Jasmine Plant 2

There are many flowers blooming at the same time for this type of jasmine plant, but again they are not noticeable because the flowers are under the large green leaves. But the scent is good, give a boost to my spirit after I inhale. The petals are thin like tissue paper, but the colour is snow white. 
Only one plant is left in my garden.

Jasmine Plant 1

You won't be able to find a lot of flowers in this tropical plant unless you put in a lot of fertilisers and regularly look after it. That is why we cannot see much attraction of the flowers in our gardens and Parks although the plant blooms throughout the year. The leaves are also very much larger than the flowers. Sometimes, you cannot see the flowers because they are hidden under the leaves.

The Garden Flowers

While the Parks and Gardens in Kuching  are grown with evergreen plants of plentiful green leaves but few flowers mostly, the garden beds in Perth are filled with outstanding multi-coloured flowers for you to appreciate. These perennial plants likely blossom during the spring and dry up during hot summer/winter. 
In Kuching, the plants will be forever green throughout the year. 
Perhaps because of the short existence, the plants may want to make sure we remember them by putting out very beautiful flowers.

My Shy Ugly Dog

Take away your "hand", I want to take your photo.
This dog has a number of tricks. Cannot be he is shy. Every time hearing the female dogs, he jumped up and wanted to get out of the house. 
In fact, he is now seldom at home because outside is such an exciting, lustful and adventurous world.

The Tortoise

Another animal crawled in front of my house gate the same day as my ugly dog barked incessantly. I was wondering where did this fellow come from as the storm drain is 1.2m deep with shallow water. Could a tortise climb vertically 1.2m?

So, I put it into a 200mm deep basin and it shyly hid its head but gradually stretched its head out to check safety.

After dinner, as the place was deserted, the tortoise began its action. When I came back to check, it had disappeared. It climbed up the basin, went through the door and crawled into the shallow house drain. I managed to find it through the water trail and guess. This time I put it into the 600mm deep plastic pail.The next day, it was still inside, it could not escape.

I let it go the next day as it could not move much in the pail and I did not wish to confine and look after it as a pet. I put inside the pond and it disappeared after a while.

Trapped Baby Monitor Lizard

It was supposed to trap the mouse, it ended up a baby monitor lizard was caught. This trap is a slow death trap, any animal sticks onto the gum will die slowly unless you give them a quick killing.
I don't like this kind of trap, it is difficult to get them off the glue without peeling off its skin and imagine how painful it is.
I tried to get it off but the lizard is very fierce, it tried to bite me. I used the steel rod to rip it out of the glue. It bit the steel rod with so much force that I could hear the biting noise. So, don't try to go near to this animal, I am not sure it is poisonous but any bite may become septic any dangerous.

Finally, I got it free and threw into the storm drain in front of my house and let the water dissolved some of the gum, though I doubted it. At least it would not starve to death as the shallow water had a lot of small fish.

Look Like Crown of Thorns Flowers

The plant is not close to Crown of Thorns plant, whether the structure, the stems or the leaves but the flowers look similar, two large red bracts surrounding the small yellow flowers.
Nature does converges to similar flower design suitable for their survival and this plant just copies that.

The Scary Fingers

In a moonlit night, the forest is dark and full of insects' hallowing songs, you walk alone with occasional owl's hair rising screams.

Suddenly, this 7 red fingers like alien's hand appear in front of you and wave to you. What will be your reaction?

Getting Less and Less Chilly Fruits

For the last few months, each time only managed to collect less than 10 fruits from this plant. Is the plant becoming too old to produce? Or is it insufficient nutrients to boost the productivity?

So, fertilisers are really important to ensure bumper harvest, otherwise the farm has to close shop for poor productivity. Urea, phosphate, what else? 

Symbiotic Relationship Between the Mushroom and Heliconia Plant

The more I look on this picture and ask myself why this mushroom grew so huge, it seems that the mushroom forms a symbiotic relationship with the plant by forming a collecting disk with the heliconia leaf, to collect water. 
If you read the book "The Mysterious world of the Human Genome" by Dr Frank Ryan, that our genome has been shaped by various external factors other than own DNA, such as virus, bacteria, environmental, etc, then this mushroom grew so huge as a result of the ability to collect more moisture which changed its genome to evolve into huge mushroom. 
Let see whether will there be more of such big mushroom around ? 
Or is it just one of thing because you won't find another such arrangement!

The Hanging Termite Nest

Slowly, fewer Termite Nests are found in my farm with my conquest of the land.
Poor thing, used to hang happily on the vine free of flood with thousands of inhabitants living in a colony, it is now laid in waste on the ground. I wonder where had the inhabitants migrated. 
Far away, it also looks like a grieving face.

Malayan Bush Brown (mycalesis fusca fusca)

The butterfly is small but it is eye catching due to it orange brown colour. It has nine false eyes on the wing.

Black Veined Tiger Butterfly (Danaus melannippus hegesippus)

This majestically butterfly like to show off its black and white colour of the wings during the fruiting season of the water apple in my garden. But why its tail turns orange as if going to fire up?

The Great Eggfly Butterfly (Hippolimnas bolina bolina)

This dark brown butterfly with white spots can be found everywhere in Sarawak and almost throughout the year.
What is it watching at ? The moon?

The Little White Butterfly

Even it is small, it can be easily noticed among the brown leaves because of the white colour. Why does it goes against self safety to produce such colour ? Perhaps, it has other skills, such as fast flight and ability to hide in bush.
Can you find the butterfly?

