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Posts Tagged ‘home garden’


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Yeay, I had a grand time picking these fresh calamansi (it’s Philippine lime for you guys) from our two fruit trees which I planted when we moved here eighteen years ago (that’s how long we’ve been staying here in this place). They never stop flowering and giving us these fruits all year round but this is the first time  (I guess) that I harvested this much. They weigh almost two kilos. Calamansi has many uses in the Philippine kitchen – it is a perfect morning drink, an immune system booster, a perfect marinade for meats or even fish and poultry.

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I bought a pot of this Pink Angel years ago. When it stopped flowering, I planted some cuttings in two small pots but it took so long for it to show those lovely pink blooms, that is,  until  now. It’s a sort of vine and shrub combined. I never knew its exact name  because I could not find such similar blooms on the net. It’s a Pink Angel, the vendor told me, so be it!

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Every year, I am gifted with the heady scent of a gardenia bloom. The previous years, I was  just so happy seeing one or two, three at the most blooming all at once. This year though, they bloomed early and almost every tip of my gardenia shrub has buds. I can’t resist making a flower arrangement. These are flowers of my childhood,  mom used to grow them lined at the walkway going to our front door.

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Before you say I am obsessed, I really am.  I love documenting every bloom in my small garden. My three varieties of lilies are in bloom again, will take shots of the orange ones and the Amazon lilies in a few days.  It’s almost summer now and the few perennials I have in my garden are showing off. Call them Lirio, Bakong, or Pink-striped trumpet lily, these are bulb plants that are so easy to propagate. Put them in partial shade when they are newly planted and let them enjoy the sun all year-long after the bulbs have grown.

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Oh, it was a four-day love affair with my camera and these lovely pink blooms.

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Two weeks ago, I took  pictures of  my Hoya flowers still in buds. They are blooming now. I just want to share with you my favorite flowers when I was a child. Back in our ancestral home in the province, my aunt and mom used to have this hanging in every window. Just like my gardenia that evokes memories of childhood, I always look forward to these Hoya flowers every year.

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And it’s worth all the time I stayed under the heat of the sun and the early mornings I have to water them.  I wonder though why they call this Shanghai Beauty.

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PAGASA says  summer starts next week. I wonder why it’s been raining the past two days. This morning, it is cloudy. If this is the kind of summer we have, I can only imagine how it is when the actual rainy season sets in.  One advantage though is, I don’t have to water the plants except those which are in the shade. It’s actually a perfect opportunity to visit and take a few shots.whats in a garden1

And I thought this orange Bougainvillea died on me a few years ago until it showed its face with these lovely blooms. Now I have two colors of Bougainvillea.   These two green varieties of  prayer plants belong to the arrowroot family. I have three  species in my garden, all producing those lovely ornamental leaves.

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This is one of my Hoya vines.  They  are planted in hanging pots with this rounded wire in each basket. I was surprised to find at least six clusters all ready to bloom into lovely pink beautiful flowers.  This is how they would  look when they are in full bloom and the flowers last for quite a while.

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An eye-catching, double-petaled Bougainvillea. Bougainvillea blooms always remind me of summer, those lazy days when staying in the garden early in the morning is a reward in itself.  And seeing this lovely fusion of fuchsia colors makes me smile.

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“However many years she lived, Mary always felt that ‘she should never forget that first morning when her garden began to grow’.” – Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

Chipped nails. Dirty hands. Rough palms. They’re just minor disasters compared to the happiness you feel when you are in a garden. I tell you, it won’t be gardening at all if you always use gardening gloves and don’t feel the rich earth in your hands.

It was a busy weekend for me and Josef. He was in-charge of trimming the carabao grass while I re-potted, transferred and planted some bulbs and flowering plants in our small garden. It was a tedious job but all worth it. IMG_3694My Crossandra plants need to be transferred to pots because they are growing everywhere. They produce orange blooms all year round and  they are so easy to grow because they are self-propagating.

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These are my Rain Lilies newly planted as ground cover, some of them I planted in small pots near the shade. IMG_0060When in bloom, they look like this. Actually, they bloom after the rain, that’s probably where they got their names. This pink one is called  Zyphyranthes Rosea.  They need full sun though to grow well.

I also transferred my Amazon Lily into four pots. The funny thing is I need to break the original pot in order to  re-pot the bulbs since they are closely clustered.

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The dark green paddle-shaped leaves of the Amazon Lily are attractive on their own. Time and again, I’ve blogged about its  sweet-scented and velvety snow-white blooms.  It produces  flowers at least three times a year.

And yes, this is another surprise, I saw a pot of my orange lily breaking into a bud and probably in a few days, it would open its arms to the world.

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I also planted another bulb plant in two small pots. It’s the red onion variety which is locally planted and sold in our home province in Pangasinan. Locally, we call  it lasuna and it is best used in vegetable salads and our famous vegetable recipe called pinakbet.

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And the highlight of course is seeing our two jackfruit trees  bearing clustered fruits. I am thinking of cooking ginataang langka in a few days.

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My only frustration is, I could not trim our Fukien tea plants in perfect round shapes. I would probably need to hire a professional gardener  to do it.

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It’s one of those mornings when you want to linger a while in the garden and just enjoy the cold breeze that the rain brought last night. It’s been raining on and off since yesterday, the kind of splatter that makes you want to just stay in bed and enjoy the cold weather. But  then you see rain droplets and you grab your camera for a few clicks.

This picture is actually green moss clinging to our perimeter wall behind the house and that mountain-like structure you see is our concrete fence. I’ve always love experimenting on water droplets, capturing those tiny jewels on cam before they reach the ground. A minute here, a few seconds there. It’s divine!

Please click to enlarge.

Aperture: f/2.8
Focal Length: 5mm
ISO: 400
Shutter: 1/200 sec
Camera: Canon DIGITAL IXUS 120 IS

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