Montebello: forest phantasms

Where do you go for a lazy, lingering breakfast on a sunny weekend morning in Cape Town, maybe as a prelude to a walk on the  mountain or a day on the beach?

A favourite place of ours is the Gardener's Cottage, above and below, in the old farm buildings and forested land of Montebello, in Newlands. Sitting under the trees in the shade of the mountain, it feels like being deep in countryside rather than in the middle of a city suburb. 

The food is simple, unpretentious and best quality, and after you've indulged, there's a whole range of interesting distractions to explore, because in and around the old farm buildings are small workshops and cottage industries promoting local art and design, a working iron forge and a plant nursery ...

And seemingly growing out of the forest behind the forge, 

you walk into an extraordinary world of a woodcarver's imagination ...

His creations seem to grow organically out of the tree stumps he carves from ...

A tree becomes a hand becomes a plant holder ...

And here is the man with the vision behind all these creations - wood carver Right Mukare from Zimbabwe ...