Unknown dry leaf Butterfly

It is not list in the 300 types of Singapore Butterflies. It looks like Palmfly but the colour is of light to dark brown. It has seven white dots compared to one on the palmfly, on the underside of the wing.
The wings seem to be made up of three layers or wrinkled.

Niger (Orsotriaena meduscinerea)

The butterflies began to fly around during the last few months in my farm. 
Niger is one of the most common types. But sometimes, you find a little variation of the number of false eyes. It has few to many big and small false eyes. This one has four big eyes and a small false eye on the underneath side of the wings.

The Unique Base of a Hill Tree

This tree is almost 20m high and is about 45 years old , after my parent abandoned the Farm.

Most of the hill trees anchor deeply into the soil in order to survive, which means larger base trunk and deep foundation. But this tree has smaller trunk base but large root system to stabilise the foundation. So it shows that Nature tried various methods to survive and the least fit ones will disappear along our long history of life.

Of course, the change of surrounding, such as erosion of soil would also cause this scenario. But it occupies a lot of the land, shall I cut away the roots or cut down the tree? 
It is too near at my proposed little house.

Crepe Ginger

You look lonely and miserable but still looks "hot red" among the wild wild green bush.

Guess these Natural Products

One red fruit and three seeds, what are they?

Very red fruit is from a 20m tall wild tree in my farm.
The smallest seed is chrysanthemum seed while the other two larger seeds are sunflower seeds.

Car Accidents Along Borneo Trunk Road

Accidents occur more frequent nowadays. Within the 365km drive, I saw two accidents along the Borneo trunk road. Is it our drivers getting more blurred or the road getting bad?
You won't feel safe even you try to follow the traffic rules as some drivers may drive into you.

Gone in the Wind- My First Shed in My Farm

After not maintaining for six months, my first shed at the hill is blown down by strong wind and grasses/bushes take over the place.
Humans are battling with Nature in order to be the Master of the Earth. But are they really winning?

Aglaeonema Seeds

Finally the seeds are exposed as the fruit over-ripe and opens up.

These seeds can be used to grow new plants.

New Area of Vines and Liana

Now again reaching a new area of vines and liana plants near the river and lowland valley, I have to make a foot path through this difficult vegetation. Cutting these vines requires careful attention as I had hurt myself a few time because of wrong directions and springing back.
These vines are like cobwebs of the forest, preventing large animals to get through!

The Fruits of Aglaonema hybrid

This plant grows well in my farm under the tall trees that it started seeding for the first time a few weeks ago. Normally, I would propagate this plant using cutting. Now, I can use the seeds to produce these plants.

The White Moth

The colour is not match able to the environment, the predators can easily find the insect.
But never mind, it has other way to protect itself, the irritable powder!

Where is the brown Butterfly?

It matches quite well to the brown dropping leaves. Predators would not be able to find it at a glance. It took me some time before I found it and took the picture. Can you find the butterfly?

My Ugly Dog

Ha, dare to sleep so soundly! Not scare of the monitor lizard?

Yesterday, a large monitor lizard  about 2/3 of his size, entered my house and he battled with the lizard for 15 minutes. He managed to bite the lizard's tail and hurt him. The monitor lizard vomited out part of the chicken flesh it had swallowed earlier and the two of them lied down in the middle of our entrance, panting, snarling and glaring at each other. Finally, my son managed to push the lizard out of the house while my daughter and maid were screaming. The drama ended after the lizard disappeared into the large drain.

Bloody Drink

This glass of drink looks delicious. But, it is actually part of my blood from the 20litre bucket after I soaked my bloody towel.

I cut my hand vein during farm clearing last week and blood spurt out like spring water. I tried to stop with tissue papers but ended up all red. So, I used the towel to tie up the wound and rushed to the nearest clinic. Unfortunately, it was lunch time, the glass door was locked. I knocked at the door and heard the voice that it was lunch time. Yes, lunch time from 1pm to 2pm, I saw the notice. I was there at 1.04pm, so bloody unfortunate. I had been bleeding for ten minutes. So I tried knocking the door again, I was hoping that any medical personnel would at least helped me to stop the bleeding. Unfortunately, no respond. 
In order not to waste time, I quickly got up the car and drove to Sarikei town which was 12km away. Five minutes had been wasted for stopping at this Clinic and so did my blood. I wondered how long I could take before I went into shock for excessive loss of blood. I tightened the towel on my wound and drove with one hand towards the bigger town. It took ten minutes and the blood also stopped flowing. I went back to my home and soaked the towel inside the pail. This was how this bloody drink come about. I tried to use alcohol to clean the wound, concerned about getting septic. I was a mistake, blood oozed out again. I quickly used another towel to press against the wound until the bleeding stopped. Then I went to private clinic not far away. This doctor cleaned the wound and the nurses dressed my wound. It costed me US$12.

In this country, we have a lot of parasites and blood suckers who do not actually work but getting fat salaries, and spend a lot of time drinking coffee , so this drink is for them.

Hanging and Gliding Wasp 

I always see birds and insects flying in the air. But to see an insect hanging and gliding in the air is really rare occasions. This wasp just did that in my garden. It hanged like an ufo in the air and glided forwards and stopped suddenly. 
Perhaps aeronautics can learn from this insect how to make latest planes. 

Eugenia oleina

The plant can be quite attractive during this time, from drought to sudden frequent rains. The plants in my garden are blooming with orange red leaves and can be seen far away.