Visitors In My Garden

Having a garden in my home country Philippines is one of the best things I have done for myself and for my environment. Although I am not there always, as I am a traveler, I see to it that my garden is well taken care of. It is well taken care of by my kind and loving cousin when I´m not there and I am glad that I have somebody whom I can trust to. I call this garden as my sanctuary and a heritage from my late loving mother. God bless her where ever she is now. The flowers that are planted there are all dedicated to her and we bring these beautiful flowers every time we visit her grave.

A huge butterfly hanging on a plant.

Since I started planting flowers in my front yard in 2011, natural visitors come walking and flying in. Well, not only flying but also crawling. Butterflies, humming birds and dragonflies of different sizes and colors are enjoying their "flight" since that year I discovered my green thumb.

A butterfly sipping the nectar of Zinnia flower.

Whenever I am in my house, I drink my first creamy black tea at the garden table while thinking what other things I can do to my garden. I enjoy listening to the sounds of the birds humming on the branches of my star fruit, guava and pomelo trees. Butterflies and dragonflies on the other hand are flying from flowers to flowers. The butterflies love the nectar of Zinnias, Cosmos, Sapphire Showers and Lantana Camara flowers. Some butterflies are flying with their small babies. Every time I notice these, I silently walk to them like a paparazzo with a digital or a video camera  in my hand. I know that some neighbors who noticed me in that behavior thought I am crazy. I don´t mind.

A beautiful bird resting in a branch of bougainvilla.

Another beautiful butterfly sipping the nectar of Zinnia.

A dark brown butterfly hanging on a Sapphire Showers plant.

A snake crawling in the Guava tree
.

I don´t know the names of the butterflies, the bird and the snake above. I hope you can help me with this. The butterflies and birds are getting plenty in my garden but I hope a snake will never come again.

                                                      Butterfly in my tropical garden.

Thanks for reading my garden blog and I will be happy to see your comment below. Have a beautiful Sunday and a new productive week ahead. Take care;-)

Here´s a link to my garden: http://thelmaalberts.hubpages.com/hub/The-Flowers-In-My-Garden-A-Photo-Gallery

Copyright 2015 © Thelma Alberts, All Rights Reserved

5 Easy To Grow Flowers In My Garden

I think planting in a tropical country like Philippines is more easier than planting in a cold country like Germany. You know why? It is because my flower plants in my balcony here in Germany are more difficult to keep alive than when I planted in my yard in the Philippines. There, I only have to throw seeds to the ground or in a hole in the pots and they grow. I have a green thumb there than here in my adopted country. 

Here are 5 easy to grow flowers in my garden.

1. Moss Rose

Moss Rose or Portulaca is one of the most easiest flower I have grown. I planted every where but mostly as  boundaries to some boring plants where I thought Portulaca could give life and vibrant colors to the view. 

Just a few cuttings planted in the ground like the photo below and watered them. They loved the full sun and mostly opened their flowers at around 10 in the morning that was why they were and still are also called 10 O´clock flower.

Moss Rose or Portulaca

2. Lantana Camara

Lantana Camara is also called Otot-Otot ( Otot means farting in Bisayan language) in my home country Philippines as the smell of this flower stinks. This flower is very ornamental and easy to care for. Just plant a cutting of Lantana Camara without leaves on the ground or pot, water it and voila, it will grow fast. This plant loves full sun, too.

Lantana Camara 

3. Turmeric Plant

My cousin had accidentally found out the name of this plant growing in our garden when she was searching acne cure online. It was a surprise that what I planted from the root rhizome was one of the healthy spices that I was using in my kitchen here in Germany. Some of these plants were growing near our fence and we did not planted them. Maybe some birds brought the seeds in the garden and they just grew by their own. 

Turmeric Plant I planted from rhizome

4. Cosmos

My brother gave me the seeds of Cosmos a few years ago after I told him about wanting to have the seeds from the ornamental highway plants. I have seen these beautiful flowers along the sides of our town highway. We did not know the name of the plant yet when I planted the seeds and so I was searching online after taking a photo of the flower. 

