Penguins on the beach? Baboons in the garden? Today we have a very unique young naturalist interview with a group of 8 siblings (ages 13, 11, 10, 7, 6, 4, 3, and 18 mos old) in South Africa. The se7en+1 gang has all sorts of grand adventures to share with us, but it is their positive and all inclusive approach to learning and living that is most inspiring to me. I have been a long time follower of their family blog which is chock full of creative ideas, so today's interview is extra special for me as I got to learn a bit more about this very cool family. And now I am even more anxious to visit South Africa. Please join me in welcoming Se7en+1 to The Magnifying Glass.
Please tell us a little bit about your family and where you live?
We are the kids from the blog se7en + 1 and we live in Cape town South Africa. Our city lies between the famous Table Mountain and and the Atlantic Ocean. We live a little out of the city closer to Cape Point... we are a two minute walk from a fabulous beach and we have the slopes of a mountain behind our house. Because we live in the Southern Hemisphere we are headed for winter right now. We have a very mild climate. It hardly ever gets cold enough to snow and if it does it is only on the tippy tops of distant mountains. It can be really hot in summer and we have rainy winters.
What are your favorite outdoor activities?
We spend lots of time outdoors, mostly in the garden where we build lots of forts and make stuff with our bark and driftwood collections. Otherwise we love hiking and exploring outdoors and quick runs on the beach at the end of the day. One of our best outings is to the nearby shark center where there are fantastic rock pools teaming with the most amazing animals. We once picked up five different types of starfish in a morning!!!
Do you have any special nature collections?
Just lately we have been collecting lots of feathers, every couple of weeks we visit a local goats cheese farm where we have collected owl, peacock and guinea-fowl feathers. We have a corner of the garden for our nature collections - stones, sea shells, precious stones and we have a fossil collection.
What are your favorite South African creatures?
Even though we live in Africa we don't actually have elephants and lions wandering about, all our Big Wild animals are in game parks. At a beach just down the road we have Jack Ass Penguins and they are really cute. We would all like to see elephants and visit a Game Park someday.
Do you have any pets?
No, we don't have any official pets, but we have lots and lots of animals lurking around. We have a porcupine off the mountain that grubs through our garden and destroys it in minutes - we have never seen it but we know when it has been!!! And whenever we plant root vegetables - potatoes or carrots then we get baboons off the mountain and we do see those. In fact they have very nearly been in our house a few... but they are quite big and they don't smell so good either!!! So those are best outdoors!!! We do get a lot of creepy crawlies: huge spiders and dozens of snakes... especially at this time of year when the weather is starting to cool, then the snakes like to come out of their rocky hide-outs and sun themselves. And there are a lot of wetlands near our home which are great for birdwatching. Every second Saturday we visit a different birdwatching site with our bird club.
Do you celebrate Earth Day in South Africa? If so, how?
Earth Day over here is usually celebrated by beach clean-ups and pollutions pick-ups. Lots of folks plant trees and lots of nursery's have specials and fun days. Usually we go hiking. Or we work on a project in our garden. One year we made a great Keyhole garden and for the last year or two it has provided us with lots of vegetables. This year we want to prepare it for some winter planting.
So what is a keyhole garden?
Knew you wanted to know!!! A Keyhole garden is a small round garden with a "chimney" up the center of it. In the chimney we drop our kitchen scraps and then the nutrients leach out into the surrounding garden and feed the plants. We have packed our garden with vegetables and it does really well and is so easy to maintain. You can read about our Keyhole garden if you follow this link.
And the Se7enth + 1 question...If you could magically fix one problem (pollution, animal extinction, global warming, etc) on Earth, what would it be?
If we could fix one problem... We would like to get rid of poverty. We can help to do this by living more responsibly. We live in a part of the world where poverty is very close at hand and it is unavoidable to see many hungry people battling to survive everyday. We would like to help by donating the things we don't need to the local township shelter. And by taking good care of the earths resources and not using up too much of them ourselves, we can make a small difference to the imbalance of wealth in the world.
Wow! A very big thank you to all eight of you for this fun interview. I loved hearing about your exciting South African adventures and your very unique back yard creatures. But I especially loved learning about your keyhole garden and I can't wait to try building one in our yard. Thank you for teaching us about your part of the world and for sharing your important thoughts on how we can all work to end poverty. You are an amazing bunch of young naturalists!
