Rosy CNY & Valentine's day.

Two years of continously viewing pictures of well-kept roses by gardeners on the forum haven't tempted me a drop to grow one. Until...

Its half a month down to Chinese New Year, nurseries are burping CNY-plants! I walked all the nurseries along Kovan and Thomsom, hunting for Jasmine plants (to replace my husband's aged/vigourless 'gals'). Non in sight. Jasmine flowers are white, they do not fit into the festive color codes for CNY.

Then 2 rosy-smiles beamed my way while I was manouvering the narrow path lined with giant mandarin-orange plants. I succumbed.



So here we get a new rosy entrance/exit. And happy valentine's day :)

Moonflowers are elegant ladies.

One day, the vines will go into full blooms, and we'll have a balcony-railing dancing with white-ladies :)

Balcony update

Our green-pets on the balcony are enjoying their lifes, generally.

Those perched on the low balcony wall get good wind and nice views of the communal garden downstairs.

The siverbeets especially, are enjoying their spa-bath while taking in the views out there.

Missy Picotees (the morning glories) climbed to get an even more advantages viewpoint.

Bay-sir grows himself up and out of the gap between the wall and railing.


All's good. The Hydroponic box of PakChoy (KY-early fr Known-You) was harvested a few rounds before being 'taken down'. Purple french beans are harvested too, and they continue to throw up flowers and new pods. New vegetable seeds are sown. Sweet basils grew up to 40cm tall, and upgraded to their own container. Ditto dills who stand in their own tub, perched on the low wall, looking out of the balcony.

... Except an unlucky chap, Bonsai-Shuimei, who's infected with black spots on the leaves. Skyfiery came visiting yesterday, smelled rat, and got diagnosis from Sixhunter that its probably black spot disease. Tat is a messy problem.

Poor handsome Shuimei got trimmed down brutally (ALL leaves n secondary branches gone), soil changed plus a root trim to downsize the root ball. He probably will take a long time to recover from tis brutal trim down. IF he survives :p

Today will be an April Fool's gardening day -making concoctions to spray down the plants from fungus-growth (in case of spread), and continue fixing the spider mites problem in the mint box.

''Your jasmines are blooming, Munmun!''

Well done your first pruning-job, MunMun.
The girl went into full-blooms :)

Divide the 'land'; together we will grow.

These are days of mudfish-morale : you know you are a fish, yet you can only crawl on your stomach on the muddy floor of the ocean-of-unlimited-opportunities.

To keep the morale afloat during this period where things just dun seems to go the way they should, i chose to work on one aspects of our life. Knowing and doing at least one thing right/victorious feels uplifting now:)


Now that Wm has chosen also to 'taint' his fingers green, we divided up our gardening area into two sectors :

- Corridor will be ornamental. This will be Wm's domain.
- Balcony will be edibles, thus strictly organic and hydroponic combo. Tis will be my domain.

Let life breath into our gardens !

CNY plant is - Jasminum Sambac

If we collect enough of the flowers, maybe we'll get jasmine-perfumed home tis Chinese New Year ;)

Luv the pot stand. Luv the double-petals. Luv the stronger fragrance in the single-petal. Simply cant decide which i like more. He he.

Double-petals

Single-petal

Lovely pot stand

Its delightful ! - more fragrance, more colors

This Xmas sees happy nursery-shopping trips with Renee n Waimun.

Renee is excited about moving back to tampines. She picked up loads of flowers, greens n hardware overnite to start her lovely little corridor garden.

And after 1 year of watching Rummi-at-work, Waimun starts to displays interest in what's growing within his compound. He'll like more fragrance, which sounds like a strange request from a person who wakes up with stuffy nose most of the days, hehe !!

I luv how the corridor look now, with the ornamental greens n flowers.

The balcony air is 'puffed' with Wrightia Religiosa and Jasminum Sambac... waiting for the combination of blooming flowers paired with breeze from the river. Here's pic of left section of balcony.

These 2 colorful pots of Pentas added splashes of colors to Rosemary n Indian Borage.

Maidenhair fern is a Pot-Of-Elegance:)
However, the two pots of polka-dot faces are under stress from repotting, some leaves are curling up at the edge, and some 'faces' losing their polkadots. Opps.

Here's a close-up of the little red lantern flowers on the hanging pot of Abutilon Megapotamicum, in the balcony. Ohh, its a conversation piece ;)

Jaminum Sambac is the flower that is used for chinese jasmine tea.

And finally, a pot of must-have =Wrightia Religiosa. After re-potting in small pot and trimming, it acquired kindofa bonsai-look;)