While exploring the area not far from where the fictional town of Aloe Glen is situated in my novel, The Fire Portrait, I came across an extraordinary garden with a range of local and exotic succulents and cacti. One of these is the pictured here. I felt it captured not just the colour of the flames that consumed part of France's house in the book, but also the harsh climate in which it lived. Those fleshy leaves would have stored water to keep the plant alive in the searing heat of the semi-desert Karoo environment.
But what is this plant? I have not managed to identify it, perhaps one of you might be able to? It is sitting among a bed of ice plants but it distinct from those... The local gardener who had planted it was not available to help me, and I haven't been able to find out whether it is local or imported.
When she arrives in the Karoo, Frances, the artist at the centre of The Fire Portrait, is at first dismayed by the seeming lack of variety and colour in the landscape. What would she find to paint? But then she begins to look more closely and finds bulbs that flower briefly, and cryptic stone plants that lurk at her feet. It turns out that when you are forced to look closely, or wait for flowers that appear only rarely, you appreciate them all the more. Frances discovers aloes that put up an orange spike in the winter, and waits for tiny succulents to erupt with colour after the rains.
It makes me think that we shouldn't forget to appreciate the small bursts of colour in our lives, rather than hankering for the big, showy events...
As Frances says, when unveiling her paintings:
There is beauty in the most remote places, if we're prepared to look hard enough...
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