'Gardening' for Juan Or

This is actually an outdated post dating back to 27th August 2010.

It all started on one fine Friday late afternoon when Mommy was at the wet kitchen. Uh-oh, the kangkung (water convulus) plant had already grown into the house! It crept in through the gap under the kitchen door!

Mommy was startled to see such thing. The plant had grown about 1 meter into the house! Hearing Mommy's startled cry, Papa came to investigate and then offered to pull the plant away, but from the outside.

Because Papa went outside the house, Juan Or had the opportunity too to join in the 'fun'. After Papa pulled away the kangkung, the plant was all Juan Or's to play with.

So this boy had a fun time dragging the long stretch of kangkung to the front and to the back, over and over again, very much like those pull-along toys.

After that, he made a 'tour' round the house compound to check on those kangkungs that seems to have dominated all other veges that Mommy had grown.

And the 'tour' may sometimes require him to go over the drain, with legs wide open! Ooops, be careful not to miss your footing!

If the kangkungs were overgrown, it's time for Juan Or's special trimming!

Well, if necessary, Juan Or would use the baby shovel to do the digging. But what is there for him to dig!? Shouldn't he be digging away the roots of the weeds? Well, for him, digging with the baby shovel is just fun-fun and play-play! ^_^ Leave all the hard gardening job for Mommy to do, ya? :P

Trip to Cameron Highlands (Part 2)

This is a continuation of Part 1.

After the Lata Iskandar waterfall, we headed up to Cameron Highlands. On the way up, Mommy could see many Orang Asli stalls along the road side selling petai, honey and bamboo shoots. Mommy wanted to buy petai and bamboo shoots from them but Papa asked to do it only later because it would be too troublesome to stop the car halfway. Our first stop was at the Bharat tea plantation. We merely parked at the road side to snap some photos, enjoy the scenary and fresh air - no stopover to drink the tea whatsoever! ^_^

Our next stop was the Sam Poh Tong Temple at Brinchang. This temple is supposedly dedicated to the Chinese Muslim eunuch and admiral of the Chinese fleet, Zheng He (Cheng Ho), according to this website. Pictured here is Juan Or and Papa walking towards the entrance of the temple. Mommy's not in the photo because Mommy was busy trailing them from behind to snap photos.

Basically, this temple feels just like any other temple - nothing outstanding about the architecture or the ornate decoration. We didn't spend a long time at the temple, but just sufficient time to snap some photos for remembrance.

Typical scene at the temple.

Here's Juan Or getting himself comfy while waiting for Papa to come out from the washroom.

After the temple, we headed straight to the vegetable market in front of Kea's Farm - Mommy's favourite stop at Cameron Highlands simply because Mommy's loves to buy vegetables at bargain prices! Sorry, no photos were captured at the market because Mommy was too preoccupied with looking out for good bargains of vegetables! ^_^ Here's what Mommy got from the market:

Cherry tomatoes (4 packets of about 400g per packet for RM10) and strawberries (4 packets for RM10 - 1 packet is about that much that you see in the small basin).

From left to right: Shoots of a gourd plant unknown to Mommy (3 bundles for RM5), asparagus (iinitially was 3 bundles for RM10, but later the seller gave Mommy one more free bundle!), and choy tam (8 packets of about 200g each for RM5).

Our next stop after the vegetable market was a cactus farm, but Mommy has already forgotten the name of the farm. Many types of cacti were displayed for sale, even pitcher plants were offered.

The plants are the main attraction of this farm, well, at least for the adults, but for Juan Or, his main attraction at the farm would be.....

.......the kiddy rides!

There was also a small plot of strawberry plants at the back of the cactus section.

After that was time for lunch, so we decided to stop over at a popular Chinese restaurant which Papa googled in the internet before but Mommy couldn't recall the name of the restaurant. We found the restaurant but too bad Juan Or was already asleep, so we decided not to have lunch at Cameron Highlands because we did not want to wake Juan Or up from sleep and end up having a fretful and crying baby! So we went on to exit from Cameron Highlands via the Simpang Pulai way. On the way down, Mommy reminded Papa to make a stopover if he sees any Orang Asli stall, but distance after distance, we couldn't see any stall and Mommy's heart began to sink. Finally, after quite long, we spotted one stall and Papa immediately made the stopover to buy for Mommy.

