End of an Era

As I have said before,  my own children loved swimming and swam A LOT when they were little.  We did not have a swimming pool, and most of the swimming happened in the farm’s “swimming pool”, i.e. a pool without a pump or filter.  Sadly I have very few photos of the many happy hours of swimming that happened there:

Thelwyn, about 18 months, in the background with wings.  Jansie in the foreground.  When Jansie was a toddler, she was a bit afraid of the water, but Lalie and I got her to “swim” between the two of us, making the distance longer very gradually.  We did the same with many other little ones.  Those were the days.

Thelwyn floating on her back – 19 months old.  In those days it was the “in” thing to drown proof your child. 

Anyway, all that swimming and drown-proofing happened a very long time ago…  In the meantime the pool got into serious disrepair: the walls and the floor of the pool kept on cracking and because the floor had a dip in the middle , it was a MAJOR job to clean the pool! (Water cannot drain upwards – it has to swept out, leaves, mud and all!)  After Ma had bought the property next door with its proper and practical pool (it hasn’t got a deep end), the children always went there to swim.  (The property now belongs to the F’s, so the children can still go there to swim.)

A swimming pool in disuse is an eyesore:

View from my kitchen.

Closer view of same swimming pool.

So we decided to close it up and turn it into a road:

The logs were removed and the last thin branches were burnt.  (No-one is allowed to burn anything in the dry season and I was worried that the smoke would get anxious neighbours complaining!)

Early in the morning before the front end loader was due, Jan and Hendrik removed some railway sleepers nearby.

Then the big push began!

 

  

After little more than an hour, there was nothing left to be seen of the pool. 

But… I got rocks for my rockless garden!  They surfaced as the walls crashed and the strong machine could easily dump them for me close to our stoep: a farm “climbing frame” for the little ones.  I love rocks – it would have been a shame to bury them, wouldn’t it?

 

Two  trees by the pool were pushed over too – very sad, but there was no other way!

 

Die plek lyk soos ‘n slagveld!  Not only were the two trees close to the swimming pool, pushed over, but the big machine also pushed over some other dead ones, saving us a lot of manual labour!  But right now all these dead and uprooted trees look awful!

In the afternoon the big machine returned to level seven loads of soil.  (Mmmm, this is starting to cost a lot…)

 

Eric lent a hand in filling the big hole by the outlet of the pool:

 

The vista has been opened up!  Come rain!  (How Ma would have loved seeing her garden so beautifully opened up!)

Now all that’s needed are some new trees… to hide the Escom tower that was not so  “in your face” before! (One of the uprooted bushes hid it before!)

Thank you God for this beautiful place that we may call home!

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