Meeting up

This is simply gorgeous...the red frangipani given by One of Onenezz! Its worth waiting for and meeting her at IKEA last week for the plant after postponing it for so many times! So sorry One, you have to carry the heavy bulky plant to meet me there.Thank you so much, it really brightens up my garden with those lovely red hot blooms! Too bad cant show her photo here as she is camera-shy like me...

Then here is another plant worth going all the way to Pusat Bandar Damansara to get it....the Bunga Kantan (torch ginger). After meeting One, my friend Noni and I made our way to see Keats of Keats The Sunshine Girl at her lovely home.

bunga kantan (torch gingers)

Torch ginger has a strong spicy fragrance and used mainly in Malaysian and Thai cuisines especially in the Malaysian laksa dish (spicy rice noodles soup). Keats gave me not one but two pots of the plant and she threw in another pot of a type of hibiscus, the Malvaviscus arboreus for good measure! Offered one pot of bunga kantan to Noni but she said her garden is too small to have it! Thanks so much Keats for the Bunga Kantan and that particular plant which was actually in my wish list.

two pots of bunga kantan

Malvaviscus arboreus

We loved Keats' house with its well-kept beautiful spacious garden flanked by big shady
trees, ferns, plants with lovely blooms especially the different types of Heliconias, and those from the ginger and galangal families, in different colours. They looked so exotic!

Keats' lovely home from my car parked outside the gate

the house from the left side of the garden

I particularly loved this part of the garden with staghorns cascading down a big tree and mixtures of plants at the bottom....felt like Im in a rain forest, shady and cool even in the hot sun!

there were green and lush plants like Impatiens, Kaempferia, Spathiphyllum like the above and others that thrived well under the shade of a big tree

the sunny part of the front of the house were planted with ferns and angelonias on the ground

Then there were these two spectacular bright red blooms from the ginger family, Zingiber Spectabile which were my favourites because of their unique and exotic looking blooms

the galangal (lengkuas) family Alpinia purpurata - pink

red Alpinia

two colours of Heliconia psittacorum (Sepit Udang) - orange

yellow one

another type - Heliconia mariae

also these two attractive colours of Canna on the sunny side of her garden

Rangoon creeper

Here is the ever friendly and cheerful Keats showing Noni a very tall tree in her backyard (sorry I forgot the name of that tree Keats)

that tree has unedible berries looked like the chiku tree (Manilkara zapota)...Keats called it her 'Christmas' tree

My friend Noni and I enjoyed our meetings with both One and Keats that day and of course thank you so much for those plants. My small car was full to the brim with 4 pots of plants, so much so that, our prior plan to stop by the nurseries in Sg Buloh was abandoned! Thanks again Keats for your warm hospitality and welcoming us to your lovely home and garden. Hope to meet you both again some other time! Sorry to post this so late because this old pc of mine was having so much problem and still is (I didnt go for holidays Milka)......this post took 3 days to complete!