Herbal Talkings

Hi there! Aauuuwww..is it getting too crowded for you? I think I have a solution. I should eat you up! Eeerr... I should harvest you and cook you up! Same thing....haha!

Ma cherie la tomato! You grew so fast, I didn't have time to set the trainer for you! That's why you bend to your likings. I will still do it for you, soon...hehehe!

Ho ho ho! You guys sure couldn't wait to grow up and stand tall, aren't you? Too late with the sticks, you're already all over the fence. Come give me some Brinjals, quick!

Aiyoo......and you! I thought were were supposed to be a row of Salad Lettuce....for my Garden Salad. But you turn out to be ..... another row of brinjals?


My Lady Fingers. You're another speedy gonzales, aren't you? You sprout in no time, and now you're ready to fruit.

Upclose pose of Ladyfinger. Why you blur up? Don't be too shy!

Hello Cucumbers! You finally decided to sprout out and see the world! For a moment, I thought you're really shy. But your previous friends almost sprung overnight...beautiful and flowering.... until that fateful day when Honeybun decided that it made a great leap fence but landed on it instead. Don't worry, I'll watch her next time. She's just too fond of chasing after the bees and flies away from me when I do gardening.

Moi Butterheads! You certainly take your own sweet time, huh!

Dearie, you have to decide, are you growing, or are you 'going'? Maybe I should take more effort to strengthen your bed, ya. I'll see if I can find some planks at the hardware store tomorrow, just for you, so that the soil won't slide down everytime it rains, ok. Mini landslide...? noooooo

Basil Beauties! Growing well, aren't you, with flowers and sprigs and germinates! You certainly keep me busy with Basil Tea, Beef Basil, Chicken Basil, Fish Basil......

Are you guys comfy there? Enough space for the four of you? You gotta make do ok? You guys are so precious and beneficial to upkeep, from diabetes, to gout, high blood pressure, high cholestrol, and migraine, you name it, you can help to ease. I just need to find out how.


Hello there, you crawly Mints! I know you like to crawl around, but I have to curl you up so you stay together ok. We'll leave some space for the others, right?


C'mon guys and gals. I know you can do it,.......faster! Is the soil way beneath you too hard? I'm sticking some bamboo's from the old oil lantern around you to protect you from the pouncing Honeybun, Minty or Oreo. Not to jail you up, k!

Wow, that's a whole lot of herbal talking. And, that's only halfway through. Now for the rest of the plants.....

Replacement Cactus

Last September when I first arranged the cactuses in a bowl, I had high hopes for it. It was actually a trial project to see, 1. whether cactusses brought from Cameron Highland can lasts in KL climate, and 2. whether it can survive as indoor plants sharing a bowl amongst them.

Well, as you can see from the left picture above, the finished project of Cactus in a Bowl and on the right is the bowl after almost 3 months. When one by one a few cactuses started to die, I was clueless on what to do. I still am now, but yesterday when I shop around, I saw some cute cactusses for sale. And they're pretty cheap too.

So I bought four new cactusses to replace the ones that didn't survive the project. I'll probably do it after coming back from my vacation next week.

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Cactus in a Bowl

Cactus as an ornamental plants is rather new to me. I haven't been paying much attention to it until a time when I saw this beautiful cactus display in a glass container which looked like a miniature green house at either a gift shop or a garden exhibition. They were beautiful! And that's about the interest level that I have in these cactuses.

Ok, so I got this glass bowl from the florist during the weekend, and the small cactus plant from Cameron Highlands in June. If I'm not mistaken, all the eight cactus costs about Rm10 and the stand is Rm5. Its a trial buy, to see if this cactus plants from a cold climate could survive here. And they turn out to be okay.

Now I'm ready for the next step. So I'm going to transfer all the small cactus plants into the glas fish bowl.

I start by filling up the bottom of the bowl with small white stones. I see some ready made ones even make it colourful with green or orange, but in this case I prefer whites.

Then I plan on the layout of the plants in the bowl, and rearranging it to the most suitable positions pleasing to the eyes.

Empty the pots and arrange the plants according to plan. At this stage, we can still change the positions.

Fill the bowl up with the soil to cover the neck of the plants.

Add some decorative pebble stones to make it look 'natural' and artisitic.

There! Now it looks like a miniature desert. The one I saw at the shops have all the black soil covered with another layer of white stones, but I kind of like this look. I may or may not buy more stones to do this. :)

Next step would be maintenance. Here are some tips online.

Cactus plant care

Potting
Cactus should be placed under adequate sunlight.
They should be sowed in pots having a good drainage system.
Remove one inch of soil form the top. Replace it with gravel.
The soil should be a mixture of sand, peat and perlite.
Cactus growing vertically should be sowed in container whose diameter is half the height of the plant.
Cacti that are growing breadth wise should be grown on containers, which are having 2 inches of diameter extra than the plant.
Recently sowed or repotted plants have more chances of getting rot.
The soil should be dry enough while the sowing or repotting is been done. Watering should be done after a week so that the roots are healed within the time.

And lastly, a word of advice from a non-expert.

Hello...! Happy cactussing! Meow, meow!

Flowers! Flowers! Flowers!

My first successful (I think) attempt at flower arrangement!

I am so proud of myself...hahaha. This is the case of 'get into the basket in a lift and press the button yourself'! Just like gardening, I used to limit my own capability, that I'll never be good at flower arrangements. I always envy those who can effortlessly create a beautiful masterpiece out of the floral pieces. Not that I want to be a professional florist, although that is not a bad idea, but I'd like to create one or two I can call my own.

Actually the one I did was fairly easy. Nothing to shout about. You just get some combinations of stalks of sticks, and flowers on sticks, and just stuck them into the flower pot. That's all!

And in view of the coming Raya festival, I decided that my house needs more floral touch, as the only decent bouquet that I have is over 7 years old! And that was from a hand bouquet I received as a welcome gift. Then I just got the old white vase and stuck it in without any foam inside. If there's a strong wind, the whole bouguet will fall off...hahaha.. no kidding!

Then I got this 2 pastel pale rustic looking flowers from a wedding door gift, I just don't have the heart to throw it away, so I stuck it in a small decorative basket and it became another floral piece until now. 5 years old!

Another simple arrangement was an idea from my friend when we went to a floral shop, bought 3 stalks of red tulips, a simple glass reactangular vase and glass pebbles, and walah..! 3 years old!

Another is a 12 years old basket arrangement, still beautiful but I put it in my powder room, I'm not even gonna show the picture here.

And last June when we went to Cameron Highlands, I was persuaded to buy some dried flowers, which I just stuck in the vase. It looked funny and unkempt. Only this morning I rearrange it nicely, and cut some stem off so it fits in the vase nicely. Not a professional result, but I think...OK la...

Yesterday when I bought the stalks, I also bought some ready made flower arrangements in case the one I intended to arrange doesn't look presentable.















There's another set of flowers that I need to arrange, but I haven't got a suitable vase yet. And there's a fish bowl that I am yet to arrange the small cactus plants from Cameron Highlands later. And I got this book on floral arrangement and hopefully in future I will be making my own bouquets instead of buying ready made ones.

Art of Love

A very nice and unique artist's potrayal of love with the use of sand as her medium.