Poppy Candu

I really like poppy in the garden. Looking forward for them to bloom in spring every year. I received some opium poppy seeds from a very generous blogger friend this year. I sowed the seeds at first too early because I was too excited. But the seeds germinate well in May~June.

The opium poppy foliage is different from the Shirley poppy that we usually grow. The seed pods are much larger as well. Wonder if we have volunteers next year.

Bees love them as well.

A shy bee hiding behind the poppy stripey petal.

Hope you get all your festive season shopping done.

Shirley Poppy (Sweet Pea Seeds Give-Away Winners)

Early ~Mid November is always the best blooming season for poppy in our garden.

I think I sowed some poppy seeds earlier than it ideally should be this year.

I did get earlier blooms in October but it wasn't pretty.

Because the flower bud can't proper fully blossom. 

Maybe I should try sowing in between May-June.

Two weeks ago, I wanted to share our recently collected sweet peas with 3 gardeners.

I hope these sweet pea seeds will make a home in these 3 gardeners lovely garden:

Dani ~ Jurnal de gradina, Cathy~ Cathy@home and Meeka.

Hope I can get your address ladies (my email: diana.demiyah@gmail.com)

The colour of this poppy is really bloody red.

No editing colour here.

It is that red.

White poppy so delicate to touch.

A pink multi-layer poppy.

A blushing one?

Wearing a different kind of red frill skirt.

Have a nice weekend!

Local Edible Produce Swap and Lemon Poppy Seed Cake

Our local community organise fruit and vegetable swap on the first Saturday of the month during winter and spring season. You don't have to live in our community to join in. If you want to know when the next swap will be held, the organiser will send you an email or I can email you the address. Yesterday, we participated and brought some of our excess fruit, herb and vegetable seedlings. The only fresh produce that we managed to pick early in the morning to share was yellow cherry tomatoes, chilies, snow peas and lemon grass.

We came back with a nice basket full of produce ~ Pumpkin, lemons, eggplant, persimmon and quince jelly. Our fisherman brought back 3 salmon trouts. Since winter season has begun, it is salmon trout and bream season. There will be many salmon trout to fish in St. Kilda and Mr. Fisherman will have frequent trip there  early Saturday morning during winter. So with fresh fish and eggplant, we made ikan masak assam pedas for lunch. I have not bake a cake since I gave birth to our first child Ilhan, and when I visited A Nyonya's Kitchen ...for all season blog, the lemon poppy seed cake look so delicious I decided to have a go making it. Thanks to Catmint, we have some poppy seeds and lemons from the local swap to bake this cake.

Lemon Poppy Seed Cake  (recipe from A Nyonya's Kitchen...for all season, terima kasih)

Ingredients:

10g poppy seeds (actual was 40gram)

125ml milk

250g butter, softened

1 tbsp finely grated lemon rind

275g caster sugar

4 eggs

335g self-raising flour

110g plain flour

240g sour cream

Method:

1. Combine poppy seeds and milk, soak for 10 minutes.
2. Beat butter, rind and sugar with electric mixer till light and fluffy.
3. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until combined.
4. Stir in sifted flours, cream and poppy seeds into mixture, in two batches.
5. Spread mixture into pan, bake for about 1 hour at 160 deg C.

Lenay was excited making this cake, she was really worried that the cake will be over-baked and keep a close eye on it while the cake is in the oven. Where was the cook while the cake is in the oven? She was already near the veggie patch, absorb on planting shallots and other vegetables. Lenay had to call the cook many times to take a look on the cake. We were supposed to wait for an hour but Lenay poke it with toothpick about 45 minutes and it came out clear. So when the cook returned to the kitchen one hour later, she was surprised the cake was out from the oven. Leaving it baking one hour should be fine as when we cut the cake there are still some moist spot. The cake was very delicious. We will enjoy making this cake again in the future. Since we only have one baking pan, the extra batch we use the muffin baking pan. I hope Mr. Fisherman will let me buy some baking pan. 

