IT was the equinox last week (March 22) so it’s officially autumn.  In most areas of the country this is the very best time to be travelling.  The grapes have been harvested in the Western Cape, the summer fug is past in KwaZulu Natal, the Highveld heat has settled down, the country colours are ripe gold and deep green and clear luminous blue. 

And anyone abroad on the country’s roads will be confronted by an annual spectacle that never ceases to amaze and delight – the flowering of the cosmos. Every autumn, almost in celebration of the Easter weekend, the roadsides on the Highveld are set alight with the marshmallow hues of the cosmos flower.  The pink and white flowers dance in the breeze on supple stems, and herald that last show of glorious colour before winter turns the veld into tawny gold. It’s no coincidence that the roads lined with cosmos flowers lead to many memorials of the Anglo-Boer War.  Historians believe that the seeds of the flowers, originally from Mexico, were brought in with bags of horse-feed for the English troops.  The English supply lines led from the port of Durban to the interior, and it is along these roads that the cosmos flourishes most royally.   Every time the supply convoys stopped to feed the horses, some seeds dropped on the ground and found the South African highveld climate to their liking.  Gradually the flower has spread – carried nowadays by car tyres – to most inland roadsides. There is a story that during the visit of the British Royal Family in 1947, the Queen (later the Queen Mother) remarked:  “Isn’t it lovely that the authorities planted all these beautiful flowers at the roadside.”  Perhaps she thought it was in honour of their visit, perhaps she just thought that South African officials had an exceptionally flowery nature.  She wasn’t to know that the delicate flowers were actually self-seeded weeds! The cosmos is at its headiest along the roads that triangulate the Highveld’s coal mining industry. The three major roads, the N12, the N17 and the R23 are important links between Gauteng and Mpumalanga, leading respectively to the Kruger National Park and KwaZulu Natal.    We are blessed that our cosmos (bipinnatus, also called, rather unromantically, the Mexican aster) has adopted us as a home.  It is a remarkable flower, noted for its quick germination and flowering time, a characteristic almost tailor-made for the Highveld’s now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t summer rainfall.  Homeopathic healers use the essence as a natural relaxant: it calms anxiety and nerves, slows down erratic speech patterns and give mental clarity to chaotic minds – just what the harried traveller needs.  Perhaps this is the reason why Japan adopted the cosmos as its emblem for the Small Kindness Campaign in 1988.  This programme mobilises three million people across Japan every year to get together to plant these flowers in the name of kindness.  It aims to ‘make the environment and people’s hearts beautiful’.  The World Kindness Movement has now adopted the cosmos as its emblem.  In South Africa, the planting has already been done for us, all we need to do now is work on the ‘beautiful heart’ part of it. Not surprisingly, the fields of cosmos are a draw card for painters and photographers.  Whereever you travel you will see a car parked by the side of the road, and some snap-happy motorist crouched on the verge taking pictures of these masses of flowers.  A photographic tip:  don’t try to get the whole field in your shot – when your picture comes out all you will see is a smear of pink and white across the frame.  Rather get right in amongst the flowers – they are almost head high anyway.  Get a close-up with the profusion of blooms in the background.  If you can include a dramatic purple thundercloud with a foreground of clear golden sunlight, all the better. Artists love to paint cosmos.  The flower is equally picturesque in the field or lazing around in a vase.  It is the ideal flower for the beginner, with its simple shape and colouring.  It is also a challenge for the serious artist, as each flower has a different angle and shape and variation in colour.  These are graceful subjects, whether they are nodding in the breeze or clustered in a jar. Often people gather huge armfuls of the flowers to take home.  Cosmos don’t last very well once cut, but their life can be extended by burning the end of the stem with a candle-flame before putting them into water. The towns in Cosmos Country, where the flowers are most prolific, have built an entire tourism industry around the cosmos season.  Canoe races, marathons, industrial shows, expos and art competitions lure people to the  mining towns of the cosmos triangle.  Bethal is the home of the annual Potato Festival, Secunda hosts the Sejacufe Jazz and Cultural Festival and the Lake Umuzi Cosmos Carnival takes place on, well, on Lake Umuzi, of course.