Lornicera/Honeysuckle and Non-Stop Begonia

My honeysuckle is blooming....but not as prolifically as the plant we had left when we moved to this house we are staying in now..... nor is the fragrance as strong...well this is an immigrant from England which a friend took home when she completed her PhD there..... i thought that it would acclimatize quickly.....since i used to have the same cultivar which usually bloomed so much more prolifically.... but up to date i have been disappointed....ohh the growth is vigorous...i am just disappointed that it has not been a prolific bloomer....YET.

Actually this friend of mine brought over 3 different cultivars....one is this one that is blooming, another refused to acclimatize and has died...while another i very nearly lost ...but managed to save a 'cutting'....it is the Goldflame honeysuckle.... which is slower still to acclimatize.... i am not sure if it ever will.... i am just thankful that i have not lost it completely...though the original 'immigrant' died...the cutting i saved...it is not really a cutting...it was a division of the original plant...a division with some roots which i cut off from the original and planted in another pot.....anyway it is a very slow grower.....will it ever bloom...only time will tell......

Meanwhile, my two non-stop Begonias have not stopped blooming... really love their bright colour....

Adenium obesum and Vitex-agnus

in celebration of 50th Malaysia Day....my new AO ...well i do not know the name of this cultivar....nor do i know the name of my red AO....thus i will just call her Ms White.... and Miss White ...despite being new in my garden...is blooming well....

..the one with brown spots....is a spent bloom whose time is very limited... just waiting to wilt n fall ...well when time is up...there is no way to delay it....!!

...and my Vitex is blooming again...well it is only slightly over a year with me....planted it somewhere the end of June 2012...or was it early July...?  errmmm ...i can't quite remember.... thus m very thankful that it has started to bloom despite the fact that there was only one stalk at a time...... furthermore the flower stalks before this one were rather short... today's is a much longer flower stalk.....

Hopefully soon.... in not too far future...my little Vitex may bloom like the one in this pic....

my first ever Paphiopedilum...

or Slipper Orchid..is already wilting....after only a few hours reaching home from the local nursery where i got it from... it was only upon reaching home that i noticed all was not well with the plant.... it did look as if it had fallen out of its little plastic pot and put back... well at that time it was simply a suspicion... but now that the plant is wilting....and on the verge of dying... i think my suspicion may have been right in the first place.... m rather disappointed that the nursery proprietor had sold me a plant that may be dying..... and on top of that  it was expensive too!! Well...it was partly my fault too...i was so taken in by the single bloom on the plant that i wanted it so much...despite seeing the bloom was actually on the verge of wilting though the leaves were still looking fine at that time.....

...the wilting beauty

Now...today...the whole plant seems to be wilting...and the roots are hollow...siiiiggghhh....

It's finally blooming....

while one has been spent and is wilted.... this bloom is not fully open....

 yet another is waiting its turn to unfurl its petals and flaunt its beauty.....  aahhh now that i know for certain that Lousiana iris can bloom here...m yearning for other colours...the blues and the purples...and whatever are in between.....

My New Vigna caracalla....

Since this plant is grown from seeds bought on ebay i ...i do hope it IS V. caracalla snail vine and not Phaseolus giganteus, which is often also called snail vine... because the former is fragrant while the latter is not.....It is claimed that the plant can be smelled from 15 feet away....but when i had it growing and blooming in my garden...errrmmm think this statement is either a 'hyperbole'...or that it is true for certain geographic locations..of which mine is not a part of! Well....there was some fragrance ...however, my nostrils will need to be a few centimetres near...wokei i should not exaggerate...may be a few inches..... the blooms to be able to smell..!! Errmmm could it be that my sense of smell is not as strong as that of the people who made that claim...?  nah...most probably it is because of soil and geographical location. Anyway, i m thankful that out of the few seeds sent to me this one ...survives...

...and it is finally climbing up the wooden pole i gave it.  Actually 2 out of ..4 or 6? seeds i got from ebay...germinated....but the other one had some time ago succumbed to ...errr 'attacks' from its namesake... aahh snails seem to love it...plus i suppose heat stress....BTW the one i had before this one had also long gone....probably due to heat stress....?  Yeah am very thankful at least this one survives.... have tried many times to make it climb the pole... it simply refused....so i gave up trying.... well i suppose it does not like to be 'pressed and pushed' to climb....wanted to take its own sweet time to do so.... aahh i m relieved now that it has .....so now i wait for it to flower...hopefully like the ones in these pics below...err  these pics are not  of my plant......courtesy of the internet of course!