Pandan

My house has a pot of pandan shrubs.  It didn't grow symmetrically. When two of the branches became to heavy and started to slanted to the left, I thought that it will die eventually, but to my surprise, after it slanted to the left, it started to flourish and grow towards the sun. Hahaha, a very good example of plants grow toward the light, can be shown to a primary school student as one of the examples of phototropism for science class.

See, in order to capture as much light as possible for photosynthesis, it defies gravity and grows upwards to the sun to survive. It's just like human beings, against all odds, we will try to make it and survive!

pandan

Aloe Vera Flower

My house have a pot of Aloe Vera plants. When it started to have little Aloe Vera, my mom would cut the old big juicy Aloe Vera out to make Aloe Vera drinks. So, I never knew that Aloe Vera has the ability to flower. So, I was really surprised when I saw spikes growing out of the Aloe Vera plants. 

Aloe Vera Flower

There were two plants on the same pot. I think both flowered at around the same time. By the time I noticed this, some buds already changed colour, not the earliest stage of flowering. I think the earliest stage must look like wheat plant. Hahaha! 

Plant A: early stage of the bloom (10th June 2015)

Plant B: early stage of the bloom (10th June 2015)

In one week time, all the buds bloomed into red / orange flowers. Some of the petals already dropped too. It's so fast.

Plant A: the flowers turning red (17th June 2015)

Plant A: photo taken from the direction of the ground (17th June 2015)

Plant B: the flowers turning red (17th June 2015)

In one more week time, all the petals dropped and only a stick left on the plant, it's quite sad, life's so short!

end of life (25th June 2015)

petals dropped to the Aloe Vera plants (25th June 2015)

My First Foray Into Gardening

May 2011

I reached Japan on March 2011 for a work attachment in Japan for two years duration. Away from home, suddenly I found myself have nothing to do on weekends. So, I planned to develop a new hobby which was gardening!

I didn't fancy flower because it's just for decorating purposes, I planned to plant something edible. After reading from many gardening forums, I decided to plant tomatoes because a lot of people claimed that it's a very easy plant, very suitable for newbies.

After deciding on that, I went to Daiso (there's a Daiso in the Kumamoto Station) after work and bought a plastic pot, pot tray, trowel, a bag of soil and a plant support. Sometimes, this 100 yen shop is like a convenient shop, we can buy almost everything in Daiso or Seria. Then, on a fine Saturday morning,  I cycled to a gardening supermarket to buy tomato seedlings. The supermarket was quite awesome, there were so many seedlings, seeds, gardening tools, soils, flowers, decoration stuffs for garden, etc. There're many kinds of tomato seedlings, finally I settled for a cherry tomatoes and momotaro tomatoes (桃太郎トマト). I bought only 1 pot, so I took a plastic container and punch holes under it and turned it into a pot.

Mango tree

Mango Tree (18th June 2012)

When we moved into our house, my father bought a small mango tree sapling and planted it in front of the car porch. The tree was kind of funny and stubborn maybe.  We didn't get to eat mangoes from that tree until a few years later. After that, depends on the tree’s mood, sometimes it bears fruits, sometimes it don’t. My parents once planned to chop down the tree, but I was against the idea. So, it stayed there. Later, a fungus infection caused most of the leaves to drop, so my father had to trim most of the branches and it became a ‘botak’ tree. The mango tree has a very strong will to live, not long after that, new leaves grew out of the bare branches. That year, we had a bountiful harvest of mangoes. However, due to the heaty effect of the mango, my mom discouraged us to eat. So, I packed many mangoes and gave it to my bosses and colleagues. I was so proud when they said that the mango was very sweet!

(After I came to Japan and tasted the famous Miyazaki mango, I found out that it tasted almost the same with my house’s mango! The only down point for our mango was it was too fibrous.)

Since secondary school, I was so taken with the biodegradable compost thing. So, I would diligently collect the unfinished food, fish bones, peeled skin of fruits, etc to bury under the ground because I believe that those things will degrade eventually. From this, I knew that for the vegetables and fruits, after it degraded, it would give a very fragrant smell. Well, for the meat, the smell was so awful. However, at least it became fertilizer rather than ended up in rubbish dump and emitted methane gas for nothing.

Although the mango tree hasn't bear fruits for a few years, we still keep the tree because it can become a shape before the sunlight enter the living room and keep it cooler.