My Zinnia - Here today, gone tomorrow, ZZZ.....

1. Red Zinnia

It was a love at first sight when I saw these zinnias and so I purchased 3 polybags of them in different colors.

I have bright red zinnia.

Gardening A Game !

I would like to thank Malar of My Little Garden blog for inviting me to take part in "Gardening A Game" where I have to list down "10 Things That I Love To Do".  Her post is here.

Malar, the lovely Blotanist who tagged me.

I have included 10 pictures of flowers from my garden to accompany the 10 things that I am going to list down:

1. I love GINGER. I love my pink Etlingera elatior, or torch ginger. It add a special exotic flavour to my favourite spicy hot and sour dishes. The fun part is getting my kitchen knife to cut off the flower buds and eating them raw, usually as garnishing on those dishes. I am now experimenting with growing the lengkuas, turmeric and ordinary ginger in my garden from store bought rhizomes.

2. I love FRAGRANT plants. This angelwing jasmine has been propagated from a cutting from my brother's neighbour in Ipoh, the same person who gave me the rhizome of the bunga kantan (torch ginger). The fragrant plants I have are Jasmine sambac, Murraya paniculata, Kesidang (Vallaris glabra) and also a white champacca that has not ever flower yet. I also have pandan, mint and lemon grass if you can call them fragrant plants.

Oxalis corniculata - Creeping Oxalis 

3. I enjoy WEEDING whenever I can. Pulling out the weeds and dumping them into my compost pile is a very satisfying experience. I feel like an accomplishment to rid my garden of unwanted plants and recycling them. However, if the weeds are as beautiful as this tiny yellow wild flower with heart shaped leaves and the jade green moss, then I give them a chance. The above is the habitat of my pomelo plant which is grown in a big flower pot.

Weeding or wild flower? The answer lies with the gardener!

“Gardening A Game”, a copyrighted post, was written for My Nice Garden blog by Autumn Belle @ http://www.mynicegarden.com/ on October 5th, 2010.

4. I love to KEEP STUFF and I like to write. I kept a diary when I was a kid. I started a blog to keep an electronic diary or journal but ended up writing a garden blog instead. I like to keep records, directories and spreadsheets and I use an excel file to do the computing and sorting.

 I still keep the letters, cards and stuff my friends and family sent to me.

5. I love FLOWERING plants. Flowers brighten up my day, no matter what their colour. I like it when my foliage plants start to bloom too!

I believe that blooming flowers always bring happiness and good fortune.

6. I love being a DIY gardener because I enjoy doing it MY WAY!

I have since learnt to be a frugal gardener and I also like to experiment with all kinds of plants. So my garden is always changing. I have a backyard for herbs and vegetables, a side yard for shade plants, the front yard for the showy ones and a 'laboratory' under my bamboo tree to act as a quarantine, ICU as well as 'birthing centre'.

7. I love to know the NAME of each and every plant that I come accross. I find that if I know the plant name, then I can find out its origin, likes and dislikes. By doing so, I can become a better gardener.

I also wonder if getting to know a person more thoroughly makes us a better spouse/friend?

8. I love raising BABIES. I am busy raising plants, the sex of which may be male, female or both! I plant from seeds or seedlings purchased at nurseries and also from cuttings given by other gardeners and friends.

Some babies are a nuisance but nature will take care of them if your garden has become a natural habitat and the ecosystem has balanced itself. Can you spot the 2nd grasshopper nymph in the picture above?

9. My HOBBIES. I love to eat, cook and take photos but not necessary in that order. I also like to listen to songs and watch movies, including costume dramas and westerns. Anyway, most of the singers I like are dead and gone (to Heaven), e.g. Karen Carpenter, Andy Gibb. I still watch Tom and Jerry and Disneyland.

If I have more money, my hobby will change to travelling around the world and visiting every botanic garden there is.

I never leave home without my camera and I have never lived a day without my dose of caffeine. I like black expresso coffee on the double, and also coffee in cakes, ice-cream and dishes, e.g. coffee pork ribs.



“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.

The important thing is not to stop questioning.”

..... Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

10. I love to READ.

I get lots of inspiration from reading books such as the classics, fairy tales, self improvement, fiction, romance, sometimes even children books. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the Harry Porter series and I read the children book, The Secret Garden as an adult. Now, most of the books I read are gardening books and cook books. I can spend the whole day in a bookstore or library, reading or browsing.

I also love to read your blogs, as many as my time allow me to.


