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
Welcome to our exotic world of everlasting summers and tropical rainforests!

Thursday, December 15, 2011

GBBD Dec 2011

1. Purple Cattleya (skinneri?) orchid

Today, for Garden Blogger's Bloom Day for December 2011, I have my beloved cattleya orchid giving me  some "twin happiness" with twin blooms, i.e. 2 stalks with 3 flowers each. This orchid had been quite inactive for a long time, growing only roots and shoots and babies. It has not bloomed since 2009. Can you imagine this - no blooms for the whole of 2010 and most of 2011?

Despite being so unpredictable and an eccentric, this 'temperamental' orchid is my favourite. It is the only plant I 'talk' to in my garden. It had made me laugh and it had made me cry and want to pull all my hair out in desperation of getting/waiting for it to bloom but when it blooms, I'll be in seventh heaven!   It  may be ordinary but it is my most precious orchid and is the inspiration for the start of My Nice Garden, both at home and in cyberspace (blog).

Now, finally a pleasant surprise to help me end my year with a BANG!

More orchids:




2. Purple Dendrobium Candy Stripe

3. Purple Dendrobium Camdy Stripe 

“GBBD Dec 2011”, a copyrighted post, was written for My Nice Garden blog by Autumn Belle @ http://www.mynicegarden.com/ on December 15th, 2011.


4 . Pinkish white Dendrobium Suree Peach

My Dendrobium crumenatum also bloomed during this time but the flowers last only a day. In fact all my orchids are blooming.  Due to bad weather, I can't take photos today, hence the photos are taken between 16 Nov and 14 Dec 2011, i.e. after last month's GBBD.

We have cloudy skies and it is raining every day, at odd times like the mid-afternoon when it should be hot and sunny. One moment the sky is clear, the next moment the it is very very dark and suddenly there's a down pour, sometimes a freak storm and floods in certain places. There is even lightning and thunder when I can still see the sun shining brightly!

One consolation is that perhaps due to the cold weather, most of my plants and all my orchids are blooming.

More flowers...


5. Red Pentas

6. Pink rose


7. Tricolour rose


8. Pineapple flowers

9. Mistletoe Fig
This is the female Ficus deltoidea, common name "Mistletoe Fig", local name "Mas Cotek", This native plant is a shrub which grows wild in the jungles of Peninsular Malaysia. It is now growing in my garden next to my lipstick palm tree. The leaves are glossy green on top but golden yellow and dotted with brown spots on the underside. They do not seem to have flowers and these red berries I guess are the fruits. I am growing it as an ornamental in my garden because I am fascinated with its unusual shape. The plant is an epiphyte that lives on tree tops but it can also thrive on the ground.


10. Santa the magician-comedian

Now that it is still 2 weeks before Christmas, do you have any idea where is Santa Claus? Well here he is at a busy shopping mall in Malaysia making children happy as a magician! Ho Ho Ho...

Besides being a judge for colouring contests, he will also pose as a model for family portraits and photography sessions. In your place/country, what other part-time jobs does Santa do while waiting for the big day to come?

How are you celebrating this Christmas?

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.


Updated 16 Dec 2011:
The names of the orchids has been added in the photo captions.
My grateful thanks to En Ahmad Makarimi of Orchid de Dangau blog.

24 comments:

  1. Your Orchids are beautiful and I think it's fabulous that the Orchid in the first photo has bloomed once more after a little break. It has such pretty flowers. Your weather does sound a little strange at the moment. That's exactly how our early summer weather is here, as we build up to the wet season.

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  2. Such beautiful flowers, that are wonderful shots ..
    Greetings Karin

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  3. Santa here in Adelaide wear shorts and sleeveless since its summer here. Your bloom are lovely.

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  4. Lovely flowers and photos! Have a great day!

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  5. Love the candy striped Dendrobium

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  6. The Pentas flowers like blinking, awesome. Wow my favorite fruit pineapple, didn't know the flower is so good looking. tQ.

