A Dog Challenge

How can I resist challenges like last month's one on James Parker's Windows to the Words blog?  Especially when it involves DOGS!

This is a beautiful dog owned by Laura Rowe.  Unfortunately I don't have her details or a blog address for her, or the name of this beautiful dog, but she did one of my Katie in return.

Here they both are -

Laura Rowe's Dog

Katie

Donkey Sanctuary

Outside Cape Town, on the road to the Eastern Cape, there is a sanctuary specially for abused and neglected donkeys.

These humble animals have been used and abused for centuries, worked to death and because they are so unglamorous, not much attention is paid to their plight.  Thank goodness for places like this one.

A friend took this picture whilst travelling through the area, a wonderful composition which I have tried to do justice to.  Landscapes again!  Oh dear!

A close-up of the three.

Lunch at Camps Bay

In every corner of every city all around the world, there is a group of people we label - hobos, tramps, homeless - here in Cape Town, anyone who lives off the pickings of the street is called a 'Bergie'.  This is a derivative of an Afrikaans word, Berg, which means mountain. 

Now the mountain that is referred to is Table Mountain, that flat topped edifice associated around the world with our city.  The original homeless inhabitants used to live on the slopes of the mountain, finding caves and rock shelters, hence the name.  

Of course, they no longer live on the mountain, instead taking shelter in doorways. There are a number of houses that have been turned into hostels for overnight stays, but not that many take advantage of them except when it gets really cold or when the rain comes pouring down.  They are fiercely independent and very rarely beg.

This gentleman is a resident of the Camps Bay area, a quiet, well mannered person who, for reasons unknown to us, lives on the streets.  He had no trouble with having his picture taken, asking for nothing in return.  Someone had given him a piece of fried fish for his lunch.

 I have included a google map of Camps Bay if you feel like gazing out at the Atlantic Ocean!

Waiting for the Tide

One of the last things I'd do right now, is go down to the beach.  

It's been raining and the temperature is still pretty chilly - but there is a slight increase so that possibly means Summer is trying to find us here in the Southern Hemisphere.

Up til now we've had the most amazing Winter.  All in all only about one month of seriously cold weather - a 6deg Celsius minimum early morning is Cold!  Which also means that I've only had to light the fire about 5 times so far.  But it's not over yet.  August can be colder than July sometimes.

But back to the beach.  

This is from one of Shelley Smart's photographs from her blog, A Year at the Beach.  She's from California and from her photos, she lives in an amazing place. She very kindly gave me permission to paint this one - I loved the composition (yes I know it breaks all the rules) and it took me a lot longer than I thought it would.

Thank you Shelley.

Little Green Frog

Every time I go to the Art Challenge blogs, I think, oh I must try that.  And I just never seem to get there!  

But James Parker's Windows to the Words challenge blog is the one that I do seem to manage!  Maybe because most of the others are landscapes, which terrify me, and James' blog posts wonderful images like this Little Green Frog which I can manage to do in one session.