#Melville Koppies

As long as I’ve lived here, the view from the deck at the Lucky 5 Star has been a wall of green. It was one of my favorite things about the house – the back yard felt like a private jungle, filled with unruly indigenous plants and flowering creepers (the creepers are pretty, but invasive).

My fascination with Hillbrow – a former middle-class inner suburb that is now the toughest neighborhood in Joburg – began in February when I explored Hillbrow on a Joburg Photowalk. When I heard there would be another Hillbrow Photowalk this past weekend, exploring the grounds of the old Johannesburg General Hospital, I signed up, stat.

I’m leaving town for a few days and probably won’t have internet access. Before I go, I want to share a few recent pictures from the garden at the Lucky 5 Star.

Gotcha!

This is not the end of 2Summers the blog. But it is the end of 2Summers the season.

I named my blog 2Summers because I moved here in August, as summer was ending in D.C. and about to begin in Joburg. I’ve essentially lived one 10-month-long summer, although summer here wasn’t really like summer back home. (It was much cooler in Joburg.)

Today Joe and I went to Greenside, one suburb over from Melville, to try out a restaurant there called the Odd Café. We go to Greenside all the time for groceries but this was the first time I’d properly investigated the neighborhood. Turns out the whole place is odd.