Today's Flowers/Desert Rose & Other Blooms

I'm thrilled that this small Desert Rose plant is blooming again. As you can see from one of the images in this collage that it isn't an impressive-looking plant but the cluster of blooms is a joy to see. I've taken the photos in rain and in shine and they seem to be happy whatever the weather.:)

Sunset Bells/Chrysothemis pulchella. The yellow blooms are short-lived but the orange sepals hang on for a while.

Flame Violet/Episcia cupreata from the family of African violets (below). This plant does well in hanging baskets and propagation is easy.

 

And lastly, the bachelor's buttons/Gomphrena globosa that I'm growing from seed has just started to bloom.I had somehow expected them to be a raging, wild shade of pink but I was surprised to see such a pure white with speckles of tiny yellow in between.

To see more blooms from around the world, check out Today's Flowers.

A New Video & My Drummer Boy

This post is very different from my usual ones. My younger son is a drummer and plays for quite a few bands. This video with the band M-Sonic released yesterday. The video shoot was done last month just after Nishant, my son, recovered from corn surgery on both feet.

The singer/guitarist is Mainak, a very talented person is the main force behind the band, M-Sonic. He's very well-known in our region. The bass is played by Simanta. My son is away in Delhi studying at a college there. He turned 18 on the 29th of July. I hope you enjoy watching this video. It's a joy to share this with my blog friends from across the globe!

Nature Notes/ Common Picture Wing Dragonfly

 After weeks of high heat we've been blessed by rain. Not torrents of it but enough to wet the parched garden soil and leave those precious pretty droplets on the edge of leaves. And here's what I found this morning. A Common Picture Wing dragonfly/ Rhyothemis variegata resting on a leaf of the Orange Jasmine.

I had seen this dragonfly before but it was always at a great height so a close shot was impossible. Today it was at eye level and I went down on bended knees to take this shot.:)

Here's the last shot before it flew away. This dragonfly is also known as the Variable Glider and from a distance it looks like a butterfly. More of black on the wings indicate that it is a female. The male has fewer black markings on its wings. I found a site with a picture of a male here.

To see what's happening in the world of nature, visit Michelle at Nature Notes.

Nature Notes/ A Trip To Shillong

Golden-flowered Dendrobium/Dendrobium Chrysanthum

Although I was away from blogdom, the camera never left my side. And I'm glad I can share these pictures today. Usually I post about my immediate surroundings, the flowers that I grow, and the winged visitors that I get in abundance. But today it's all about visiting a cooler place, Shillong, where the summer temperatures vary between 24 and 27 degrees Celsius and the flowers that wouldn't thrive in our humidity flourish there. The above photo was taken outside the Don Bosco museum.

 This variety of lily grows in the wild. And all along the road I saw several clumps.

 The restaurant that we went to had new plantings of this variety of impatiens. It could be Impatiens pulcherrima/Handsome flowered Balsam.

Lush hanging plants adorned several baskets all along the entrance path.

Stone seats were placed next to a waterfall which also had an angler placed on a vantage point.

For men may come and men may go, but I fish on for ever.....

 Dry ingredients were attractively displayed. Those leaves are Indian bayleaves known in India as Tejpatta. Unlike the Mediterranean bay leaf, this one has more of a cinnamon flavour. More dried display can be seen in the photo below.

 Post lunch we headed to the Elephant Falls, another must-see spot in Shillong. The light was fading so the moss on the tree that I captured (below) doesn't show up that well.

Part of the city of Shillong as seen from Shillong Peak

Our last stop for the day was Shillong Peak, the highest point in Shillong. Although we've been there several times, travelling with children ( my sister's) makes every trip a wonderfully new experience. Once the photos were taken, we huddled back to the warmth of the car. It'd rained in the afternoon and the peak was windy. And we are certainly not used to sudden cold!! But that was also the fun part...to experience weather so different from ours, to tighten the shawl/cardigan around our chests and experience a sudden gust of winter in the middle of summer. An experience most likely to be repeated next year!!

To see other participants' posts, visit Michelle at Rambling Woods.