Pure Oxygen Generators: November 2015

Sunday, November 15, 2015

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day

I have always been forgetting GBBD. Sometimes i remember when i see posts of my friends, and the meme at Maydreams Garden is already very full. So i opted to just forego with a promise to myself that i will not forget again next month. However, forgetting seems habitual. Then this time i already drafted this 3 weeks from the mid-month. I hope i will remember to post, hahaha!

Officially, we are still within our rainy season, but rain has already been dwindling. Our temperatures are at the lower 30Cs with Heat Index even higher than that, as if it is already at the height of the dry season. Climate change is manifesting so well with us, and El Nino fully aggravates it. At least our flowers and plants are still lingering with their flowers, unlike when they are in temperate zones, that cold front or frost will totally obliterate them in a few blows. So i am giving you our present garden status.

D Hedges

I am posting both my mother's biodiversity garden and my hoya garden.

It looks invasive but who cares, white is lovely, Alternanthera ficoidea 'Snow in the Mountain'.
We just trim them when time allows. You will see some invaders there too,
that green vine is a misguided sweet potato.

Ixora coccinea never fails to show off, and is a favorite of the butterflies.

above is the wider angle shot of that area

Asystasia intrusa favorably hides a wire fence, serving also as its trellis

Crossandra infundibuliformis gets lovelier too during the rainy season

Alternanthera ficoidea 'Party Time'

Individual Flowers

a terete vanda remnant of an old hobby

we also have some roses

Chrysothemis pulchelia - we have a lot of this as it has an enlarged root that lies dormant during the dry season and ressurect again during the rainy season.

a lovely lily, Hippeastrum reticulatum, flowers all year unlike most of the hippeastrum that only flowers once a year

Artemisia scoparia, also lovely when in hedges, also favorite intoxicating potion by some butterflies

Duranta erecta

kamantigui or Impatiens balsamina. We have different colors before but it seems like only the violet and the whites remain with us now.

red Salvia

This Sanchezia speciosa is a new plant from our old mother plant which has been with us for several years now, allowed to grow fully during the wet season and hedged back before the end of the dry season

My Hoyas

GBBD is not complete without my hoyas, which has been occupying all my weekends. I started with a few species, but its addicting properties become so virulent that i now have a lot of species in my collection. This addiction is also contagious that i have friends now who are also deeply into it. Even my Facebook photos have its share of virulence, affecting some FB users who are not my former friends. Now they become my hoya friends. I still have many which are in bloom, but i intentionally refrain from posting them. They deserve another post.

Hoya diversifolia

Hoya buotii (purple)

Hoya buotii (yellow)

Hoya imperialis

GBBD

Nature Notes

Sunday, November 8, 2015

Hoya imperialis

Hoya imperialis is a bit difficult for me to know well. It has been with me for almost 2 years and yet i still cannot understand what it fully wants to perform fully. I am aware that it hasn't received its full needs, there are three umbels that always start with many buds. Many of the buds abort at different stages of growth. But at least there still are a few flowers that continue to open. I guess it doesn't like water more than it needs, at the same time it doesn't want to experience even a short dryness at all. In other words, it is difficult, just difficult.

But when it opens, even just only a flower will get your heart, and it really is awesome! Moreover, it stays there for 8 days. My sister says it looks so mysterious, to the brink of a bit scary at night because it is different-looking among most of the hoyas. The diameter is around 2 inches without stretching those corollas. For me, it just is other-worldly!