Count Your Blessings!

With love and passion, everyone can have a nice garden...Elaine Yim

Count Your Blessings!
Count The Garden By The Flowers, Never By The Leaves That Fall.
Count Your Life With Smiles And Not The Tears That Roll.
..... Author unknown.

Knowing me, Knowing you..... Aha.....!

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Malaysian Flora USDA Zone 11
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Saturday, October 15, 2011

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day - GBBD Oct 2011


Welcome to My Nice Garden! This was a birthday gift from my darling daughter last month. I think it's a doe that looks like Bambi. The little garden helper with the Welcome signage shall be my companion while I am all alone tending to my garden, standing in for my DH, the non-gardener.

“Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - GBBD Oct 2011”, a copyrighted post, was written for My Nice Garden blog by Autumn Belle @ http://www.mynicegarden.com/ on October 15th, 2011



This is the first re-bloom for this orchid. It looks like a dendrobium-phalaenopsis?



All my 3 Desert Roses are blooming; red, pink and also Santa Claus. I put them out to 'sunbathe' during the day and bring them back into the porch area in the evenings. I am always worried that the plants will be damaged by too much rain. Sometimes during a rainy season, I suddenly remember that I had forgoten to bring them in, so I wake up in the middle of the night just to do this otherwise my sleep will be disrupted.


My Jasminum sambac 'Grand Duke of Tuscany' has just started to bloom. The flowers look like snow-white roses. The plant grows very slowly, even the flower buds take days to open but never fully.


My bonsai, a Water Jasmine (Wrightia religiosa) about 23 cm tall with a single, very scented tiny flower. A miniature flower for my miniature garden. Can you find the solitary blossom?



The is the biggest of my 3 pomegranate fruits from my potted plant.


I grow this Capsicum chilli pepper from store bought varieties. Now I am waiting to taste my first chilli. There are only 2 surviving chilli plants as at today.


Now, some pictures of my garden friends.
Dragonflies love to perch on my Cat Whiskers flowers.


A Lyssa zampa (Laos Brown Butterfly). After breakfast, I found this moth perched on the outside of my window pane. I was lucky to get this close-up of its full 'underside' body. See my camera reflection? One shot and that was all. That's because after the first shot, I rushed out of my house hoping to get a front view of this beauty but alas, it had disappeared from sight. This moth likes to rest hanging upside down, just like a bat but it looks like a butterfly and flies just as fast!



A miniature cycad blue butterfly on my Imperial Rose, another miniature.
It is either busy drinking nectar or bathing in this rainpool of rose petals.


The Logos Hope Floating Bookstore came a calling at Port Klang. It will be here from 29 Sept - 30 Oct 2011. Its next destination is Kuching, East Malaysia. I went there to take a look. It was very crowded making it very difficult to browse through any of the 500,000 titles without getting soffocated. I left without buying any books but brought back some nice experiences on board a floating bookshop. There were many working volunteers, mainly friendly young people from all over the world.



I also went to the Big Bad Wolf Book Sale (7-10 Oct 2011) held at Malaysian Agro Exposition Park (MAEPS), Serdang. It took us 1.5 hours to reach there by car. It's a crazy sale with 1.5 million books going at 75-95% discount. There were so many people that we had to be allowed into the hall in stages. Nevertheless, everything went smoothly due to the foresightedness of the organisers. There was an ambulance, meals on wheels, even feeder mini buses to ferry shoppers from parking lot to the hall. There were attendants and helpers with trolley to help carry our books at checkout point.

My bounty was 18 books at about RM 200 bucks - in my bag are a hardcover 1ft x 1.5 ft "Beauty of the  Rainforest" book, Nigella Lawson cookbook,  more cookbooks, gardening books, Idiots and Dummies series and paperback novels e.g. The Gift (Cecelia Ahern) and New Moon (Stephanie Meyer) at RM 8 each, the normal price for novel paper backs is RM 70  each. A management book at USD 60 was going for RM 30. Prices of books range from RM 5.00 to RM 30.00. I only had 1 hour. If I had more time, my load could be heavier as I am still a book worm, not an IT reader. So I like to touch, feel, smell and lie around while I read my stuff. Now I regret I didn't grab Jamie Oliver's cookbook too!



