Monsoon

Monsoon season has been here for more than a month and we had plenty of rain everywhere. It causes havoc at times when traffic are at a standstill on major highways. Or when it rain overnight, I will wake up to a mini pond-like all over the garden.  I love the rain, just not when I am travelling or getting up for work, so rain on weekends are the best, though it's not really up to me to control the weather as it seems to be a bit cranky  nowadays.  I wanted to take those pretty droplets photos, so off I went to dust off the good ol' 'big camera' (aka the dslr) as my son calls it. Seriously, it took me a few minutes to remember how to use it and that poor camera has been under-used ever since we had the compact one. However, I must say as convenience as the compact it...there are instances where photos can't be as good as the dslr, especially on fast moving ones.  Anyway, here are some shots I took in my garden yesterday.


Love those tiny droplets on this lotus stem.

A favourite flower of mine, it blooms first in yellow and then red..though I still don't know it's name.

We don't have a Christmas tree at home but have two sweet flowering orange jasmine tree with tiny white flowers  flanking our main door. I was trying to capture the a droplet of water on my crystal ball..which I hang many on the tree. On sunny days, we get hundreds of rainbow rays permeating into the home :)

Another fav of mine, my pink lotus which went into hibernation for the longest time.  With lots of over-fertilization (it worked!) and lots of rain, it started to bloom non stop again.

I am a sucker for water plants, so here's my water lily and I planted two different colours in one pot!

Just throw in a water lettuce or two and watch it grow like crazy, here they are sharing with the lily.

The largest bloom and lotus of all is this white lotus, opened fully it measures a good 6 to 7 inches across, however, it's such a pity as it bloomed only for 2 to 3 days and fade away.  However, it does smell divine, not strong but very mild and sweet.

While I love all these photos, I must say this is my favourite. It's from the white lotus.

An old lotus pod which had shed all it's petals, waiting to be cut and thrown away. However, I just love how those droplets of water looked like small diamonds on it, each on it's own and I was careful not to touch it as I'd probably won't get the same effect again.

In less than two weeks, school holidays will be over and we will be back to our normal busy work-school-tuition-after class-dancing class-and other lessons routine with the kids.  They've had a pretty laid back December and missing their friends. December seemed to have zoomed past and at times I wondered what I have been doing for this month, except for that soon...I am a year older and have to think of what  I want to do for 2011. I've decided to skip the normal 'resolutions' since most of them are the same as like 10 years ago, eg..loose some weight (sigh....) but one thing kept popping in my mind and I hope to practice is - organic living. To eat healthily and as close to nature as possible...not being vegetarian but generally, we eat very little red meat but lots fish and vege, but we do want to cut down tremendously on eating out - which are basically junk and MSG laden. To finally exercise (eek..such a scary word haha!) but really, I will do more than think about it.

I've had a couple of requests from friends on unfinished post on Vietnam and Indonesia and hope to find time to post more.  It's always an issue with me, I take a long time to finish a post of any trip and by the time I do it, like a few months later, sorting hundreds of photos become another chore ..and as for remembering what I did then, is another problem.  However, I do want to travel more and want to cover a few more countries I have been dying to go.  China, India and Korea will be on my list in 2011..and more of Indonesia as well.

So, to all my buddies, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays too.

Cheers :) M