Comprising a Life

The Bonsai, Travels and Haiku of Vaughn Banting

Mixed scenes from South Africa

While touring and teaching bonsai in South Africa, I took a lot of photographs, most of which you will find under specific categories in the Index. The following photographs are more of a general nature.

Acacia tree from one perspective

.. and the same tree from another

Tree looking like it was pruned that way

... maybe by a giraffe

Dwarf accasia

Euphorbia cooperi

Two species of Euphorbia at the base of a kopjie

Euphorbia excelsa

Closer view of Euphorbia excelsa

Euphorbia ingens

Euphorbia ingens

Euphorbia turucalli, Milk Bush

Everyone was armed but it was because of the insurgents coming across the border not against wild animals

Ancient strata slowly reveals itself on the wind-blow veld

Aloe saponaria peeking from the rocks

Aloe acutissima

More Aloe saponaria

I brought some small pieces of this rock home with me to find out more about it.

A fern surviving among the burned off grass stubble

In this parched land vast areas of it are actually planted with bananas which is where they are native to.

This was an irrigated citrus orchard and horse stables

We climbed up and among these rocky hills

Native only to the new world, prickly pear cactus has none the less colonized Africa and Australia.

Like an octopus, a ficus species harvests the nutrients from the created soil caused by erosion.

The old highway through this pass

... and the new one

Eroded dyke, remnant of the distant past

Termite mounds punctuate the landscape

Border with Zimbabwe

Aloe at the cape

Waterfall

Our traveling party

Home from our travels

Urban vegetation

Average suburban home

A suburbia street

Home garden, Cape area

Calla Lilies wild in the ditches

Picture taken from inside Johannesburg zoo