Joining in Wendy's Garden To Table Challenge.

PROJECT: Save the Bees

Holly the author of Tasty Travels…food talks, I listen blog is hosting a Project: Save the Bees on Sunday, February 6th. This is a very interesting project that I would like to participate and encourage friends to join in too.

To participate in PROJECT: Save the bees, this is what you’ll have to commit to:

1) Purchase a seed packet of bee friendly flowers & figure out how many people you'd like to share with.
2) Announce the project on your blog/website & offer seeds to others on Sunday, Feb 6th
3) Link back to Holly post (to be posted Sunday, February 6th)
4) Mail your seeds to your people
5) Update your original post with a list of places you mailed your seeds to

This time I am offering our bee friendly flower home-saved seeds to 3 people which resides in Australia only. You can leave a comment that you would like to receive this seeds and I will pick 3 blogs randomly if more than 3 people are interested.

This is our top 5 bee friendly flower in our garden last year:

Poppy

Bees really like this flower. Always buzzing around this flower especially in the morning and here a link where I capture the bees playing around new bloom of poppies to show how much bees like this flower. This is the only seeds that I am offering which is not home-saved seeds. I regret so much not collecting poppy seeds last year.

Calendula (Sunshine)

Calendula always brighten up our garden patch in winter. Since it is always blooming through spring as well, the early hungry awaken bees can sip the calendula nectar when other spring flowers is not blooming yet.

Lakspur

Blooms longer and grow majestically tall.
Evening Sun Sunflower

After all the spring season flower ends, evening sun sunflower provide many blooms for the hardworking bees to gather nectars.
Nasturtium

Not only a gardener best friend in the garden but bees as well.
What is your favourite bee friendly flower in your garden?
For more flowers on Saturday visit Simply-Life Photographs.
For Flora and cottage ideas visit Tracie at Fishtail cottage.

New pop poppies & busy bees

I found this poppy just bloomed a few minutes before I took out my camera and snapped pictures of it while bees are busy buzzing around it to sip fresh juicy nectars. From observation, bees this year in our garden is much fatter compared to last year. Maybe because we planted more flowers this year than last year. I think we pampered the bees this year with hope that pollination is better this year.

Is there any room for two?

This two bees managed to balance themselves on this single poppy.

More ruby colours on Mary blog.

This is my current favourite flower that I am submitting for Fer carnival blog.

Silky Poppy

  I am glad that I decided to sow some poppy seeds last autumn for spring flowering as one of my new experience of growing flower from seeds for this year. Living in Mediterranean climate I found that sowing time play a very important role ensuring the success of certain plant. Growing up in tropics you can plant all year round. Here in Adelaide I had to do my own research on determining when is the perfect time to sow certain plant seeds I would love to grow. At first I thought I sowed those poppy seeds too late and they won’t produce any flower for me at all. I almost gave up on them and thought to clear them up to giveaway their space for other plants. I got worried  because when I walk around my neighbourhood nobody has poppy plants in their front yard garden except this one house which grow Californian poppy that has bloom 2 months ago which mine has not even after a month back then. Luckily I was patient enough and now got to see the reward. There is so many different shade or colours of poppy blooming now in my garden. Which one is your favourite?

We grow one of the hybrid of Shirley poppies (ornamental poppies). The first time I touched poppy petals, my first thought was silk or soft tissues.

Fresh poppy bloom is on the right side where the something (don’t know what its call) around the green capsule is yellow where as on the left it has already turn brownish in colour. Poppy don’t bloom that long about 3 or 4 days, the petals are easily carried away on windy day. But I am not worried because not long they will be new bloom to replace the old ones.
Sexy red poppy dancing facing the sky. 


The first poppy bloom colour in our garden was crimson red.  It so much remind me the colour of cheongsam and blood.


For more bewitching red colour hop on to Mary blog the host for Ruby Tuesday.




This is an old entry but I would like to join Tracy party at Fishtail Cottage for Cottage Flora Thursday’s #3.

