Gardening

I took some photos of flowers and plants during our trip to Gunung Stong, intending to identify them with their Latin names and all that, but it turns out my book “Plants for Tropical Landscapes” really only focuses on plants for gardens, so I’ll just tell you what I managed to pick up about the plants.

There are a number of wild ginger varieties there (the Zingiberaceae family). This is the flower of one – it grows on the ground, and as you can see it captures water in its cupped petals

I was surprised that ginger plants actually grow long stems kind of like bamboo – I guess because I only ever see the root, I never thought about what happens above ground. These next two are ginger too – I think.


This is a palm that is particular to the Gunung Stong area

and this is a Pandanus of some kind, lots of them there
Continue reading "Jungle flowers"

One thing I’ve definitely learnt so far is that a blog needs regular updating, and doing good posts takes time.

And I always want to do things in detail, so I put off doing posts because I’m missing some small factor.

Anyway, the full post is not complete, but here’s a film on how to prepare a vermicompost bin

…and you may want to skip this post if you’re squeamish, or are about to eat…

I’ve brought you my Weaver Ants before. I think they are responsible for keeping my kumquat tree free of caterpillars, and the other day I saw more evidence of their carnivorous tastes.

Our smelly dustbin had maggots in it, and when I went out to pick up the newspaper I noticed the ants had done a raid and were carting off squirming maggots. As usual, I found the ability of ants to coordinate and cooperate fascinating, so I decided to take a few photos


here's a close up…


and here’s a film – enjoy

Just a little update on the qumqat tree. As you can see, it is now in full flower, I’ve never seen it with so many flowers!



I can’t help thinking that the ants have something to do with it… They have moved house though – their original nest has broken up/been abandoned:






And now they are living in another one not far away...

One morning I noticed that some of the leafs on my qumqat tree were stuck together – like this…



curious, I poked it with my finger and quickly retreated when large red ants suddenly swarmed out, looking mean and angry…

Continue reading "Weaver ants scramble!"

Qumqats, or kumquats, are used during Chinese New Year as a symbol of prosperity: apparently the word sounds something like "gold" in Cantonese, and the bright orange colour resembles gold (incidentally, this is a typical example of so-called "imitative" or "sympathetic" magic: i.e. something is believed to affect other processes in the world due to its plastic properties, another example would be the phallic-shaped asparagus that are believed to be aphrodisiac).

Anyway, I have a kumquat tree which I bought for RM12 about three years ago: it never amounted to much until I transplanted it from the pot to the ground, and now it's flourishing well and measures about a metre high.

Here are photos demonstrating the different stages of the flowering and development into fruit.

The bud...


which then develops into a flower - here you can also see a caterpillar (sneakily disguised as a bird dropping) which will gobble down much of your leafs unless you remove it...
Continue reading "The flowering of prosperity"