Number 28: Raymond and David’s father Solly was a man of the earth!   He absolutely loved gardening.  When our parent’s bought their first house in Port Elizabeth at 34 Brewer Road Summerstrand, Solly insisted on bringing in about a metre of soil. Everyone commented that this was ridiculous – but soon 34 Brewer Road had the tallest (and most beautiful) trees in the neighbourhood, because they had the opportunity to take root like none of the others. He also brought in rugged mountain rocks and built the most beautiful rock gardens. His garden was respite from work and the incessant politics and social activism that he involved himself in.

Many years later, after having suffered numerous medical conditions including life threatening septicaemia, heart bypass operations, and having had his left leg amputated in 1999, our parents Marcelle and Solly Schkolne moved to the Fairhaven Retirement Village in Port Elizabeth. Over there our father, still very involved in the political issues of the day, would also spend many hours designing, buying plants for and working in his garden – albeit at a slower pace than in the past! In this photograph of 29th November 2004 Solly Schkolne with his prosthetic leg proudly oversees the garden he created at their home in Fairhaven.

It is fitting that after Solly’s passing on 21/08/2011 his tombstone is a rugged mountain rock, smoothed in the front to enable the appropriate engraving of the words that memorialise his life.