You don’t bring me flowers…

I was delighted when I saw my mint flowering…

…the other day. Generally, I do not have flowers in my garden – I would only plant things that I can use in my cooking or are edible so whatever flowers there may be are purely incidental or coincidental.

However, I have decided that I could do with a bit of colours in my life, not all green and I started working on this…

…what I call my floral circle.

These…

have yet to flower…

…but I think I will have to keep an eye on it. There were some lilies originally and my missus went and planted these at that same spot. They grew fast and furious and the lilies did not stand a chance against them. I have since planted the bulbs elsewhere in my garden and they do not seem to be doing too well – it has been a long time but they have yet to flower.

I have planted a couple of periwinkle seedlings here too and they are starting to flower…

I don’t know where it came from originally – they just appeared out of the blue.

My missus planted these balsam plants as well a long time ago and the ones I have in the circle look very “fertile”…

…but they have yet to flower. They are called cheng kak hua in Hokkien or fingernail flowers and are believed to be a natural remedy for fungal growth in toe nails. I had that problem once and a distant relative by marriage, a doctor in Australia prescribed some medicine for it – he said it was not a big problem just that the toe nails were a ghastly sight. Well, I went and googled and saw a list of the side effects of the medicine so of course, I did not bother to go and buy and take it. Thankfully, for reasons unknown, the problem just disappeared by itself eventually and because of that, I have never tried these flowers so I do not really know whether it works or not.

These were weeds that grew out of the cracks in my driveway and I took some to transplant in a more orderly manner and they have been growing well all this while. The purple flowers…

…are very nice but sadly, they will bloom in the morning and wither away when it gets a bit too hot. The good thing is they flower in abundance and there will be quite a lot at any one time every day.

I got the cuttings for this giant hibiscus…

…from my girl’s school in the jungle. The mother plant that I planted in a big pot is doing well and I planted some cuttings from there here and they have started to flower. What caught my attention way back then was their size – bigger than a saucer, around the size of the plate by the side for your dinner roll in a western table setting or a bit bigger!

I do hope I will be able to add more flowering plants to the aforementioned circle so if anybody has some seedlings to give away, I shall be glad to accept and take them off your hands…