Sunday, April 26, 2009

How Many Kids do You Think She has?

I stumbled upon a colony of new hatchlings of a (suspected) spider.The baby spiders are hundreds in numbers. But who knows how many survived into adulthood?


Count it for yourself!




How many will survive? Only Allah knows.


Cannot get any closer than this - so you just have to make do whith this shot....

Saturday, April 18, 2009

...in the Meantime...

The rambutans grow about 1-2 ft taller



...but the durian remained almost unchanged.



...the ubi lengkuas was badly damaged by Cik B and struggling to survive. I decided to move the remaining roots near to the hut within our view, and it looks much more happier there. Sorry Hajah, need to wait a while longer for the "ubi"... hehehehe...


Friday, April 17, 2009

Progress Report - Apr 09

Been busy lately, and expecting to be busier in time to come... The farm is sort of neglected. But life goes on... Here is the progress report todate:

The new batch of stela - expecting for Aug/Sep harvest... or delay it a bit longer till after Eid?

The angled bean never stop producing... Alhamdulillah....

The tapioca in one corner - also expected harvest similar to the stelas... If it can last that long, for 2 days after this picture is captured, a strong wind has flatten a few trees.


The banana trees grow very well in the farm and started producing saplings - no fruit yet la! The sugarcane trees grow not as healthy, as I mentioned earlier the roots are not strong due to the white ants attack. But look at the grass!!! Hahahaha no time to "melerah" la....


Lemongrass - the most sturdy and care free plant...


The regular size tomato tree started bearing fruit - Alas! but one tree only survived, the rest of the batch saplings didn't survive the grasshoppers' attack.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Bunga Durian

The flower season has ended. Weather condition will determine if the flowers survive and grow into fruits. Pak Su Dir commented that the flowers might not survive given the alternate hot and rain weather lately. We'll just wait and see... And they said that the "masak lemak bunga durian" is nice, I have not tried though...


The falling flowers. Decorating the floor with cream colored flowers...

...and intoxicating the air with sweet scent of heaven...





...the Day After



Somebody has disturbed the eggs cluster, but for the rain, it still grow. The obvious, we can see the stalk coming out of the egg...




The new batch of survivors...

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Stinkhorn aka "Kulat Pak Pandir"

The stinkhorn or locally known as "Kulat Pak Pandir" is not edible for its foul smell - though not so strong. Less common than the cow dung mushroom, but grow all year round. Usually left undisturbed but for the curious who would stop to admire its beauty...


A cluster of stinkhorn "eggs" at the bottom of one cili padi tree trunk. One mushroom book reported that the egg stage is edible (no smell yet) and posesses aphrodisiac (what else?) properties...
The egg would cracked open and a spongy stalk and sticky cap would emerged. It's name is really inappropriate for its beauty. Who would have think of such a funny name?

Close-up to its stalk - the more common type has yellow "veil" and not white like this one....
The foul smell attracts insects to its sticky cap - nature's way to spread its spores...
...at the end of its life, the mushroom wilted and "sujud"... I hope to have a similar end, amin...

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Red Hot Cili Padi!

"Cili Padi" or "Cili Burung" is common in Malay cooking. It is the smallest but also the hottest local chilli. Like I mentioned in the earlier post, other types of chilli simply cannot substitute it's taste. Although all "cili padi"s are generally the same, however, upon close scrutiny, you will find that the "cili padi"s are slightly differerent in size and shapes and level of its hot taste. Here are my observation on the "cili padi"s in the farm:


The most common, the "regular" type of "cili padi".

This is the newly fruiting, wild grown chili - similar to the regular type, but a bit longer, that make its look slimmer...

Another regular type that is high ripe.


This one is similar shape to the regular type, but about 30% smaller. And it was said that the smaller the type, the hotter it taste... There is only one tree that bear this type of fruit so far...

The "blunt" type - shorter and rounded end... There is also one tree that produces this type of fruit.

...sometimes the shape looked so obviously different from other types...