Roses

As recently published in The Pâdapa Times, I am in love with roses. With the spring in, I thought it’s right time to introduce some to Plantville. Well, today is the day of few words, so I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.

I have no idea what cultivars these roses are - thanks to people at nursery who are not concerned about all that silly (according to them) details. I wish I knew their names - I mean their individual identities.

 (The roses did appreciate the recent spring showers)

The Pâdapa Times

I am excited to announce the publishing of The Pâdapa Times. The Senior Editor, Ms Pratika Redleaf, of Plantville has been planning this for long but she finally came to me with her first article few days ago and I was excited and thought our green friends and we would be interested in what happens in the green world. So here were are: the first publication of The Pâdapa Times. If you’re wondering, what Pâdapa (pronounced Pa as in part, da as in the (dha) water, pa again as in part) which means plants in sanskrit, so it’s The Plant Times to translate it literally.

(Click on the image to enlarge it)

Indecisive…

It’s great to work with plants and soil and his week has been productive – slightly. I wish I get extra time, like an extra twenty four hours in a day to get all my projects done. [SIGH] Anyways, I still have few plants to be repotted with cocopeat.

I’ve been having a strange someone digging my pots off late which would cause serious damage to my plants. Thank God they weren’t fatal, but my heart would break every time I see a plant flopped to a side with one of its branches cut, and the soil mix spread on the floor! Fury would run up my nose and out my ears and I’d so badly want to wring that strange someone’s neck of its head!!

I thought it was the squirrels as I had them creating disaster in the past and tried spraying chilli + garlic + onion extract which did the trick in the past, but the episodes continued no matter what. It would sometimes stop few days and again I’d find a planter or two desecrated. I thought it was the rats by their droppings but the garlic extract should have worked on them I thought. So I tried moth balls and toilet cleaner, which worked for a day or two and the episode continued…

Today when I went to water my plants, I found a HUGE garden lizard run away from behind my hibiscus pot. I saw that that pot was dug – shallowly. Nearby, this poor rose plant was half-uprooted and flopped onto one side. I immediately set her right and secured her well back into the soil.

Now, I’ve never heard of garden lizards causing havoc. My understanding was that they were gardener’s friends. Do garden lizards dig the soil? Or was (s)he hunting for insects n the soil? But how did s(he) manage to get the rose uprooted? Beats me… 

Or, could it be that it is a she and she was finding a spot to lay her eggs or hide her food? May be this is the first time s(he) visited my garden and it was not him/her in the past? I don’t know how to save my planters now. I am confused. I’d love to hear your thoughts…

Well, I also discovered this buddy feeding on my Adenium today.

Do you see him? No? Here's a closeup.

This Adenium was the one gifted by my friend two years ago on my birthday. Would this buddy destroy my Adenium?

Anyone know what kind of caterpillar this is? Do I let him be? Because I don’t want my Adenium destroyed, but I am not ready to kill a future butterfly either.

While taking a closeup of this guy, I discovered a teeny one in another leaf.

Is this guy gonna be a butterfly/moth too? Hope Randy or someone else can identify and help me decide about these two. 

 Oh, I almost forgot. I saw this guy feeding on my Jasmine last week and I was sure that this was a moth, but not cent percent, but I transferred him to a different pot of Jasmine that was not blooming. I forgot all about him and now talking about the other two, it reminded me of this one too. I hope he survived and became a moth/butterfly. Gotta check tomorrow. I am ashamed to say that I don’t know how long it takes a larvae to become butterfly. Off to Google…

Plantville’s back online

Hello everyone!

It’s nice to be back in blogosphere! First of all, I owe you all a sincere apology for going offline for too long. It’s just a mood swing – I guess I should steal Prue’s blog title and call myself Inept Gardener ‘n’ blogger :D.  Though I have been inactive in this blog, my garden was growing big time, then suffered ignorance, many departed Plantville, and finally, they are coming back to shape now. I was blessed with a nephew on October 2010 and I was also busy with my office. My irregular and frequently changing shifts kind of put me into this inactive mode. Now, finally, I’ve decided to get myself a new, regular job and get myself a life! Phew! Wish that day comes soon…

Anyways, as I told you, my sister gave birth to a cute ball of joy who’s now the most important person in our family. I crocheted him a sweater and jacket! YAY! It was fun. Baby projects always are!
Plantville was doing great in the month of June and July. The Amaryllis Lily and Spider Lily were flowering crazily

 

 and so was the cape honeysuckle and Adenium.

 This Hummingbird Vine would grow crazily the moment you give it support. 

 It would twist and turn around the twine in no time and cover the vine with lovely scarlet blooms. What a sight it was! Plantville had strange visitors in July 2010.

Unlikely ones like these lovely dragonflies (?) visited Plantville

  

and I had fun watching them.

Sunflowers and Hibiscus flowered as if it was the end of the world. I even planned to post a blog about them but never got around to doing it. Well, you might get to read that story very soon…

Gerbera too flowered well

and so did Brinjal (eggplant),

but somehow it never yielded fruits.

The mini roses and jasmines did great too.

 And then came the period of ignorance with the onset of rains. The Plantville gardener would hardly water them, prune, or fertilize them. He was irregular. With the onset of cold season, he took up crocheting and knitting in the very little time that he got between office and sleep and would almost always ignore his Plants. He’d occasionally check on them and pick the flowers for his pûja.

With arrival of New Year, things changed. The gardener woke up and began cleaning Plantville. Of course, he had to pay the price of his ignorance. Many departed,

  some fell very sick,

and some were ardently devoted to him.

The good news is, I don’t intend to go back to hibernation mode and have promised myself to sow as much as I can this year. I also plan to launch a crochet and knitting blog titled ‘Cables n Posts’. Will be back soon with more green stories and lookout for the surprise giveaway to celebrate my comeback. :)