I have not been very active lately with my gardening – I just spend my time weeding and watering, trimming and getting rid of some of the things that are growing a bit too old and are not flourishing.
My butterfly pea flower is doing all right, all along the fence in my backyard. Every morning, I would go and pluck all the flowers and give to my neighbour – she wants to dry them and keep for her daughters who are living elsewhere, not in Sibu. I was doing that myself once and I managed to collect one bottle full. In the end, I gave it to Melissa’s coursemate who is currently teaching in Sibu. I also gave him some seedlings and some seeds that I had collected.
Well, the other day, he shared with me this photograph…
…on Facebook. He said something about it not doing too well initially but it looked like it managed to pull through and should be flourishing from now on. It’s not difficult to plant, not at all and that makes me wonder why those people in the nasi kerabu and Malay kuih businesses would not plant for their own use – instead, they choose to use artificial colouring.
I’ve seen photographs in food blogs and online recipes where they use the flowers for the colouring and I noticed that they used the dried ones. As far as I know, they do not come cheap – I saw it once at a supermarket, RM13.50 for 300 gm! In my neighbour’s words, good things do not come easy and only when we do it ourselves, we would not know how difficult it is. We dry a lot and end up with just a little. I wonder how much she has managed to collect so far. It certainly is a lot easier to plant one’s own and use the fresh flowers.
Going back to Melissa’s coursemate, in his post, he was discussing with his friends, complaining about how their kunyit (turmeric) and serai (lemon grass) never flowered. I’ve yet to see my serai doing that but my kunyit flowers…
…all the time, one after another, sometimes two or three at one go. They say I am very lucky because it is not something that happens so easily and frequently.
For want of something to do during this pandemic that does not look like it is ever going to end, the ladies in the house have started planting vegetables and flowers. I, for one, will not bother to grow anything that is not edible. We’ve yet to get to eat any of the vegetables but I must say that the flowers do look rather pretty.
My girl planted some succulents that do not need much watering and attention and they started flowering…
…in no time at all…
The mum planted this…
…that looks like a daisy but the plant looks kind of different from anything I’ve seen before.
Well, I don’t have to plant any – just like the papaya trees that popped out of nowhere, time and again, there will be plants appearing out of the blue and the other day, I spotted these lovely flowers…
…by the fence. Truly, God works in mysterious ways…
...STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS! 