This is the most easiest flower I have planted. When the Cosmos flowers got brown and wilted, I harvested the seeds and just threw the seeds to the places I wanted them to grow. The seeds that felt on the ground propagated themselves. 

Yellow Cosmos, Red Bougainvillea and Dona Sirikit 

5. Zinnia Elegans

Zinnia Elegans is one of my favorites. I brought the seeds from Germany and I did not believe that Zinnias could grow in the Philippines as I have not seen one yet before that. I was glad Zinnias grew well and I had to do trial and error. I found out then that when Zinnias were planted, they should stay in the same place as transplanting them was killing them. They love full sun as well and butterflies are loving them, too.

                            Zinnias Elegans

I hope you like this blog and please comment, tweet, pin  or share this to your online account. I would love to hear from you my readers. Thanks for your visit.

Here´s my link to my garden hub and to my  main writing site.

http://thelmaalberts.hubpages.com/hub/The-Flowers-In-My-Garden-A-Photo-Gallery

http://thelmaalberts.hubpages.com/

Cosmos in the  vase.

                                  
                            Copyright 2015 © Thelma Alberts, All Rights Reserved

Typhoon Hit My Tropical Garden

Every year, my garden had to suffer from the monsoon rain, typhoon and flood in my home country. Every year, some flowers and other plants were destroyed. Either cut off by the strong wind or uprooted from the ground. Well, it made me sad but what could I do? Nothing besides accepting the fact that nature is sometimes cruel. Then, I tried to save what I could or else I have planted new ones.

One of the plants that the typhoon uprooted in my garden was the papaya plant that had 21 pieces of fruits. Yes, I counted them. Mostly were still green and unripe. 

This was one of the ripe papayas  that we were able to eat right after we gathered the papayas from the garden. It was so delicious as it ripen from the plant itself.

This was how it looked inside when it was cut through lenghtwise. It had a lot of seeds and some of these seeds were planted in my garden. I hope the new papaya plants will be having new fruits when I´ll be back in my garden again.

Thank you Guys for reading this blog. Please comment below. You are of course free to share, pin, tweet, etc. this blog to wherever you want it to be. Happy weekend.


Here are some links for what I did with the papaya fruits from my garden.

http://thelmaalberts.hubpages.com/hub/My-Homemade-Papaya-and-Mango-Body-Scrubs-and-Facial-Masks

http://thelmaalberts.hubpages.com/hub/How-To-Make-A-Healthy-and-Delicious-Fruit-Salad

http://thelmaalberts.hubpages.com/hub/Fruit-Snack-Mix-Recipe

Copyright 2015 © Thelma Alberts, All Rights Reserved

Bougainvillea, A Beautiful And Easy To Grow Plant

I grew up with different kinds of bougainvillea plants. Those were the first flowers I knew of  as a kid besides bananas and coconuts. I still remember the bougainvilleas my late mother planted in the pots and were put on the sides of our balcony of our traditional wooden house with nipa roof in my home country, Philippines. The bougainvilleas were in white, pink and red colours and they were very healthy as they were fertilized with urine mixed with a lot of water. It was not stinky as it was more with water than with human urine.

My mother is gone to heaven (I hope) but some of her bougainvilleas are still in our garden but no longer in the same house. The bougainvilleas were almost dead when I came in our garden in 2011. I was able to revive them with love and care, with the help of my relatives living in my house. 

This is a bougainvillea I have planted in 2012. I have planted this by just inserting the cutting in a small hole I dug. It was so easy, with luck and with my green thumb as I found out years later. My cousin and I always trim this plant when it blocks the way to our house again. 

This is the same bougainvillea taken from the other side of the garden. You can see the pink Plumeria/Frangipani before it and the yellow cosmos at the back.

This pot of bougainvillea was one of the flowers my late mother left behind. I treasure her flowers like the beautiful orchids she left behind as those are my inheritance from her.


If you are interested, please check these hubs on my main writing site Hubpages:

http://thelmaalberts.hubpages.com/hub/My-Beautiful-Orchids  a poem.

http://thelmaalberts.hubpages.com/hub/How-To-Take-Care-Of-Potted-Orchids

http://thelmaalberts.hubpages.com/hub/The-Flowers-In-My-Garden-A-Photo-Gallery

Thank you very much for taking the time to read my blog. If you have something to say, please comment below. Enjoy your  month of June. Take care!

