Juliet's Kenya Days blog

Letter from Juliet to Grandma & Grandad 16 Oct 1975 –

I may have mentioned before that Helen & I started a garden plot a few months ago. Now a lot of flowers are in bloom. There are lovely white lilies and some big daisies. Our neighbour Caroline found some coral and some shells in her garden and she gave them to us so we decorated our gardens with them.

Letter from Judy to Lisbeth & Peter 10 Dec 1975 –

We are planning to spend the next week at home – we are still getting rain every few days so don’t like leaving the garden too long – it’s amazing how quickly everything grows in this climate – it’s a bit like having a damp May and June for 9 months of the year. We have been experimenting with sticking various things in the earth and seeing what grows – our two most notable failures have been bamboo and lavender. Unfortunately we can’t remember if one could successfully take cuttings from lavender at home. The garden is full of dahlias again – they flower and die down twice each year !

Letter from Helen to Grandma & Grandad Feb 1976 –

We have a very big tree which you might have a glimpse of in some of our photos. On this tree at the end of January great big caterpillars come and crawl all over the tree and Dad said they would turn into lovely butterflies or moths and what he said was quite true because now we are having quite a few visiting our verandah and they are really beautiful.

Letter from Graham to Grandma & Grandad 3 Apr 1976 –

This weekend we are having a quiet time and the children have been playing in the gardens most of the day. In our front garden there is a big tree and today more than a dozen enormous caterpillars crawled down from it. They were black with white spikes sticking out and they appear every year from this tree. After walking (creeping, rather) for some yards they burrow down into the ground for the chrysalis stage. Later they turn into beautiful emperor moths, 5 or 6 inches across but as caterpillars they are not at all attractive. Last year we had dozens come down the tree so there may be more coming tomorrow. Fiona stands watching them in an apparent state of fear. She must enjoy being afraid because she could go indoors or watch from the verandah.

Letter from Juliet to Grandma & Grandad 18 May 1976 –

We have had a lot of rain recently which has been a great help to the garden and to the weeds unfortunately ! The beans are growing nicely and the dahlias have got lovely flowers. Helen and I have a little patch each in the garden where we grow flowers. In Helen’s garden she has got a cactus, geraniums, irises, big daisies and all sorts of other things. One of my iris plants has got a lovely white flower. I have got a small fuchsia and some lilies in my garden. Our gardens are bordered by stones and each day, or nearly every day, we weed and hoe our garden with a ‘jembe’ (hoe) or a ‘panga’ which is a kind of cutting thing.

Letter from Judy to Grandma & Grandad 5 July 1976 –

The Kikuyu grass you mention is a native grass of this area. It has a special ability to spread out very rapidly over bare ground so is now widely used in drier places of the world to hold the soil down and start a vegetation cover. We have lots of it in the garden and it sends out long suckers up to 6 or 10 ft long in a single season just on or under the surface from which grass sprouts every few inches. As you can imagine it is a nuisance in the flower beds but very useful for making paths – we have several new grass paths completely grown in one season. At the moment we have a horse quietly grazing on the front lawn – much more aesthetic than a lawn mower!

Letter from Helen to Grandma & Grandad 15 July 1976 –

The loquats are getting riper and Ruth and Carole (our friends) are nearly always up the trees getting them.

Juliet, Helen and Fiona enjoyed climbing trees – still photos from our Ciné film.

Letter from Judy to Grandma & Grandad 27 July 1976 –

Graham has half a dozen boys working in the garden this weekend earning their fares home so our garden is looking remarkably tidy !

Letter from Juliet to Grandma & Grandad 27 Sept 1976 –

On Saturday we played in the garden making houses. Helen cleared out the Servants Quarters (which we call Skew House) and put rugs in there. I made a wigwam using some 20ft bamboo poles placed around our flame tree and then covered in blankets, rugs and sheets. Fiona had a cafe in which she sold sliced bananas.

Letter from Judy to Grandma & Grandad 11 Oct 1976 –

To our surprise all our cactuses and lilies which usually flower only once a year are coming into bloom again so the garden is full of colour. We always enjoy it when the cactuses flower as the blooms attract beautiful sun birds – little brightly plumaged birds with long curved beaks. How they know that the plants are in flower I do not know because we never see the birds at any other time of year.

Letter from Judy to Jane & Malcolm 15 Dec 1976 –

The coolness of Kikuyu was a nasty shock after the high temperatures of the coast as they’ve been having some unseasonal gales and rainstorms up here. Everything looks very pretty though – all the flowers suddenly spring into bloom and a startling greenness pervading everything – the garden which we’ve virtually neglected for months because of the the drought has sprouted out in all directions !

Letter from Judy to Nanny & Grandad 2 Feb 1977 –

Our weather continues to be unseasonal with showers of rain in the early morning and thunderstorms in the late afternoon, though with plenty of sun in between. This is normally the dry season with everything hibernating but the garden is a mass of blooms and everything beautifully green. The local Kikuyus are all very happy with the prospect of an unexpected harvest – there will be full tummies for the next few months anyway. We have a whole lot of bushes with white and pink flowers that have been literally covered with blossom ever since we arrived. I don’t know how they do it !