The Mystery of the Munching

Last Saturday, we decided to be adventurous and set out to find a nice lunch spot out of town, on a road leading to some interesting rock formations. Apparently, the rocks make a good location for picnics, with some countryside peace + quiet, lots of climbing opportunities for little ones to enjoy and even some local monkeys or baboons to entertain us.
However, we seemed to get a bit lost. We ended up en-route to a couple of quarries, where the only entertainment would be rocks getting blasted to pieces, rather than peace and quiet and nature-watching!
After bumping along sandy tracks for some miles, our grumbling tummies helped us to reach the decision to stop anyway, not too far from one of the quarries, and eat our sandwiches.
We selected a sandy spot on a flattened anthill, with a distant view of a lake, which was rather pleasant. The picnic spot itself was a little dry and barren, with a rather chemical-smelling fire burning in a hollow nearby, but undeterred, we Parkers determined to focus on the pretty yellow flowers nearby and the lake glimmering in the distance. And it has to be said that we had a very nice time on our rather impulsive picnic outing!


There was opportunity to explore the bush a little...


... and I was particularly impressed by these hardy flowers, bursting with bright colour in a dry and sandy environment. It is amazing that they can survive and look so cheerful in such dry earth!


I also liked these tall, dry plants with their impressive spiky heads.


I decided that the seemingly deserted wilderness we found ourselves in would not miss a couple of these dried stalks, so I selected a few to take home, to pop into a vase in our lounge. I thought that would add a lovely element of the outdoors to the interior of our home- bringing an element of the local countryside inside!

Back at the house, I arranged my prized plants in a couple of vases: although I say so myself, they looked rather nice in our home. Andrew agreed and I was quite pleased with the outcome.
However, later that evening, a mysterious munching sound started in our lounge. At first, we ignored it, but as it continued, it became obvious that unknown Living Creatures were busy devouring something very close to the sofa. On further investigation, we realised that the munching sound was coming from the vases of dried flowers...!! We were not quite sure what exactly might be alive in the vases, and what might be eating my impressive plants -and I didn't really want to find out! So reluctantly, I had to take all the dried flowers outside and dispose of them, rather than end up with a home infested with mysterious, hungry, possibly scary creatures from the African bush!!