I have selected 10 bloggers who are also newbie Blotanists to play this game. Let's get to know more about and welcome them to our beautiful Blotanical family of garden bloggers. They are:

1. Makarimi of Orchid de Dangau - Malaysia. Update: The post is here.
2. Terry and Janice of The Upside Down Garden - New Zealand
3. College Gardener of Journey & Jonquils - New England, USA
4. Bom of Plant Chaser - Philippines. Update: The post is here.
5. Michelle, Chris and Gabe Clay - The Clueless Gardeners - Massachusetts, USA
6. Rosie of My Garden Haven 1’s Blog - Malaysia
7. Carol of My Passion Venture - Malaysia
8. Radha of Naturally Beautiful - India
9. Trevor Hunt of A Gardening Life in Brittany- France
10. Takaeko of Small Vege Garden in a Suburb - Japan


The rules of this game:
1) Inform who invited you and link back
2) What are the 10 things you like to do
3) Invite another 10 other bloggers

Now, I wonder if anyone will do this post on Sunday, October 10th, 2010 or 10-10-10!

May 2010 GBBD - And The Rain My Drink

Do they look like Lady's Slippers or Wishbones?

Recently all my Torenias disappeared from my garden, having died back. I think it will reappear again somewhere and sometime later. But I miss them a lot, so I went to the nursery and bought some of these pink ones.

The name Torenia fournieri was given by Linnaeus, the father of modern taxonomy after a contemporary Swedish clergyman, Olaf Toren and also in honour of the French botanist Pierre Fournier.

The heart-shaped petals look like love,love,love.....

This is my Blue Daze (Evolvulus glomeratus) which I purchased from a nursery managed by a very old man who could hardly walk. He show me where his 'special offer' plants were by pointing fingers while sitting down on a shady bench. They were some helpers around but surprisingly these workers only tended to the plants. They were quite oblivious to his orders and they also ignored customers' queries. So I pitied him and took what I wanted to his bench to ask and bargain prices with him. I felt really dizzy because he smelt strongly of counterpain ointment! Howerver, it was a good buy. The prices were cheap and plants healthy.

This is my Hippy Lily (Hippeastrum reticulatum) which is commonly grown in tropical lowlands. They are quite easy to grow and they flower the whole year through.

The petals are heart-shaped in many photos. Can you see the yellow 'peace' signs around the centre?

This zinnia is grown from seed sold in packets at the garden centres. This time, all the seeds in the packet germinated but I am left with only a single mature plant - The Lone Ranger. I hope it will self seed. A packet of seeds cost about RM 3-5. A seedling sold in poly plastic bags costs almost the same price. I have a better chance with seedlings than seeds. The performance of seeds are unpredicatble and fluctuate between 0 - 100 %.

Now, with such a wide range of fluctuations, how to trust the seeds from packets?

Bye, bye love.....

A few weeks ago, I was so hard up for new plants, I went to the nursery nearest to my home and ended up with a few purchases. The sad part was that 2 plants was sick and died but before dying they infected my peace lilies. All of them suddenly died when their head was 'decapitated' and rotted off by some white powdery stuff that looked like fungus. It had just started to bloom when they said Adieu, so I said "Sayonara, rest in peace!" and I was left to pick up the pieces.

When I purchased this cat whiskers from the nursery a few years ago, the flowers were pale purple. Now all the flowers are white. I wonder what magic did I do?

This citrus plant was purchased during this Chinese New Year. The overflowing golden fruits have dropped off. It is blooming for the second time now. Usually, I'll wait 2-3 rounds before I harvest the fruits for eating or cooking. I'm worried the growers had applied a lot of chemicals to the plant during the forced blooming season.

The one that wouldn't die.

When I purchase my new citrus plant, I wanted to dispose off this old plant that I had been growing for 3 years as it seemed old and dying. I also needed the flower pot. But it was stucked inside the pot. I pulled and I pulled but it wouldn't come out. Finally I succceeded. I chopped off its head. I even stepped and jumped on it a few times to to loosen the soil and roots. The root ball was very hard, so I left it at the 'sick bay' (a shady area at my side yard, under the bamboo tree) with no food and water for a few weeks to meet it's own death.

Euthanasia -Resuscitation - Resurrection?

Strangely it didn't die because one day I noticed healthy green shoots coming out and growing sideways. This plant is a fighter. So I took it back again to its rightful place in the garden.

Blastoise is getting into mischief again and I caught him in action, haha!

The rest of my blooming flowers. I'm sure you know all their names. Do you know which is which?

• A fruit - Pomegranate flowers
• Edible flower grown for its natural blue food colouring - Blue Butterfly Pea
• Our local common name is Paper Flowers - Bougainvellea
• Bachelor's button - Gomphrena
• We can suck sweet nectar from its flowers - Ixora

My post today is dedicated to my lovely friend, Dr. Andrea, from the Philippines of Andrea In This Lifetime blog, the first commenter of my Kapok Tree post. Maraming salamat po for being my friend!

Today is Garden Bloggers Bloom Day. Now, do head over to May Dreams Gardens to see what's blooming round the world today.

This is my entry for Today's Flowers # 93, a meme which opens every Sunday, 2pm GMT. My grateful thanks to Today's Flowers team members; Luiz Santili Jr, Denise in Virginia, Laerte Pupo and Sandy Carlson. To participate and view other gorgeous flowers around the world, click here.