Copyright 2015 ©Thelma Alberts, All Rights Reserved

How I Planted The Birds of Paradise

Have you heard about the Birds of Paradise? Maybe you have as this tropical plant has many other names. Some of the names are Heliconia and Strelitzia. I can´t remember where I got this plant as I kept on asking and collecting for some cuttings or seeds from my friends and relatives.

It´s common in my home country to just ask some cuttings or seeds from the people who own beautiful plants. I would have paid for the flowers and plants though, as long as I love the beauty of them.

Birds of Paradise was an easy perennial plants to plant. I had a few of those young plants with roots, which was separated from the adult one. I planted them near the bamboo fence side of my garden. I just planted them in line with the fence. I dug the soil where I intended them  to plant (one by one) as deep as 10 inches, put the cuttings inside and covered the lower part with the soil. I watered them after that everyday. 

The weather in the Philippines is so hot and humid. That´s the weather the Birds of Paradise / Heliconia / Strelitzia like. 

The photos above were taken last 2013, 2 years after I have planted them. They grew so fast to almost 2 meters tall, leaves almost as wide as the banana leaves and have given a lot of new plants that they occupied the bamboo fence. Though Birds of Paradise need less care, my cousin and I had to remove the old brown leaves of this plant every now and then.

If you want to read more about my plants here´s a link.

 http://thelmaalberts.hubpages.com/hub/The-Flowers-In-My-Garden-A-Photo-Gallery 

Copyright 2015 ©Thelma Alberts, All Rights Reserved

Torch Ginger Plants

Torch Ginger is one of the flowers I have planted in my garden in 2011. The year I started gardening in my front yard. At first I saw this plant in the front yard of my sister. It was a huge plant and I was amazed by the beauty of the pink flowers. I asked my sis the name of this plant but she did not know. Anyway, it did not matter. I still like the plant and so my sis gave me some of the ginger rhizomes cuttings and I planted them in the ground inside where I put a not used truck tire.

Torch Ginger is a huge plant. It grew so fast to 6 feet tall. I often trim the plant as its young  rhizomes were already growing out of the tire planters where I planted them. Then I search online the name of this plant and found many things about it. 

Torch Ginger is  tropical perennial plant and does not need a lot of caring. The unopen flower is edible and are mostly used by Asian in cooking curries.

I have not tried cooking the unopen Torch Ginger but I will try next time I am in my garden.

This is a video of the blooming Torch Ginger. Courtesy of You Tube.

Here´s the link about  Torch Ginger. Thanks for reading. 

Copyright 2015 © Thelma Alberts, All Rights Reserved

Thelma´s Tropical Garden

Thelma´s Tropical Garden is my niche blog about my garden in my home country Philippines. I will be writing about how I came to like digging the ground of my front yard and creating  the garden that I always wanted to have. Traveling to Great Britain and Ireland has inspired me in creating my own cottage garden.

In 2011, my hubby and I started our journey of living our dream. Living in our house in the Philippines "for good." Well, since that remarkable year, a lot of things happened. We can´t leave Germany for good. We then live in 2 countries, so to speak.

After 2 years of happy digging, my tropical garden becomes the beautiful haven of birds, dragonflies and butterflies.

This is the first photo I took in my garden in 2011. Our dog Angus was "fertilizing" it. That ugly front yard inspired me to beautify this view.

If you want to see more views of my garden, just visit this link

http://thelmaalberts.hubpages.com/hub/The-Flowers-In-My-Garden-A-Photo-Gallery

Torch Ginger, one of the flowers I planted. I planted this just right there inside that tire planter in the photo above where the pots were located.

                                       Above is the video of my tropical garden.


I hope you will continue visiting my blog as I will write more of the plants and flowers I have planted, what experiences I had being in my home country and what healthy  plants and fruits I discovered. Thanks for reading.


Copyright 2015 © Thelma Alberts, All Rights Reserved