Borrowed Views

My friend just had a house in an exclusive village outside the metropolis. It is a vacation house when she wants to be away from the busy humdrum of the city and sniff some newly produced oxygen untainted with automobile exhausts. The food is also exquisite, the spa offers a wonderful body tune-up, and the views are Shangrila-like. The right side is overlooking a lake with a volcano, with a lake. Can you visualize it? And the left is draped with fully green curtain of naturally growing trees in a natural forest. Are you still with me? And the front side on the terrace offers the best view of sunrise from another lake in the horizon. And while looking at all these there is wonderful food and coffee. Oh how nice to have someone like her, I am not capable of having such luxury, but I have a friend who has. Thanks God for friends.

Red salvia lined the streets to her place.

Another hedge is planted to lantana, and below is a lovely pool of white rainlilies. 

The butterflies seem to be very happy fluttering among the flowers, and i am happy too. 

A view in one window shows some cluster of houses still in construction, and beyond them 

is the ridge-curtain of green forest.  

This sunrise i will not get tired of watching and shooting again, and again, and again!

Fertilizer Friday

My 5th Floor Pets

Pets are basically not allowed where i live in the city. Four legged breathing entities are banned inside condominium units, but sometimes 6-legged ones can easily get in.  Rooting entities are not mentioned as exemptions, so I opted to have them. There are units with indoor plants, so they open the curtains during the day for light to feed them. I am the only one with plants outside the window as i am facing the west position not very obvious to the public. So i have them both inside and out. 

 Caladium bicolor is trying its best to live inside the room, with only some light passing through the west glass window.  It is not doing its best but it gives me some color.

 Bitter gourd or ampalaya is living outside the window, creeping on the cement wall aided by other plants near it. A variegated hoya at the background is allowing its tendrils to hold on tight, and the hoya gets some partial shade from its leaves, i hope it is a good symbiotic relationship.

 My hippeastrum puniceum is growing profusely. A lot of bulblets are growing simultaneously with the mother bulbs. I have a lot of bulblets to give friends at the end of the season before the dry season starts.

 And inside my big bathroom i have basins of water to help these other unusual entities. These are oyster mushrooms. I have 5 of those bags which produce them at staggered intervals. The above bag is producing a good harvest than can give me a plateful of delicious omelet.

One bag obviously got too dry when i went home to the province one weekend. Only one big mushroom is produced during the first growth. These bags still produce more growths several times before it finally succumb to contaminating fungus. The above round shape is not a common shape for this species. 

This omelet is one of the plenty of omelets i've produced from the very productive mushroom bags. Those green spring onions are also from a pot in my window garden. My living pets are giving a lot of satisfaction not only for the show they are giving me through their growths but also through the food they provide me.

Now who wants more of the 4-legged entities!

Supertyphoon Aftermath!

I would first apologize for posting these photos. I know you have seen these on television, this is just my share of letting my blogger friends know of our situation right now. Fortunately, and thanks God, I am living in Metro Manila that was not the typhoon path of Supertyphoon Yolanda (Hainan). My immediate family in the province is also spared. However, my friends from these parts of the country are directly hit and until now we haven't heard about them. Communication systems in these areas just started yesterday, so i hope we might get information soonest.

I've been a research coordinator for these areas in the past and I know it pretty well. The long stretch of seashore composed of many municipalities from Tacloban City, Leyte Province to the south of the island are all devastated. And Leyte is just one of the island provinces affected.

The series of photos will speak for themselves.

a ship slammed the shore

a lone survivor in a ghost town

                                     dead bodies piled  on top of tables and wheelbarrows

survivors moving forward

All these photos are from a site with compiled photos which i guess are also from other sources.

http://www.allvoices.com written by  Stef de la Cruz.

Nature Notes

Our World Tuesday

Outdoor Wednesday

Are they aliens?

Coleopterans are normally called beetles. They are insects with thick front pair of wing covering the rear wings. Brown and black are the common colors of beetles, but some have very bright colors too. Encyclopedia says it comprise 40% of all the insects and that means at least 360,000 species are all beetles. Oh My God, i hope that 360,000 will not be roaming here at the same time, that is really more than scary!

 The antennae of this species are segmented and very long.

Look at that thick hard-shelled body and appendages, scary isn't it.

And look at that fierce face, it really is more than scary! The mandibles also look ready to tear every part it alights on. I am glad this night visitor is just greater than one inch long, or else i would have screamed!

Camera Critters