Welcome to Week 12 of my #Gauteng52 challenge, for which I will visit and blog about a new place in Gauteng Province every week for 52 straight weeks. This week I visit Delta Park, which explodes with pink and white cosmos flowers every autumn.
This #Gauteng52 post is cheating a little because I’ve been to Delta Park – a huge city park bordering the suburbs of Craighall Park, Blairgowrie, Victory Park, and Linden – before. But up until yesterday I had never been to Delta Park during cosmos season, which transforms this park into a totally different place.
Cosmos are wildflowers that made their way to South Africa in contaminated horse feed during the Anglo Boer War; the flowers are native to the Americas. The cosmos took to the dry climate of the South African highveld and everywhere the horses fed, the cosmos grew. The flowers seem especially fond of ditches along rural South African roads and highways, and they grow like wildfire in Delta Park.
March is the beginning of autumn in South Africa. We might not have the same abundance of fall leaves that I grew up with in America (there are some, but not as many), but the explosion of pink and white cosmos more than makes up for scarcity of red and orange leaves. Especially in Delta Park.
I’ve made quite a few stops along the side of the road over the years to take pictures of pretty clumps of cosmos. But nothing could have prepared me for what I found in Delta Park. The park doesn’t have clumps of cosmos – it has outright seas of cosmos that grow taller than me.
Cosmos season at Delta Park is a photographer’s dream. Don’t miss it.
The main entrance to Delta Park is on Craighall Road in Victory Park.
Read all of my #Gauteng52 posts and check out the interactive #Gauteng52 map.
How have I never blogged about 44 Stanley Avenue, the coolest shopping and dining complex in Joburg, which is only five minutes from my house?
I guess it’s wrong to say I’ve never blogged about 44 Stanley; I’ve mentioned it countless times over the years (see here and here) when writing about specific restaurants or shops that are there. But I’ve never written a dedicated post about 44 Stanley as a destination and it’s about time I did – especially now, with the holidays upon us.
I’ve been dreadfully uninspired lately, struggling to think of anything I want to blog about despite having a long list of great ideas (many of which you, my readers, provided in September). I’m finding it hard to feel positive about life at the moment. But on Saturday Thorsten and I got the chance to visit Indwe Park, an indigenous garden and sculpture park in Braamfontein, and I knew I had my topic for today.
Given this week’s political nuclear bomb blast, it feels like a weird time to publish a light-hearted post about my recent (pre-election) jaunt through the United States. But I’m hoping you’ve have had enough of the U.S. election horror show – I know I have – and are ready (at least temporarily) for some wholesome American travel adventures. If so, please read on about my four-day visit to Maine, the northeastern-most state in the lower 48, with my sister, Susanna.
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It makes me smile, when I see it.