Many people think of autumn as a process where the tree leaves slowly change colour and then lose all their leaves and everything slowly turns brown. Thanks to the warming we are experiencing and the effects of El Nino, we had an almost completely dry spring and early summer and then constant rain for two months. There was rampant plant growth but now that the rains have reduced, the intense heat has returned and everything is roasting.
This tiny bush growing in an exposed place simply frizzled up
The ferns have also dried out
This is partly because the rampant growth of the last two months created leaves that were not sufficiently tough for the intense heat and dryness although even the Xerophyta retinervis, with their particularly tough leaves have called it quits in the exposed areas
I'm told that The entire Southern Africa has Kalahari Desert sand in the soil mix and this is because the desert grows and shrinks over aeons and we are once more looking at a process of creeping desertification. Although the rest of the world is on average 2 degrees warmer, Southern Africa is four degrees warmer. This doesn't bode well for the plant life around us