Crime and punishment

The new fully secured rosarium

After four intense weeks of security upgrades to the properties in Cape Town and Bonnievale, life is slowly returning to normal. Or I suppose a new normal. I could not find a creative way to write about security beams, zones and perimeters. October ended up being very thin on the blog side.

All the detail of the security breaches I am not going into at the moment. But the sheer maliciousness of the crimes is what made us decide to extensively upgrade our security. Part of what happened at Towerwater was that the people that broke into the garden office after picking most of the oranges and lemons, proceeded to take bites out of the fruit before throwing them down on the ground. Not taking any of it, but leaving it wasted and unusable.

We understand when people take fruit to eat because they are hungry or want to sell it. But to destroy it so that nobody can benefit from it, is just wrong. As with anything else on the homestead, even the security needs to conform to the aesthetics of a 19^th century farm house. So we went for invisible beams all around the borders of the property. We hope that by December, everyone that freely ignored our other security measures before, will learn that climbing into the property will not go unnoticed anymore. We have had a couple of breaches since the upgrades, but they have climbed out faster than they climbed in.

The damage to the Cape Town property was more of a structural nature. Sad, after all the effort we put into the historically sensitive renovations. The damage to the Victorian detail of a door and window was heart-breaking. We were soon uplifted when we discovered that the joinery business that made the original replacement wood detail more than 30 years ago still existed. Not only that, they were as amazed to find clients dating back more than 30 years. Very kindly, they made up replacement components for the broken detailing, for free.

To maintain the integrity of a historical property in today’s day and age is not easy. Although the new beams take getting used to, it helps to know that they are not only protecting us but the buildings as well.

We are getting used to the new beams. Relaxed in the knowledge that our guardian angels are constantly looking out for us. In a time when being a victim of crime is not uncommon, it is sad that one gets punished for it in more ways than one. The financial loss seems to be the least of it when one factors in the trauma, resulting loss of creativity and a suspended life, while trying to get everything back to normal.

My row of bush beans after  snails got to them

While I was thus distracted, snails have taken the gap, destroying most of my seedlings for the new season. That is a crime I cannot let go unpunished. I have to deal with the snail crime wave in my herb and vegetable beds before I can sow again. Maybe eating them will be an appropriate punishment for their eating the seedlings. But, the process of preparing them seems more like a reversal of punishment.