Stare what stare?!

This cat was hanging around the plants at Mutter's teacher friend's garten. She was browsing every plant, as if seeking breakfast. She was not very happy to see me stalking her.

Making my own tomato seeds

I was reading You Grow Girl, which was basically a collection of gardening advice and tips from yougrowgirl.com. The one tip that arrested my attention was how to make your own tomato seeds from eh.. tomatoes?

So what I did was to scrape off the pulp as much as possible off the seeds and dump them into water. I soaked the seeds for 3 days, pouring off the water and flotsam everyday before replenishing with new water. At the end of three days, all the seeds at the bottom of the jar were the viable seeds.

I dried them on a plate. However B仔 told me that there were a lot of fruit flies flying around the seeds. Frustrated (and thinking the seeds were no longer viable), I threw the whole lot into a peat pot... Guessing what?

I had 11 seedlings. Ok, 4 died so far, but at least we know that this method works!

A Growing "Picture"

Art Friends had this frame + canvas offer last year. I bought three, but didn't use any of the frames to surround my completed paintings. I think one of them became the duckie I sent to Germany for Tante H, another became the Mr Bear. So I had them hanging around, taking up space. I wanted to recycle them for decorative purposes but wasn't sure what to.

I suddenly had an idea. Why not put a little flower pot on each of the frame so it looks like I am framing a growing flower. I tried to find rectangular pots so that I can fit it perfectly on the frame, with nothing protruding. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find any, so I bought little flower pots instead.

What you need is the following:
A leftover wooden frame, a little flower pot, 2 screws, acrylic paint, sandpaper (realized belatedly, as you can see, it was missing from the foto below) and portulaca. 

First I measured the distance between 2 of the drainage holes, then used a rule to find the middle of one inner side, 9.5cm, so I measured 1.1cm from the middle, and then I tested screwing the screws into the wood, so that I would have an easier time later when I screw the flower pot on.

So I painted the frame a metallic blue, the painted the flowerpot a hot pink. Had a hard time making the color stay, then realized that I should have sandpapered the surface. You'd think I remember after all that nightmare painting of the chandelier. 

Then I screwed the little pot onto the wood, and then put a little bit of the gingham cloth to filter the drainage holes. I put in some of the remaining peat and plucked a bit of my portulaca to fit into the pot. That's when I realized the other portulaca variety I had had been attacked by aphids. Sh*t. I was wondering why it was doing poorly, and now I know. I have a little bit of it left in another pot, so probably will transplant it into the pot when I chuck out the old plant, aphids, soil and all. Sigh.

My heart is broken

I hadn't posted in a while because my new camera had a lens error (which made me very sad) and while I was at work on Monday, my little town experienced strong winds so much so that my little sunflower seedlings which I had been cultivating, bent over in defeat.

I put them outside in the L-shape because they get better sunlight there. Unfortunately when the chilli plant was thrown out, there was no more natural wind break standing in front of the smaller plants in the corridor. So they were extremely vulnerable to the insane sudden wind.

Depressing is not sad enough a word to describe how I feel. Especially since it had been bloody hot in Singapore since last week, and I was totally feeling it because our air-con went kaput.

 

Blumen @ Mittenwald, Deutschland

I have been borrowing books on container gardens, and was vaguely confused but impressed on why so many different types of plants were arranged into a pot, sort of like a ever growing arrangement. How in the world do they know how to water them, esp since different plants have different watering needs?

Then I recalled this foto I took in Mittenwald while travelling around the Füssen area. Mittenwald used to be a place where violin makers congregated for their art. There was a giant wooden violin sculpture to commemorate this.

I don't know what flower this was, but it's really pretty isn't it? It's a close-up on the container flowers.

Sunflower in the Bathroom

I bought this window mosaic kit a long time ago when the art shop at Harborfront was having its closing down sale. So one day while enjoying my favorite Korean drama (sobs! it ended!), I started sticking everything together. Luckily I kept the original sticky sheet that stuck the mosaic pad, so when I was done, I just covered it over the tiles, to make sure nothing drops out. 

When I was done, I stuck it to the bathroom wall. Not bad right?

Mr Bunny Ears Cactus

This little guy was rescued from the corner of Mutters garten. Yes, he was one of the aloe vera + cactus grown by the predecessor who rented the garden, and was very lucky not to be chucked out by Mutter and gang when they took over. He, together with the crazy aloe veras, were hauled home by me. 

When he was sitting in time-out at a corner of Mutters garden, he seemed to stop growing. So I was shocked when he started sprouting a new green growth at the top of his head after being put by me at the balcony. At first I was sure it was a flower, but slightly disappointingly, it was a new ear(?).

After living me with for about 1 year (I moved into the apartment around the same time, even though I bought it 2 years ago), he started to grow another two more ears. And now I have a bunny eared cactus.

Recently looking at it carefully, one of the ears seemed to be growing a new growth again. This is quite alarming because he is starting to be too tall for his pot already. Mutter said I should just break off the ears and replant them. She also said to chuck him outside at the L-shape because it is apparently bad fengshui to have a cactus in the house. Mr Bear also agreed about this.