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  7. Love your first orchid flower quite positive its purple? hehe. Also love the striped orchid lovely.

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  8. Beautiful photos. The Orchids are lovely but I always like seeing the pineapple blooms.
    Cher Sunray Gardens

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  9. I knew as soon as I clicked your link I would be wowed with orchids and roses and such. It is great seeing the flowers from other climates to add color and a warmth to the season. Lovely photos and have a Happy GBBD!

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  10. LOVE your orchids and of course the roses and pentas! Beautiful photographs, what a joy it must be to visit your garden!
    Happy GBBD :)

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  11. Your orchids and pineapple flower blooms are so beautiful! It is so nice to see some colorful blooms since we are going into winter here.

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  12. Those orchids are just stunning...love 'em!

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  13. Bernie, the news says that our weather at the moment is due to the El Nina effect adding extra bite to our normal year-end Northeast monsoon season :(

    As regards to the Cattleya orchid in the first photo, maybe it didn't bloom because it is playing games with me. Sometimes I talk to this orchid.

    Karin, Eileeninmd, Cher, Donna, Christine, Lee, Scottweberpdx thanks!

    Diana, you have Summer Christmas in Adelaide while we have Evergreen Christmas here in Malaysia ;>)

    Sean, yeah I was attracted by its stripes too.

    Bananaz, pink pentas starry starry eyes blinking and winking. Yes, the first orchid is purple! Striped orchid (image 2 and 3) is purple and image 4 is pinkish white.

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  14. We have almost the same weather these days. It is the cold and the long nights which induced flowering too. If you have another pentas color you will get other colors from those seeds, I can see they have seeds already. Ours just appear on the ground and before we know it there are other colors. However, our whites and violets were all gone last dry season. When I'm home i tend to cut the spent blooms, to encourage more blooms and lengthen its life.

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  15. Christmas is just another ordinary day to me.

    Maybe, more photo shooting?

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  16. Andrea, thanks for the idea. Now, I'll get more colours of pendas.

    Rainfield, if it rains continuously, we will have a Watery or Rainfilled Christmas!

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  17. AB - I'm back, when you steep the leaves of cat's whiskers, how long do you soak the leaves in boiling water? Does it not taste or smell like raw grass? Some people in our area actually planted it for the medicinal value, but I am not really good in taking unusual tastes! But I want sweet basil as fresh tea, i've tried that.

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  18. Nice flower and orchids are so special. The Cattleya is more probably from primary hybrid from cattleya skinneri, cannot find the name...maybe the hybrid is too old, will find and feed back to you soon. The purple stripe orchid is Dendrobium Candy Stripe and the peach color is Dendrobium Suree Peach.

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  19. Andrea, I have already posted the recipe in a comment in your blog post. The taste is very mild. I think it tastes just like Chinese tea. Basil is more strongly scented when compared to Cat Whiskers.

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  20. Makarimi, thank you so much for naming the orchids! I am indeed very very grateful. The first orchid is an offspring a cattleya handed down from my late father in Ipoh. He had it since 1960s. He used to say that it was the same type as in the Singapore currency SGD100 denomination during those days. It will be wonderful if you can find out the name. It does look like Cattleya skinneri.

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  21. My pleasure Autumn Belle. Thanks for mentioned my name here. I really grateful if you can email me the whole picture of the cattleya plant, from there I can find the exact name (try my best to get the name). Most of primary hybrid, normally the flower can be similar to the parentage. If even that is Catt skinneri for sure it is special variant, that why the price is so expensive. Honestly the flower so beautiful ;)

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  22. Your orchid photos are beautiful. I can see why they are such an inspiration to you. I like the pineapple flower which I have never seen before.

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  23. I can totally relate to your excitement about the orchid that finally bloomed after 2 years. It is like meeting an old friend again,right, AB? Happy GBBD!
    Rosie

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