September is here....

This year's Merdeka Day was really muted.... Raya overwhelmed it and pushed it to 16th September, which I feel should rightly be our 'Merdeka" cos Sabah and Sarawak joined Malaya to form Malaysia on that day, 48 years ago. As in many things these days, semua boleh diaturkan, including pushing backward Independence Day... unless this is a permanent push.

My long suffering orchid plant finally flowered. I thought it was not going to make it through the last heat wave when almost all its leaves had this yellowy tinge. The cooler weather lately has brought forth colour in the sea of green.

My bush bean finally flowered. As of this evening, I could see tiny beans growing. Monay, if you are reading this, we are waiting anxiously for the first fruits. But I am going to keep the first few for seeds... after so many failed germinations. BTW, my lil one has also germinated the Alyssum seeds.. there are tiny seedlings now. We are hoping to see them grow too.

This is Mark, the latest addition to our hodgepodge pond. He was found right outside our house after a particularly heavy downpour by our help. We put him in a small aquarium at first, and he made so many attempts trying to crawl up. I pitied him and thought of releasing him into the river.

But he's still really tiny.

Finally, after a few days... we thought we'd keep him. Our gal christened him Mark. We had a small tortoise many years ago named Tobias but he died after I fed him with cabbage. He was Son's tortoise. Apparently he couldn't withstand the chemicals in the cabbage... see how laced our vegetables are. Anyway, Other Half built a little platform in our pond for Mark to rest whenever we let him in there to play. He hasn't quite gotten used to it but he's quite happy to swim in the pond. He also seems to enjoy helping himself to the moss in the pond too... So, we'll probably keep him for a while before releasing him back into the wild...

And this is the little patch that Other Half and I just cleared over the weekend, after the long beans were done. I have pineapples growing there too but they don't seem to be looking very good after being hidden among the bean plants the last few months. Because I bury all kinds of fruit peelings in this patch, a honey dew plant grew...

And among those vines which looked kinda weather beaten was this and a couple of smaller lookalikes... honey dew melon. I had one plant which grew there the other time which had a fruit but it didn't grow well. We're keeping our fingers crossed for this one... 8)

September is here.. year end is also coming. School will also be reopening soon....