Mosaic Monday-Hot Stuff!

My super-hot chillies. Lovely to look at, but they are not purely ornamental. Chilly-lovers beware! There's a zing to these tiny colourful chillies that might make you give up wasabi and switch to these home-grown specimens.





For more mosaic pieces, visit Mosaic Monday. The link is at the bottom of the page.

Skywatch Friday - Sky above My Garden Haven

I couldn't believe my eyes...the skies above my own garden looked so captivating today. It was not the dramatic sky of billowing clouds, nor the melodramatic dark powerful storm clouds that might get me dashing indoors to grab my camera. It was just this - what do you call this type of clouds?

Remember my pergola? This is my favourite shot for this post-clouds over pergola! 

Looks to me like they are scurry-clouds...right then, I'll name them my scurry clouds! You can just sense that motion when you look up at them...there they go, scurrying off to the horizon, as if on a mission.

This is my second favourite - clouds above my Blue Pine.

I couldn't carry on referring to these clouds as "Scurry" all my life, could I? So, I checked it out, and comparing the photographs to my Scurry Cloud photographs, the nearest match I could find was "altocumulus". Oh alright, Alto is quite a cute name too.

To satisfy my curiosity, I found out some interesting gossip about our boy Alto - known to carry water droplets but can also carry ice-droplets when temperatures are low enough! Not a high-flier, though - a mid-level kind of cloud, hovering between 2,000 to 6,000 metres. I could tell that from his name... . Now Cirrus, though, that's a high flier! We'll meet him sooner or later.

Don't you just get a strange feeling looking at a sky like that?

So here we have it...an arresting sky with altocumulus clouds filling the whole canvas above.


For more Skywatch Friday features, please click on the link at the bottom of this page.

Pink Powder Puff, Deserted

Can't think of anything in my garden that is deserting me...on the contrary, there are more weeds now that I wish would go away, more pests that I wish would crawl or fly away... . However there is one particular tree in a corner of my garden that has been feeling pretty neglected by her owner, and I see signs that she is planning to desert me. No, she is not packing her suitcases in the middle of the night and preparing to tip-toe out of my garden-gate though she might just do that. I deserve that kind of 'stealing out when I'm not looking' treatment because I had hurt her feelings. For a long time, I had forgotten to give her the pampering she deserves, as she is such a well-behaved plant that I had taken her for granted. She produces pretty flowers regularly without any prompting. These flowers dutifully turn into pretty berries which look like raspberries.



As with anything that is out of sight, this plant is also out of the owner's mind. No fertilizer
fridays for her, not even on any other day of the week! Now she has grown spindly, and her branches are rather bare of leaves - they had long deserted her..



She stares out of the window, hoping against hope that her owner would one day give her a second look, realize that here is a plant pining for attention.
And wonder of wonders, it happened on fertilizer friday!!! Rosie came to give her the best fertilizer that was usually applied on her precious  hydrangeas and her other showy flowering favourites. She trimmed the dead twigs, and.... is she drawing her camera out of her pocket??? Is she going to give the greatest gift of all - the gift of appreciation to this forlorn specimen? No, this can't be happening - it is a dream. Rosie does not even know her name!!

Click - click - click!

The flowers might inspire a designer to use it as fabric motif  for a Shanghainese  'cheongsam' (elegant ladies' costume)

She gives her best smile to the camera. The camera loves her. She glows with happiness. This is her moment of fame, glory. But more than that, she is no longer deserted, but was lost and has been found!

This could very well be a chinois print.

Note from Rosie : Does anyone know the name of this plant? I had always thought it was a bottle-brush, but guess it isn't. Please leave me a note if you know this plant. It needs the recognition due to it, don't you think?

Have a wonderful time at Tootsie's Fertilizer Friday and Katarina's Blooming Friday. Click on their links at the bottom of this page.

Post-script
Thanks to Autumn Belle, we now know the name of this pretty flower - Calliandra emarginata.

Macro Flowers - Spanish Roses

A rose from any corner of the world would still be a familiar, beloved flower. But these photographs of roses which I captured in Spain brings back wonderful memories of a carefree, delightful springtime holiday. They may be simple, straightforward photography, but they are bits of cherished images I would add to my photography credits in my journey of discovering the camera as my travel-companion.






This is my first post in maiaT's meme, and I am excited to be part of the community of keen photographers.
To view this gallery of  Macro Flowers, please click on the button Macro Flowers at the bottom of this page.

Romantic Gardens of Bali

After a period of readjustment in my garden blog, I am longing to return to normalcy. I have missed that passion with which I had begun my blog in October 2010. I had neglected my love affair, that fine romance I have with the lovely gardens I had visited lately. To recapture that nostalgia, I shall post about my romance with the evocative Balinese garden.

I was in Bali in July 2010, just when Bali was in the grip of the 'Eat.Pray.Love' fever. Julia Roberts had just finished filming the 'Love' segment of the movie and I suppose romance was in the air since this was the segment where Liz finds love. Walking in the gardens among the ancient temples of this exotic island where paddy fields and bicycle lanes are the norm, not the exception in this rural setting, one can definitely feel the essence of romance here.


These photos help to convey the uniqueness of romantic Balinese gardens. The romance lingers even when you leave Bali...the scent of frangipani flowers, the incense of aromatic prayer sticks, the image of green moss on temple walls, the lilting music of the caklempong and bamboo angklung, the dark-eyed dancers expressing their anquish or joy as the tale unfolds in their cultural dances . So walk with me through these gardens and images of Bali and let's fall in love...

   Walk along the riverbank and savour the bright, beautiful day...feel the joy of being   
   among unique palms and trees.

 

   Breathe in the fresh, unadulterated Bali air.

     Lose yourself in the brilliance of the colours.

    Hear the trumpet flowers making swishing sounds in the wind, heralding your arrival.

 Luxuriate in the cool green shadows of the pines that stretch to the sky.



Embrace that old-world feeling in this rustic setting.



Be welcomed by these petalled water...used in spas to pamper and delight the senses.



Be awed by the skills of the ancient craftsmen whose works of art beautify the gardens.



Be uplifted by the cheery colours of the canna lilies.





Here we say good-bye to this lovely spot on the island of Bali. Truly a garden haven for garden lovers from everywhere in the world.

Horizons in New Zealand

Here are some horizons I have been privileged to have been able to photograph during my travels. These are unforgettable moments  that I would always want to keep in my memory...and when the memory fails to recall the details, these photographs will enable the magical moments to live on.

No matter how far I roam, no matter how inspiring the beauty of foreign horizons, the horizon that I can see from my  window at home is where my imagination takes flight at the end of the day...

I would like to thank Roses and Stuff for offering me a chance to post my favourite pictures on horizons. For more of the theme "horizons", you can visit Blooming Friday when you click on the link at the bottom of this page.