We are often asked if we get repeat guests and the answer is a resounding, yes … loads. And also, how do your guests hear of you? Well, if you’ve been going for over 30 years you build up quite a solid client base. And there is no more effective marketing than “Word of Mouth”. Plus, as the next generation grows into adulthood, they become our “new” clientele. We have laughed and cried and celebrated with so many of our wonderful guests who, on arrival, say wistfully and with relief “We are home”. We could get no greater compliment. And just as we have left our mark on our guests, so have they left their mark on us. Here are but a few tangible memories …
Kathy and Mark arrive bearing gifts! They have the best kind of relatives – a winemaker and a very good one at that! Bruce Jack’s excellent website gives loads of info not only about the wines but, as importantly, a sense of the ethos of the winemaking, selling and staffing. Some back story from our guest: “He [Bruce Jack] got a Masters Degree in Poetry from St Andrew’s University and after that scared his Dad, he announced that he wanted to make wine so headed off to Oz to study Oenology. And from the start, the brand he created, Flagstone Wines, was winning awards. He sold that down the line and now his main brand is Bruce Jack Wines.” Not only is it a really good wine but it is GREAT value too. Thank you Kathy and Mark for your gifts and intro to this wine. And for coming back to stay with us!First time guests arrived from Ficksburg in a very large SUV with an even larger trailer. Fortunately we have a second large parking which can accommodate trailers, so all was good. But what was in the trailer was important. Rows of dwarf apple and cherry trees. It turns out that Suzie had come to a monthly market to sell her brother’s trees grown in Ficksburg at Swartlaagte Farms. They are “premiumapple and cherry trees grafted onto dwarf and semi-dwarf rootstocks. Perfect for home gardens and backyard orchards”. Well, we don’t have an orchard, but we have space for pots for sure. So now we are the proud owners of an Early Red Apple tree and a Granny Smith Apple Tree. You have to have 2 to pollinate. We should have apples within a year apparently. Cherry trees do not need another to pollinate but they take 4 years to produce fruit. Patience is not my strongest suit!Our Early Red outside the breakfast patio. Maybe by next March we will be serving fresh apples off our trees?A long-stay guest recovering from surgery recently stayed in our Earth room. Our famous flower baskets in room courtyards can be difficult to keep watered and tended without disturbing guests during the day. Joan, who was perfectly mobile, loved her challenge of watering, tending, pruning and talking to her plants. She cost me a lot of money by suggesting a succulent basket … but we love it and I always think of it as ‘Joan’s basket’. I can see it needs a bit more tending!And there I was quietly reading my book in my bedsitter when I see a man creeping around the garden with a very large telephoto lens. It was fortunate he is a much-liked repeat guest who I also know as the most amazing amateur wild-life and bird photographer. Here are but some of the photos he took while waiting patiently and quietly on the lawn.While the grey hornbill, the green wood-hoopoes, the go-away birds and the crested barbets did not honour him with their presence, the 2 little love birds did.We all know the red-ringed parakeets are actually a menace – invasive, noisy and taking over nesting sites and feeding resources. But they are very pretty and it’s difficult to stop them visiting. Here they are having a mad time in the neighbour’s banana tree.A scrawny teenage black-collared barbet was hatched in one of our barbet logs.
And these are but a few examples of the physical traces guests have left us with.
