Babe – I kid you not, there is a grocery packet walking across our garden right now!” he whispered incredulously to me.
Time to investigate or for Gary to get new glasses – I thought to myself. As I heaved myself out of the comfort of our bed. Sure enough there scurrying across our driveway was the grocery packet with the German Shepherd chasing after it!
Or was it? No it surely couldn’t be? We both shrieked at the same time: – “It’s a porcupine!” Well from that night onwards ‘Percy the Porcupine’ would explore our garden when night fell.
We soon realised that there was also a Prudence and they had a couple of friends (or family – we never were quite sure.) However it certainly became our “party Trick” – I kid you not – but you could actually smell their scent when they were visiting – so we would break from chatting around the braai and all gather at the window, using the curtain as “cami” so they couldn’t spot us as we watched them chomping away at our garden.
Our garden certainly wasn’t a show piece; it was more a shrubby mass of greenery so it never really bothered me if they took delight in our garden. Shortly after we discovered Percy, Prudence and the others we would hear a raucous bellowing each night. What the heck could that be?
Each one in the family had their own “expert” opinion on what was making this screech each night. From rebellious Haededas to flying bats – to monkeys and even wild cats!
Until we actually witnessed the bush babies swinging through our trees. What precious little creatures they are – we still blessed to have these little ones visiting each night at our current house.
Together with the cute cuddly and prickly were the silent and slithery! Yip on many occasions we would bump into mostly unwelcome Mozambican Spitting Cobras – once we even had a baby rock python casually slithering amongst our rocks – we still to this day wonder exactly how close mom, dad and its siblings were to us – eish!
We still delight in the “Te Whit Te Whoo” calling of the local owl – in the dead of night. He is a pure treasure to have as a resident sharing our space – him and all his other cute and curious little fellow creatures.
As I said: How lucky are we to share this precious little city with creatures great but mostly small.
