A Green Thumb - DH's Special Gift

One of the things that truly amazes me about DH is her ability to nurture nature. By nature, I'm specifically referring to flora - plants, trees, shrubs, vines, etc. Most folks would probably refer to it as having a "green thumb" or that special ability to make plants grow. But to me, it's a gift.

DH has demonstrated this numerous times. She's fond of taking cuttings from plants (mostly flowering) that catches her fancy in gardens of places we visit. And I would jokingly threaten her to stop or else I call the guard in the premises.

When we went on a road trip this summer for Visita Iglesia, we had lunch in a place called Cafe Casa Rap in San Jose Batangas. In that place's garden, most of us in the road trip were simply awed by these flowers.

Here's a picture of the flower from Wikipedia. I later found that this plant is called "Thunbergia Mysorensis" although it's also known as "Clock Vine", "Ladies Slippers", "Doll Shoes" and "Brick and Butter" Vine.

Update on the Millionaire's Vine

It's been a few weeks since I've planned on putting up a Millionaire's Vine on our wall. So far the vine has held up and now has 6 or 7 aerial roots. I enjoy looking at it everyday and seeing its progress.

It has still a long way to go though to completely cover the vine supports I recently assembled, but I'm guessing the wait will all be worth it when the vine's "curtain" will cover the wall.


You might ask, where did DH get this plant (we hardly buy plants)? She took it as a cutting a long time ago when we visited the Blumen Resort last year.

Finding a Spot for the Cypress Vine

After much inspection of the wall, I decided to locate the Cypress Vine on the whitish post which is at the center of the blank wall. I thought the color of foliage and flowers would create a good contrast against the white color. Here's a photo showing that part of the wall.

Garden Grass Shears

A couple of weeks ago I bought a pair of garden grass shears from Starmall Alabang. I've been looking for a suitable pair for a while now and I found this pair to be easy on the hand. They're made in Taiwan with the name AMES and cost Php359.75.

Cypress Vine or Ipomoea Quamoclit

One of the ornamental vines that we considered planting to cover our blank wall is the Cypress Vine. Simply having just the Millionaires Vine up there sort of looks bland.

Anyway, DH was able to get some seeds from a mature fruit on a robust plant that she saw near the kids' school. I've not personally seen this plant but DH says it has pretty tiny red flowers. Here's a pic from uniprot.org.