The Cosmos of Koster

Now--late autumn--is a beautiful time of the year here on the highveld. Not that we really have four seasons; there’s no real sense of the trees for example, taking on different hues—no real ‘fall’. Things just get drier, colder and dustier.
The unmistakeable signal for the impending winter is the cosmos. Strictly speaking, cosmos is a weed. The legend is that the first seeds were brought here in the horse feed of the British during the Second Boer War—1899-1902.
It infests all the bare ground alongside the roads, the patches in the now-dead corn fields, any spot of earth where it can get a foothold. As a single plant, it’s unremarkable; a little like a tall, spindly fern, but topped with a bloom about half the size of your palm. In a mass, as you drive across the countryside, it is astonishing—in places a mist of colour, most commonly a mauve, with plenty of white mixed in and just occasionally a deep, luxurious red-purple.
A few years ago, I would have to drive 8-10 hours every other weekend and it was always a joy to watch these fields of innocent colour. Perhaps I’m a van Gogh at heart; these are my sunflowers of Arles.
I’m pretty much confined to Jo’burg these days, or trips to the north—tomorrow to Athens, then Albania. So it’s goodbye to all that.

Goodbye to summer.