Petai in 3 small bunches for RM5.  

 Six pieces of bamboo shoots for RM5 (very cheap!).

Once at the lowland, Papa decided to stop at a Chinese restaurant in Kampar for lunch. We have eaten at the restaurant before in a trip long time before Juan Or was born. Once there, again our heart sank to see the restaurant closed. So we went on down towards Bidor's direction and found many restaurants closed along the way. Finally we stopped at Bidor and was glad to find at least a Chinese restaurant open. By then it was already something like 2pm already. This was what we ate there.

Mantis shrimp cooked with salted egg yolk and sweet potato leaves in belacan.

Fish slices stir-fried with spring onion.

Papa also bought tau sar peah from the restaurant - 3 packs for RM7. This restaurant's tau sar peah has a limey taste to it.

We reached Kuala Lumpur again by around 4 or 4-plus pm, just in time before the traffic-jam started (we went on a weekday, remember?) and stopped over at Haji Samuri's satay stall at the KESAS highway to buy satay for dinner before heading back home to Puchong.

Overall, how successful did Mommy consider of this trip? Mommy would consider it a 98% success because Juan Or was able to withstand the long distance with minimal fretfulness (fretted when we stopped at Bidor in the morning), plus Juan Or did not vomit at all nor show any sign of dizziness. In fact, during the journey up, Juan Or teased Mommy by saying that he wanted to vomit, but he laughed after that, so Mommy knew he was trying to pull Mommy's legs! Since Juan Or has passed his first long distance trip test, so there will be more long distance trips for Juan Or in the future! Yippy!

Trip to Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (MARDI) - Part 2

After Mommy bought some plantlets from Unit of Planting Material, Seeds and Farm Breed Production, Mommy drove to this part called "Laman Sayur-sayuran" (Vegetable Front) which is just a short distance away. Juan Or and Mommy were greeted by two banners hung at a shade-like structure of the vegetable park. The banners wrote "Edible Landscape". Mommy thought this is a good idea if you have some land in your own home - planting vegetable plants both for food and decoration for the outside of your home.

(The edible landscape.)

Now Mommy and Juan Or walked under the shade structure. You can see many vegetable fruits hanging down and the creeping veegetable plants providing shade as well. What a beautiful sight! Now Mommy knows - vegetables plants can be just as good for landscaping purpose. The only thing is that if you plant the creeping type, you need to built a substantial structure for it if your other aim is for landscaping purpose, and of course building such structure requires money!

(Many loofahs and snake gourds can be seen hanging down like Christmas ornaments! What a delicious and beautiful sight!)

(The garden pathway with more of these vegetable fruits hanging like Christmas ornaments.)

(Another angle of the garden pathway.)







(A closer look of some of the snake gourds among the foliage.)





(Net structures plus rafia strings at the side parts of the shade structure as means for the creeping plants to do the initial climbing. Seen here are bitter gourds hanging among the foliage.)






(Juan Or, all wet and sweaty, was looking around under the vegetable shade.)


("Yikes, a dead vegetable flower on the floor! That's mine!")





(Juan Or was so happy to walk under the vegetable shade.)




(After passing through the vegetable shade, we arrive at the lakeside landscape. Seen here is Juan Or running towards an orange garden hose on the floor.)

(Juan Or seems to be more intrigued about the orange garden hose than the vegetables.)



("Mama won't let me touch the garden hose because it's dirty, but I touch it already! What can Mama do!?" Look at Juan Or's cheeky laugh!)

(Mommy was attracted to this bottle gourd. Would you believe it if Mommy tells you this gourd is humongous?)




(Taa-dah! Mommy's hand is put here....now see for yourself how humongous it is!)




(This is another big bottle gourd but not as big as the one just now, only thing is that it is nearer to the floor. So Mommy asked Juan Or to go and touch it while Mommy snapped a photo. Too bad, Mommy's handphone camera is not fast enough - shown here is Juan Or already done with touching the gourd!)




After this edible landscape, Mommy and Juan Or headed out of MARDI because the day was becoming too hot already - it was afternoon by then. So Mommy sent Juan Or straight to the babysitter's house because Mommy had other things to do after that.