Ni Hao

I just adore this can. I keep it even though its contents had long been digested. Truth to tell, i bought this for the container and not for the assortment of biscuits. Yes, i am attached to it. How can i not be? It has lovely carnations on it among colorful birds painted on a gorgeous red background.  What a splash! 

When drudgery bites, birds and flowers are two of nature's reminders to me of things sublime.

Papaya!

Instead of the more commonly known flora, i decided to feature other flowers usually not noticed.  One example is the papaya flower. Yes, the flower and not the fruit. I myself have dismissed these blossoms, appreciated them only because it heralded the sought after dessert fruit which i love.

The flowers according to botanists have sexes. The male, the female, and a third sex (so inclusive, this plant) -- hermaphrodites. Interesting. If your papaya tree has male flowers it will not get pregnant (not produce fruit) as they say. Female flowers on the other hand, when not pollinated, will just drop off from the tree. It is the hermaphrodites that give you fruit. 

A closer inspection makes me appreciate not only the fruit but also its unassuming flowers. One day, i will try to eat them as well. Should this surprise you? In Indochinese kitchens, the buds of the papaya are blanched in hot water to remove its bitter taste and then stir-fried with eggplant and some condiments. Imagine your dinner table laden with a papaya dish, papaya salad, and chilled ripe papaya to cap off that meal. Papaya!

Peanut Plant

A distant cousin of the edible peanut, this ornamental gives credit more to the shape of its flowers for its name. This plant is popular as groundcover in urban landscaping. They spread fast and dot the landscape with lovely yellow sparks -- like concealer makeup for the ground's face. This makes one's walks along pathways a more pleasant one.

It is low maintenance and hardy in the face of drought. Hmmm, how wonderful that they can exude such attractiveness with so little care. They are consistent, too. I have yet to come across such plants bearing other colors. They seem to have laid claim to yellow forever.

Lavender Grace for the Morning

One of the perks of living in the suburbs is the peace and quiet of an early morning walk. We live very close to a park which is hardly ever manicured. The grass grows in wild abandon --- all the easier for my dog's droppings to be out of sight.  

Noticed that the flowers in the park (that of the grass, too) were all in the lavender palette. I connected to that -- it tells me my day will be one of harmony.

“When hope is fleeting, stop for a moment and visualize, in a sky of silver, the crescent of a lavender moon. Imagine it -- delicate, slim, precise, like a paper-thin slice from a cabochon jewel.
It may not be very useful, but it is beautiful.
And sometimes it is enough.”  

― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

White Ginger

Tropical storm again in these islands. The rains are once more doing their job of getting the dust off the air, the dirt off the streets, and gifting us with a whiff of negative ions. What's more, the White Ginger flowers are only happy to come out in wet weather.

Known locally as the Camia, its delicate white petals are extraordinarily ambrosial. I included the blurry shot for you to imagine it giving off its perfume.

Here's how i got my stash today: husband and i went to market together. In the fish section of all places, i smell something pleasant. I look down and i see a little girl hawking the last of her garlands to me so that she may have money to buy snacks for school tomorrow. I was only too glad to oblige. Helping a kid earn while combating fish smells, at the same time having the senses of touch and smell gratified. Good stuff.

In Cuba, the Camia is known as the Mariposa Blanca or White Butterfly Flower. I can imagine women in the olden days donning the blooms as perfume. Today, one need only go to their favorite beauty supply outlets to get lotions and colognes in variants of this scent.

La Hoya Carnosa

My fingers once squeezed these fleshy flowers and leaves out of sheer delight. Its waxy and leathery feel made it seem unreal, like plastic. Do you also have that compulsion, to touch and pinch flowers and plants to find out if they are real or fake? My mother, a consummate gardener once caught me doing just that and reprimanded me by pinching my butt. Not that i did not appreciate the beauty of the plant -- i just wanted confirmation.

What also struck me about the flowers were the stars in the middle which i tried to delicately extract so that i could pin them to my ear lobes as earrings. I wish i had this climbing on my porch now. We used to have it on trellis in our garage back in the province. Come to think of it, i have not seen such plants for a long, long time now.

• More known as the Wax plant or Porcelain flower, the Hoya as my mother called it (she liked to familiarize herself with scientific names ) is found to be an air purifier around the house.