Babylonstoren

Having lived in this area for five years, I had the fabulous experience of visiting Babylonstoren for the first time the other day. I am still in awe when I think of the first time I walked those gardens and sat down to a beautiful brunch in The Green House. It has this "wow-factor" that is hard to put into words, one have to experience it for oneself. Really!

Babylonstoren is situated in the Drakenstein Valley between Franschhoek and Paarl, in the heart of the Cape Winelands.  There are many activities to keep you busy all day long, which includes The Garden, wine tasting, hiking up the koppie, bird watching, photographing every square inch of this beautiful property and of course, EATING....

I cannot insist enough the importance of experiencing this place for yourself; once you've been there, you'll know what I mean. Like my friend said; "it looks like they employed someone to go around all day, merchandising and decorating". It is just FABULOUS!

At Babel  

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The Garden

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You can view more pictures from others that visited this amazing place on gramfeed. Then head on over to my favourite local blogger Vasgevang, to see his posts about Babylonstoren, here, here and here.

And now for some pics of my own.....

Even the taps are beautiful... hehe..

Happy weekend!

Veggie garden

Wanting to grow my own veg at home for as long as I can remember, the day has finally arrived. The Captain ordered a book by Mel Bartholomew about Square Foot Gardening, or SFG in short. (You can read the review on his book here and visit the SFG  website here.) It gives you great ideas and a whole "new look" on how to garden.
I did my own bit of research in Jane Griffith's delicious book and on her website and blog about organic gardening which has been a huge inspiration to me.

We decided to go "above ground" and higher up than the usual raised beds, saving on our "broken" backs a bit. My first stop was at Stellenzicht vineyards here where I was lucky to get hold of 4 old wooden crates (about 1m x 1.2m) which was previously used for the grape harvests.

The next step was to source the ingredients for Mels's mix. Quite a genius mix, but I'll tell you more about that another day.

With the mix all mixed, we were able to fill only one crate; but for me that was quite enough. My seedlings went in there and voilà, all ready to grow into delicious, juicy, home-grown goodness!

I'll keep you updated on the progress of our veggie boxes.

Happy day!