follow your nose

Pretty little pentzia incana - the quintessential smell of the Karoo. The honey fragrance of vygies on a sunny afternoon; delicate sweet-lime perfume of tiny ivory-coloured orchids; the intoxicating, invisible but almost tangible cloud around a flowering num-num; and now, that rich heady, robust note of a pure, aged balsamic vinegar that tells you that, somewhere very close by, under a euphorbia bush, there's a fruiting Hydnora africana. Pushing up through the karoo-soil, its chocolatey bulb opening to deep luminous orange, it glows against the dull dusty grey & green of its hide-away. My delight at finally spotting it, as nothing, I'm sure, compared to the pleasure of the small nocturnal harvester whose tracks I will find here tomorrow morning.