Good day, friends,

I hope that you are all still in good health and that you are all living your best life.

So much has happened in the past two months.

My brother and his family moved into their new house. I am so happy for them and wish them many years of making happy memories in their forever home.

Poplap our parakeet passed away. He was stil talking, singing and dancing on the Sunday evening. When I got to him on Monday morning, he was lying legs in the air at the bottom of his cage. I have no idea what happened.

We had to euthanize Ogies yesterday morning. Every year she gets hay fever around August to the end of September. This year she had it bad. She just recovered and then since Friday I noticed that she did not move around much. She would go outside to soak in the sun, she stayed outside for a long time then came inside and looked for the sun on her chair in my room. Sunday, she started losing her balance and it looked like she had no control over her legs. She just falls over. By the evening we had to hold her while she was eating. Ogies is Armand’s baby. He had to make the decision to rather relief her from the discomfort she was having. I know it must have been the hardest decision he ever had to make in his life till now.

We had a wonderful 17 with Ogies and she gave us a lot of beautiful memories and tons of love. When we were sick, she would come to lie with us and help us to get better. I will never forget how she would ask me to go make a fire in the fireplace. She loved it. She will sit and stare at the dead fireplace and then I will hear her scratching against the grid. That was my q that she is cold and need the fire to keep her warm and comfortable.

Armand, got a 100% bursary to study Cyber Security. He is working very hard, but loadshedding is busy making things difficult.

In the meantime, I had Pneumonia again and was very depressed about it. I spoke to a friend and he told me to stop feeling sorry for myself. My dad would not be happy if he sees me so down and not capturing the world and living my dream. Dad was my biggest supporter and when he said that to me it hit me hard. I started thinking of all the times dad encouraged me to go out there and capture the beauty and the not so beautiful around me. I got my act together and gave myself a date to go out. Does not matter if it rains or sun is shining, I will be going out to take photos.

I started going out into the field again from 1 September 2022. I am busy working on my Parks and Reserves project. I try to go out at least two mornings a week.

The weeks that I do not go out I sit in the garden and take photos of the birds and my new plants. I will post some of my garden photos also in the near future….

I also started a new project. This project takes a lot of time. I have to do research and learn more about the subject but I enjoy it. I have had this project in mind since I started photography in 2009. The boys bought me a wildcard so that I can enter all the SANPARKS and Cape Nature Reserves for free. I also signed up at The Botanical Society as a member, now I can enter all the SANBI Botanical Gardens for free. Kistenbosch is number one on my list and now I will be going there more often and I also paid a little extra so that I can take in a guest as well.

I might as well tell you all. I am busy working on a series of books. Not your normal flower identifying book. It is going to be very detailed and, in a language, the normal man on the street will understand. I have thousands of flower photos that I took since 2009 and now it is time to get them all identified. Well, those I have not yet done anyway.

I will be dedicating this series of books to my Father, Mother, my children and all the friends who encouraged me over the years. I also have a few of my followers here on WordPress that will be mentioned.

My photography student from years ago also moved back to Cape Town and she joins me on my expeditions when she is free.

I have also decided that from January 2023 I am going to start giving one on one workshops in photography. I had a few people in the past that I helped and then of course I had Lizette who came to me once a week for a photography class. She was my first proper student and I realized then that sitting in a room trying to teach photography does not work. I then moved our classes to the field and well it worked much better.

My leg is still not properly healed and I got a knock again when Willow and Oprah came charging down the passage and bumped me out of the way.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for all your support and for taking the time to look at my posts. I am truly grateful for every view, like, and comment I receive.

Wishing you all a fantastic day.

“If you can dream it, you can do it.” ~ Walt Disney

🤗Big Virtual Hug 🤗

Coreen

PS. Please support me on☕ Ko-Fi ☕. I have to save up enough money to cover some of the expenses for my Landscape Photography Trip to Namibia and also honoring my promise to Dad to go back to Scotland.