Cactus: flower by night

Flowers bloom at night, be prepared to stay up until 3am to see them in their full glory

Lovely. Unfortunately there is no smell

Training roses on a trellis

Scraggly roses grew upwards high above the trellis that it is difficult to enjoy the flowers

Secure the stems as horizontally as possible across the trellis, this will encourage new shoots to grow out of the stems

Almost all done

After a few weeks

Will be officially successful once these shoots flowers and the gardener is tall enough to enjoy the fragrance

Creatures: spot them

Spot 3 toads and 1 snail

Creatures in the garden: the rabid cat

 

One of the uninvited creatures in the garden. This one thought to have rabies due to very temperamental personality, hissing and teeth baring on sight of humans. Nicknamed 'rabies'. Initially lived mostly in the covered drain with its 3 kittens, now decides to live in our garden. Suns itself on the garden bench, sleeps right outside the front door and poos everywhere. Theory for wild, aggressive behaviour: trauma due to being constantly chased by neighborhood kids. Very difficult to photograph, these are all with max zoom. Vicious eyes.

Fruit trees

The ciku tree, no fruits yet

Jambu air fighting for space with papaya. The survivor papaya was not planted, it just grew

Mango tree, came with the house. All of the first fruits split and dropped. Waiting for more fruits

Mangosteen tree died probably due to overzealous fertilizing. Replacement not found yet



The Kitchen Garden

Tumeric, lime, lemongrass and curry

Curry leaves, hidden behind the lime in picture above

Pandan outside the home perimeter. My ex-neighbor received a warning letter from PJC for planting tapioca outside hers. My pandan has so far dodged the authorities, or more likey they just let it be...

Chilies, one in a broken pot and another on the vegetable patch. Where is the rest of the vegetable patch? Well...there is a patch but no vegetables yet. Watch this space

Pandan has been used for nasi lemak and to flavour the gula melaka for sagu gula melaka and made someone very happy, yum, yum. Curry leaves - what else? to make various types of curries ie chicken, beef, brinjals.  Lime, lemongrass and tumeric leaves for rendang, masak lemak cili padi. The repertoire of receipes is limited but I also cook!

Planning the garden

 

Read this book when I was starting the garden, a lot of useful information - marked the pages with the yellow stickers

See...very useful

So I made a plan for my garden...like so

First, decide which type of garden that you want to have. I love the English Cottage Garden best ( hate Rock Garden and Japanese Garden), but this is the tropics! Besides, I don't do well with flowering plants especially the Cottage Garden must have ie roses. And I have no idea how the plants are arranged to give that rambling look. Its called 'layering' - taller plants at the back, shorter ones at the front but still I have no clue how to do it. So...I decided I will have a Tropical English Garden instead (the only one ever existed I'm sure), with a kitchen garden at the back and my favourite fruit trees as well.