Grooving into a beautiful Cape Town Summer

Grooving into a beautiful Cape Town Summer

It's that wonderful time of the year in Cape Town where you get ready for summer in and around your home!

The sun is out, and the days are beautiful with early sunrises and spectacular sunsets over Table Mountain. We've put together a couple of easy ways and ideas to get that summer groove going and prepare for the holidays.

Stargazing from your Pool or Backyard

Did you know there are 5 planets visible without a telescope: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. You can also see a galaxy 2½ million light-years away with your unaided eyes and craters on the Moon with binoculars!

Something amazing to enjoy during the hot summer nights when the neighbourhood has gone to bed, is lying on your Lilo in the swimming pool, and gazing at the stars.

Make a date night and study the sky with the naked eye or just hang out with the kids, snugly cuddling together in an inflatable boat. If you have an inflatable kiddie's pool, take it out to the back yard and fill it with pillows and blankets and start enjoying a lifetime of cosmic exploration!

Be sure to get your pool summer-ready with these 10 Pool Maintenance Tips from South Coast Sun.

Paint a Focus Wall

If you want to dress up your living space, painting an accent wall is an easy and gorgeous solution. Focal walls can spice things up and create a fresh new look with minimal cost and effort.

Combine the new Dulux Colour of the Year for 2021, Brave Ground^TM, with a mix of soft, natural shades to give a relaxed and inviting feel to a home. It's also a versatile shade that lets other colours shine if used with the rest of the colour palette.

Check out the new Dulux 2021 Colour Palettes.

Cool trick to clean your ceiling fan without getting dust all over the place

Take a pillowcase and slide it around the blade. Then, pull it towards you in such a way that you wipe all the dust into the pillowcase. Repeat with each blade. Once you have most of the dust off, use a damp rag or microfibre cloth to wipe each blade and remove any residual dust. In only a couple of minutes, your fan is clean without the dust getting all over your bed or furniture!

To clean the dusty pillowcase, just empty it out into the bin afterwards, turn the pillowcase inside out, shake out most of the dust and throw it in the wash. Ta-daa!

Bake or make something for your neighbours

Having good neighbours is a blessing and building great relationships often requires getting out of your comfort zone and having some fun. We all know that the act of giving helps others, but studies show that giving is also good for the giver. It boosts physical and mental health, including lower blood pressure, increased self-esteem, lower stress levels, longer life and greater happiness.

With Christmas around the corner, why not bake or make something for your neighbours? You can simply make a small posy with flowers from your own garden and bind them with a pretty ribbon. A handwritten card, homemade jam, vegetables from your garden or a handmade tablecloth or table runner will make any neighbour feel special and appreciated.

For easy baking check out this link: 14 Incredible dessert recipes with only 3 ingredients! 

Plant some Lavender - The story of my Princess Hedge

About a year ago, we decided to plant some lavender in our back garden. I looked around our neighbourhood in Protea Heights, Brackenfell, and saw stunning lavenders in many of the gardens growing beautifully. Most of them were showing off their flowers throughout the year and the friendly Garden Centre-person assured me that the super sandy soil in our area is perfect for lavender. So, we planted our 18-meter hedge with love and care and enjoyed about 2 months of small bushes with struggling flowers.

Then the pretty, purple-pink Princess Lavenders stopped flowering. I gave more water and regular compost. I talked to the Lavender. I sang for the Lavender. I begged it to flower. Then I started to threaten the Pink Princess. I gave even more water and even more compost. But to no avail. At last, about two months ago, I decided to do some research and found this article online:

9 Reasons why your Lavender isn't flowering, from Gardener Report. 

And it seems that lavenders love lots of sun and poor, well-drained soil. They get super stressed when they get too much water and adding fertilizer to lavenders can actually deter flowering!

So I learned from my lavenders that sometimes when things don't go the way you anticipated and dreamed, you have to get educated, do what you can, stop prodding and forcing the problem and simply wait and trust. And now, for the first time since we planted our hedge, we can sit under our big tree and marvel at the mass of the spectacular purple flower-hedge with lots of butterflies and bees buzzing blissfully.

About the Author: Erna Sciocatti is the principle and owner of RED Properties:

'The RED Properties team specialises in selling homes in the Northern Suburbs of Cape Town at the best price, in the shortest time and doing it in such a way that Seller's are glad they chose us to do business with.'