These trees are on the slopes of Signal Hill. What may not be immediately obvious is that the area directly behind these trees has been stripped clean of most vegetation, creating a firebreak to slow the progress of the fires that break out on the hills and mountains in this area each year.

What you may find strange is that, to survive, the fynbos flora that covers our mountains and hills actually needs to burn, preferably in late summer, every 10 to 15 years. Strange hey? Read a little more about this on the Encounter South Africa site.

Governments around the world regularly meet to discuss desertification and formulate policy and law to protect the natural environment. South Africa isn't any different, our government have put in place various pans and policies to protect our fragile environment. Some would argue that they're not doing enough, and other would argue that they're doing the best that they can with the available funding.

Take a look at this pamphlet that deals with the conservation of plant life, produced for last year's Arbour Day by our local government.

This photo was taken in our leafy suburb of Tokai on the slopes of Table Mountain.

Although Cape Town has plenty of pine trees like these, over the years of my existence in the distant suburbs of the city, I remember many beautifully huge trees like these being cut down - for various "legitimate" reasons of course. The reasons range from the need for new roads, new homes, safety, and simply whether or not a particular land owner likes the tree in the place it is.

I'm being a little melodramatic - there are plenty of good reasons to remove certain trees, but sometimes people do seem to remove them for no apparent good reason. A case in point are our new neighbours who, a few weeks ago, removed almost all the trees on their property - and yesterday removed another huge tree.

Granted, the trees that they had weren't the most magnificent, but they were large, green, and provided good shade. Their garden looks so barren now. :(

I took this photo in the very leafy suburb of Tokai - one of the beautiful areas of Cape Town's Southern suburbs.

Strangely, pine cones like these remind me of school days and holidays. The school that I attended for grade 1 through 7 had several pine trees on the property, and I remember playing marbles amongst the trees during break (which you might know as "recess" if you're not a local), as well as picking out and eating the pine cone seeds. Not because I was hungry, but because they were so yummy! :)

The cones remind me of holidays because of the times that we spent at caravan parks during school holidays. Often parks would have plenty of pine trees to cast shade over campers' tents. The downside of this was that they were notorious for dropping sticky gooey pine gum onto tents, caravans and cars. :(