Saturday, December 11, 2010

Rainbows, Black Clouds and Strong Winds.....!

We almost go hiking again today, but had to turn back because it started to rain......! We saw  a  rainbow on our way home,  the rain had not reached our place yet . Now it looks like the storm is coming after a small dosage of sunshine.......



Okay, now it had started to rain........drip, drip, drip....nice, cool and breezy.







For nothing better to do, I am putting up  my Serissa  Foetida plant (posted 28th October 2010)  with its first single bloom. Yeah  it has its first bloom yesterday, and today the flower is still looking good.  Imagine  my delight upon seeing the many new buds as well . I can't wait to see  if this plant will live up to its  name  - " Tree of  A Thousand Stars" !  Maybe this first round of blooming won't be many  flowers. Anyway  I like the flower as it is so small and really dainty - very pretty indeed .  Take a look. 



To end this blog - have a look at my collage of  my first love and favourite. Yea ....just playing with photograph editing.....


Friday, December 10, 2010

A Practice Target........(update: 1st March 2011 : Tawny Coster)

This handsome  fella has been coming to visit .... finally I manged to 'persuade' it to be  my photography practice target.....Cool model, isn't he ? Perhaps it is a she ....probably looking for a place to lay her eggs. I  really need to read more on these beautiful creatures since they are one of the more frequent visible visitors these days......Then I will have names to call  them....
 
Not easy to arrange these  shots.....looks like I need to learn more on photo inserting and editing.  Actually I started  off with 8 photos.  So  I will stop here before I lost more.  Very troublesome to keep going back to insert them back whenever they get deleted somehow.   Sorry this is  what   I can manage for this post....sigh !



Update : 1 st March 2011 

Now I have some names for some of  butterflies visiting my garden.  Just hope I do not ID them wrongly though....! Anyway now that I have read up a bit on these butterflies and their life cycle, I realize now that this fella after visiting must have laid some eggs .  Below are the caterpillars hatched ..... ugly creatures with spines all over,  they look dangerous and threatening, not friendly at all. 

Actually they were nasty little fellas - they ate up my blue passion plant, and practically destroyed it. I had no choice but to trim the whole plant down after they were done!  Luckily they did not infest my passion fruit plant. 

Wind Chimes


It rained intermittently these few days, even though  some days it is blistering hot.   I always welcome the cool and windy weather, a good change from the heat!


My wind chimes are working overtime. One day I want to collect all sorts of wind chimes, right now I  just have three -  the clay  (from  Langkawi),  the metal  (Kek Lok Si, Penang)  and the bamboo ( Bali, Indonesia).  The bamboo wind chime produces a hollow sound ..... a dull tone that evokes something from the heart when the breezy wind brushes against them.  Takes me back to the holiday we had in Bali where the people are  so close to nature.

The  melodious tin-gin-ling sounds from the  clay chime  and metal chimes are somewhat  of  a higher pitch.   How does one aptly describe the  sounds from  these  chimes when  the wind  plays on them ?   Seductive,  Haunting, Mesmerizing , Soothing ..?  I am  at a loss. Simply that  they just pulsate with life seems so lame, so inadequate .....!  Interesting objects and credit goes to the wind chimes makers, they are great.  I guess to design these instruments would need some sort of measurements and knowledge of music to get the sounds right, to  bring  such pleasure to the owners.  I remember when I wanted to buy the wind chimes, I had a hard time choosing.......all played beautiful sounds.....and each more mesmerizing than the other.   In the end, I thought --- if I hang it up, I probably won't see it, just can hear the sounds.  So I just selected with my eyes closed ....!

 

I am not sure exactly why I  had this sudden impulse to collect wind chimes. Why do people collect them anyway?  People surely must collect them for they are sold  in most tourist  shops and most shops in town.  So I  did some checks from my best source.....!  Great.... so many sites offering wind chimes for sale.  And I never knew wind chimes have significance in Feng Sui  (I am not what one would call a Feng Sui  believer :- ). Anyway for those who might suddenly decide to collect wind chimes, check this site out .....http://www.suite101.com/content/feng-shui-wind-chimes-a266478, just for interest if not for anything else. 

So it is not a good idea to collect too many wind chimes ..... Well, as they say, see how it goes. If  I come across some unique wind chime  in the shop  that won't let me walk away .....