I received an email from Nuffnang that I am entitled to 4 movie passes from TGV Cinemas. I can select any movie I like, including the newest ones. I had a great time with DH watching Mr Bean's Johnny English and The Three Musketeers.

It was a wonderful surprise and birthday gift, hence
THANK YOU VERY MUCH TGV!


Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day is hosted by Carol at May Dreams Garden on the 15th of every month. To participate and/or to view what is blooming in gardens around the world, please visit the link here.

This is also my entry for Today's Flowers # 165, my grateful thanks to TF team Santilli - Denise - Pupo - Sandy Carlson

20 comments:

  1. Great photos. Lots blooming for you and they are lovely. The bookstore was interesting, haven't seen that before.
    Cher Sunray Gardens

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  2. Happy GBBD! Beautiful flowers and critters! I have heard of this bookstore years ago. Didn't know they are here again.

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  3. Very impressive show of your work... the moth at your window, especially...

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  4. Happy Belated Birthday. Hope you had a wonderful celebration. The moth certainly is a good capture.You know, I missed collecting the cinema tickets from Nuffnang.

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  5. The Laos brown butterfly looks really interesting. I love the desert rose!

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  6. Your plants look amazing! I like the floating bookstore...neat! It seems huge. Happy GBBD!

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  7. I especially love the desert rose. It is such a beautiful flower.

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  8. Sometimes I'm just so envious of your climate--so much beauty there! Plants and books--what more could one ask for! Happy GBBD!

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  9. Wow that's the great work of 'green hands' to have the lovely flowers and fruits and what more, nice pixz as well. Great shot of the dragon fly & moth.

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  10. I had to google Desert Rose as the flower in the picture looks similar to Mandevilla and maybe even the Gloxina. The leaves are different and of course the Mandevilla is a vine. In the past when I saw a bonsai Desert Rose, I saw it as a form of Mandevilla. Now, it like how can you make that mistake!!

    Ah, the good ship Logos. I had friends who sailed in it years ago. I do not think it is the same ship but same good intentions.

    Many a friend and family were happy victims of the Big Bad Wolf booksale.

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  11. Oh, I just love the look of that jasminum! Gorgeous! And the underside of the butterfly is so beautiful! Great pic! I've never seen a floating bookstore - how fun! I, too, love to curl up with a good book.

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  12. Olá Estou visitando seu Site
    que é um encanto, lindas fotos!
    é um grande prazer passear por aqui!!! parabéns!


    Adriano.

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  13. Hi Autumn Belle, when i posted last night at #112, i thought i will be the last, then i realized now you are still further down. I haven't seen that moth here, but we have the nicer and bigger Atlas moth. Do you know that the Jasminum sambac is our national flower, when you have hibiscus? We call it 'sampaguita' here, also acquired as female names! And it's scent is used by the Thais on their sweet desserts.

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  14. Great series of pictures. You have so many of them. And belated Happy Birthday to you. :)

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  15. The Butterflies are just gorgeous! I love the Desert Rose blooms. Just so lovely. What cute critters. The little girl is so sweet.

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  16. That's very huge book sale!
    Beautiful pictures and lovely gift from your hubby!

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  17. Belated happy birthday, autumn belle! Nice to see your daughter's gift in your garden. Nice shots, too!

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  18. Belle!!!
    Thanks for visiting Autumn Belle!
    Your garden is wonderful!
    Their flowers, their otos are very beautiful!
    Can we be friends???

    Adriano.

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  19. Beautiful photos. I especially liked seeing the insects.

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  20. Adriano, welcome to My Nice Garden! You can find me at Facebook and send me a friend request. Thanks.

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