Shoe Rack, What Are You Doing In My Garden?

The shoe rack replied, "I'm not wanted where I'm supposed to be, where else can I be, except be a friend to whoever needs a friend, you can always lean on me!" 

This extra piece of shoe rack has been in my mini store for ages! Finally put it to good use! Two of my french beans are happily creeping towards the shoe rack supported by two bamboo sticks.  This 'handiwork' was done by my dear hubby. 

Do you know what that is?  Well.... it is our very old TV aerial!  It has been on the roof for years!  Ever since Astro was installed years ago, this aerial has "ceased operation"!  Almost two months ago, our Astro has gone ga-ga, the Astro guys came to repair and told them to bring it down. Hubby wanted to dispose of it, but I have better use for it!  Ha! Ha!  Hubby modified it for me and ta...da... I have a sturdy  plant stake!  On the left, another french bean plant is making its way up and to the right is the bitter gourd plant. Never realise that I like an aerial so much!

OK, time for some harvest!

My little harvest of nai pak. Too little to stir-fry, so goes into my yong-tau-foo noodles. Very crunchy and good! The rest of the nai pak, eaten by snails and the culprit below!

The flat grasshopper.  I do not know what it is called, but I think flat grasshopper seems suitable!

Another harvest :

 Belimbing! I pickled these! Yummy!

The extremely hot weather turns the leaves yellow real fast!  It's like having autumn in my backyard, which can be very irritating! The leaves keep dropping even as I sweep! But I am being rewarded with lots of fruits. Gave some to my sisters and neighbours. Look at the bird's nest. It is still up there after so many months!  There are no birds now, but really amazing, this nest can withstand strong heavy rain and sometimes very windy days too! I hope that the birds will be back to their "delivery nursery" soon.

Happy Gardening !

Dill

Back to gardening!


Dill has slender stems, and alternate, finely divided, softly delicate leaves which can range from 10-20cm long.  The flowers are white to yellow, in small umbels diameter, about 2 to 9cm.  Dill is originated from Eastern Europe and are now widespread throughout the Mediterranean and West Asia. The fern-like leaves are aromatic and are used to flavour many food such as soups, pickles, dips and other culinary uses.

Dill needs full sun to grow with rich well-drained soil.  This is a short-lived perennial herb. Now that explains why my dill plant is slowly drying and wilting away.  I bought this plant from Sg. Buloh for RM5.00.  I have never seen this being sold anywhere else. 

Surprisingly, this plant is a member of the parsley family!  Dills are grown from seeds. I have yet to try this! It has some medicinal value too. The seeds are used to control flatulence by brewing it as a tea and by chewing a few seeds will help to freshen the breath! 

This photo was taken in August.

This photo was taken in September. In just a month the plant has grown taller with lovely small yellow flowers

A close-up picture of the leaves

Another photo of the leaves

Look at the lovely umbel of small yellow flowers

Close-up photo of the flowers

The dried seeds. Photo taken a few days ago.

Close up photo of the dried seeds. They are very small. 

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This is for you to drool........

This photo was taken last week at my sister's garden. She planted this vine about less than 2 years ago, and look at the little grapes, are you drooling already??  I sure did! This is the second time that the plant is fruiting and it is only one cluster of grapes, bigger bunch than the first time.  I have not tasted it yet! Keeping my fingers crossed that I will have the chance to try this when it ripens, maybe no chance at all, may have to wait for the next batch, hopefully more bunches next time round!

Beyond Gardening!

A short break from gardening!

Balloon Molly
This is a cute fish with rounded, large belly. 

This little mama is pregnant. Look at the rounded belly. We were waiting almost very patiently for the babies to appear!

 Can you see the baby's tail coming out from the mother?  I actually waited and wanted to video the birthing, waited for more than half an hour and finally gave up, as I really had to go out at that time. When I came back more two hours later, she has already given birth to a few babies! But sadly, this mama fish died the next day, and she's the prettiest mama in the aquarium!

See the two little fishes following closely behind? They love to do this, I guess it's one their natural habits. These two are siblings! The are about 3 months old. The rest of their siblings died, along with their mother.

This cute little yellow molly is another little mama. She gave birth to more than 20 baby fish about 2 weeks ago. She seems to be doing well.

These are some of her babies

This is one mighty proud male fish.  He likes to spread out his top fins when pursuing the female, male ego? I don't see other male fish doing this! 

 Baby fish gets to hide in little caves and holes. The bigger fish, even their own mother are known to eat their young, and I have seen this before.  My hubby and myself witness the birthing of the babies a couple of months back and saw the mother ate one of her young just minutes after birth! Both of us are speechless at that very moment! But that is nature.  

There are four of this little fish with the black stripe, all siblings.  They are about 3 weeks old. 

Our little aquarium! Watching the cute little antics and habits of these little fishes can have a calming effect. They always seems to know the feeding time, they will get very excited and swam to the top waiting for the food when its time for feeding.  The lovely green plant is from our own bigger plant (this will be a separate post). It can last for at least 4 months, sometimes even longer,  in the aquarium. 

Beyond Gardening shall continue.... in due time!

Wordless Wednesday

Rangoon Creeper

Quisqualis Indica is also known as Rangoon Creeper or Chinese Honeysuckle.  It is a vine with red cluster flowers, the colours varies from white to pink to red, and is very fragrant.  This plant can be found in Philippines, India and Malaysia and is mainly used for traditional medicine. The roots, flowers, leaves, seeds and fruits, can be used to treat various ailments such as diarrhea and rheumatism.  

This is a perennial climber plant which needs a wall or fence to climb.  I plant this in a pot and place it at my front porch where it gets full sun. This plant needs a lot of water especially when it is very hot, just like today, I need to water it twice.  The flowers are really fragrant, almost similar to our local jasmine.  When it starts to flower, the whole plant will be full of blooms, like it is blooming now. It is indeed beautiful when this happens! My plant is about 6 ft high but it is not very big.  Usually after the flowers faded off, most of the leaves will turn to yellow and will soon drop off too. (Just like autumn, ya??). I will then prune and cut off the dead wilted branches and soon new leaves will grow, followed soon after by another batch of blooms.  Anyone of you have this plant?  Does this happen to your rangoon creeper?  A few of the houses in my neighbourhood grew this plant on the ground, their plant is so much bigger and lush!  

This rangoon creeper of mine has faithfully blooms thousands of flowers these past eight years of so. Even though it is not big in size, but it makes its presence known each time it blooms.