Colourful November

I don't have that much space to grow many flowers that I would love to see them in my garden. But I am learning how to to grow them with vegetables side by side. Hopefully, pollinators will happily stay at our garden and we have much better luck with the fruits that need to be pollinated this summer. You can see almost every patch has coriander that is flowering profusely in the background of the picture when you see small white flowers.

I have never seen a poppy grown outside the nursery. This year we grow our poppy from seeds. I thought it will make a nice border for the veggie patch. However, never did  I expected that it will grow so tall and eventually shade any nearby plants. Every morning since our poppy starts to bloom I spend more longer time in the garden before I am off to school. I am still surprised and excited looking at the different colours of poppy flowers that are blooming in the garden. As I was looking at one of the bloom this morning, a big bee was off and on that flower, and I can see the pollen flying away and how it attach on the bees legs.  I felt like the bee was giving me a special lesson about how important its role as a pollinator.

This corner is near the front of our kitchen window. Self-seeded viola is growing below sunflower plant and nastartium has  to be tamed not to invade other plant spaces too much. Its neighbour zucchini has some bud developing when I peek yesterday.

The pansies has hide the leek stem from front view. We don't have to cover the leek stem to get those long white stem instead of green. The pansy is not just a pretty face but have done a good job on shading the leek stem.

The linaria has bloomed for months now since middle of winter. I should have stake them but like poppy I never thought it will grow so tall. Luckily I planted them at the back.

We still have many poppy plant which has not bloom yet. I wonder will we have another different colllection type of colour. I am making a mental note , I should have sowed the poppy seed earlier this year. Well I can try again next year.

Rayyan’s catheterization today (心の準備)

I took one week leave of absence from school starting this week Tuesday because I will be busy with Rayyan’s medical appointments. Rayyan had his pre-admission medical check up on Tuesday afternoon. Wednesday morning he will have cardiac catheterization and required an overnight stay in the hospital and I will also be staying in the hospital with him. Some of nurses in the hospital ward remember Rayyan and surely they remember Rayyan mama who is a stubborn girl always by Rayyan side. The nurses had a hard time convincing me to take a rest away from Rayyan bed. But how can I rest when I keep on hearing the alarm beeping so frequently indicating his oxygen saturation level drop and my baby is in pain. I was an emotional wrecked when Rayyan was first admitted in intensive unit care. Guilt was one of the main factor. There are risks with this ‘catheterization’ thing from what the cardiologist explained about the procedure. But I will think of positive things and hope the next surgery will be booked soon for Rayyan sake. To make me calm and ready for the next day, I look at the bright things in our garden after the pre-admission check up.

How wonderful our first poppy bloom this week. This is our first time growing them and grown from seed too. I was afraid I got the sowing time wrong. I was surprised to see that the colour of this flower was crimson blood red. However, correct me if I am wrong, I find that the petal are very fragile and the flower bloom a short time only before it fall to the ground blown by the wind.

Columbine producing more flowers.
Polyanthus still showing colourful display at our patch. I am happy this year we have several colours of polyanthus blooming in our garden.
I did not know that poppy plant can grow so tall. This gerbera is being cramped by above shown poppy picture.

We have many corianders flowering in the garden now. The tallest coriander plant in our place is almost 5’feet tall now. I like to look at the coriander white dainty flower.

Kai lan (Chinese broccoli) flower and red onion flower in the background. It is still too early to sow kai lan seeds have to wait until next month. This is a kai lan plant that we forget to harvest because it was hiding between broccoli plant over winter.

Ilhan will wonder why Rayyan and mama is not coming back home tomorrow. This favourite of his, peas is almost end of the season but I am glad Ilhan will have some pea snack tomorrow.
Some treat for Ilhan tomorrow~strawberry is ready to be pick.  Not only from this strawberry plant but Alpine strawberries too for him.
Everything should be fine and go smoothly tomorrow ~ My hope.