Friday, March 23, 2012

Garden Growing


A common tailorbird that had flown into the large window at the front of our house, knocked itself out, and then a few minutes later got up and flew off. We hope there are not too many bird accidents. If there are, we may have to rush to finish some curtains to give our flying friends a visual cue of the glass hazard. 


During last year's rainy season, we cut a few branches from neighbors' hibiscus plants, clipped off all the leaves, cut each branch to the length from my elbow to wrist, and then poked them into the wet mud to root. Less than a year later, they are leafy, and some have flowered! We hope to have a nice hibiscus hedge on the east side of our house, along the side with the public sidewalk.


The balcony railing by Landry and our friend Paul.


These orange birds of paradise started off as root stumps -- a gift from a neighbor at our old house. We put them in pots for a few years, and then planted them here under our shower, to drink up our soap and shampoo water from bathing. They are now about two meters tall and happy.


The "moke" bushes on the left are slowly adjusting to our clay-consistency earth. A few of the moke are leafy, others are flowering, but none look particularly happy yet. The plants on the right were mysteriously growing in all weird directions, but then we realized with a few of the bunches that really flourished that each sprout forms a fan of leaves around a central flowering stem.


The neighborhood cats are talented climbers. Spot the one way up in the tree?



This plant, "bua bok" (which translates to mean the lily on the shore), began as a little clump that I got from a coffee shop near our old house.


Rose apples on their way. These "chompu mah miaw" begin as fuzzy pink flowers.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Back in Phra Pradaeng

After a few months away, we are back home.



 Received in the mail a copy of A DAY magazine's February issue, with a feature on Landry.

  


We also came home to the hot and dry cicada season. It sounds like southern France. Villagers walk around with plastic bags at the end of long sticks to catch the cicadas, fry them up and eat them with a little Thai dipping sauce. One of the villagers told me that the male cicadas (in Thai called chakka-chan, which kind of sounds like Jackie Chan) make a lot of noise, but the females taste better because of the yummy eggs near their butts. We've yet to try this local delicacy.