Ah! The wonder of nature.

Have you ever gone into a wide open space filled with plants, trees and flowers?
Well, that was exactly what I did this morning. I woke up at the unearthly time of three-thirty in the morning in order to join my friends from the Art of Living to travel to Penang Youth Park to celebrate the 'Women's Conference 2011'

And so it was that I found myself in the midst of so much greenery at about five o'clock in the morning. I did not expect to find anything different from the usual happiness of being with friends and having a great new day to enjoy my life with. I did not expect the wonderful fragrance that beautify my senses as I stroll and enjoyed the greenness at that time of the morning. It was indeed a strange calm feeling as this unbelievably appealing perfume enveloped me as I stood there wondering where its source was.

Gradually, I realised that the scent came not from some human but the very surrounding plants and their flowers. How did I verify that? Well, I saw the flowers in the trees and I moved towards them. As I went nearer, the peculiar fact that struck me was that the fragrance recede and almost disappeared the closer I was to the trees and their floral display. To test this observation, I retraced my steps and moved further from the flowers. Again, the perfume became stronger. It was my first delightful experience. It is an experience I would not have the luck to enjoy had I not been out among nature at such an early part of the morning. It is something I hastily set on record upon reaching home so that others may some day have the same pleasurable delight I encountered this day.

At the age of sixty-four, I still find so much new pleasures in our fantastic world. Of course, this is not the only thing I enjoyed at Penang Youth Park today. I also learned how to make pancakes with Korean Kimchi as well as potatoes and had fun selling them, meeting all kinds of people in the process. Life is indeed beautiful and all it takes is for us to go out there to enjoy it.

A plant of interest from a nursery.

The other day, it was a Tuesday, my son and I went to an orchid farm at Sungai Dua as he is interested in orchids and wishes to know more about them. We did not manage to see the inside of the farm as Michael, the owner of the farm was not in and his workers are instructed not to allow anybody in when he is not around. So, we went to the pottery shop of his parents and bought some pots instead. Then, we headed for home.

On the way home, almost near Kepala Batas, there was a nursery with very attractive pots on display in full view of road users passing the place. We stopped to have a look at the pots as well as the plants in the nursery. There were numerous pots with such beautiful designs and patterns. However, I was so taken up with some of the seldom and rarely seen plants in the place that I totally forgot about photographing them. I must make it a point to visit the place again and get some pictures.

As for the plants, the owner of the nursery had wild jungle orchids and some strange plants. One of them is the Jari Lipan (Translated into English, this is Centipede’s Finger), a name which belongs to an aquatic plant in the internet, and not the ‘Centipede’s Finger that we bought. However, it was strange enough and sufficiently interesting to be acquired. You see, the plant does look like some kind of witch’s finger. Interesting! According to the seller, it has anticancer properties. To use it, the ‘fingers’ are boiled and the resultant brew drunk. Well, he certainly was no doctor as he could not be specific when it comes to amount of leaves and water or the dosage for a cure. So, have you folks out there heard about it. How about sharing knowledge with me and our friends.

Still, I believe we can eventually find a reliable cure for cancer from nature. From what I have read, the amount of experiences of such cures is mounting. I certainly hope it could be soon as the present reliance upon chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery brings much undesirable side-effects and uncertainty.

When man uses trees not planted from seeds,.....

Immediately after the storm, with the last tiny drops of rain petering out in a few minutes, the rain-water flowing slowly into the drains, I went to look at the damage nature has wrought and the amount of work that has to be involved to put things right.

As I surveyed the damage wrought by the strong wind during the storm I noticed something peculiar as I looked at all those uprooted trees. All those big trees which were uprooted by the wind and rain had no main root. The exposed roots beneath the trunks were merely about three or four feet covered with soil. This implies that those trees were planted either from cuttings or grafted. That could be the only reason those trees did not have main roots. (Even if there were main roots for those huge trees that fell, although I doubt if there were any, the main roots must be too thin to anchor the trees strongly to the ground.) Without main roots to anchor themselves, it is no wonder those huge trees could be uprooted.

So, trees planted from seeds with their main roots strongly embedded deep in the ground could withstand the forces unleashed by nature from time to time. And that is proved and confirmed to be true when I went up the hill in the morning to see some trees with broken, even twisted, trunks and branches but with the roots intact although the assault on them by the storm was not less strong up there.

Actually, I do not need to go up the hill to know that seeded trees withstood the might of the previous day’s gale better than ‘man-made trees’. I refer to those trees as man-made because nature meant big trees to have main roots to not only be stable and strong but also reach far down for the necessary water during times of drought and perhaps certain nutrients found there. (The soil is fast being drained, deprived or emptied of natural nutrients from decaying organic matter as a result of humans removing trees and natural space to make way for so called progress.) Here, in my own compound, are trees planted from seeds. There are an Alfonso mango tree with the seeds originating from the middle of a plantation in India and a star-fruit tree from the seed of an earlier plant. They stood strong against the power of the other day’s blast.

Thus, the next time we wish to plant a fruit tree which can grow tall and is situated very near to the house, a seeded plant would be better as it would be stronger and more stable with no chances of it being uprooted. Of course, with a seeded tree, we can never be sure of the taste unless it is obtained from the middle of an orchard where all the trees bear similarly good taste. Furthermore it takes longer to bear fruit.

Of course, we could still ensure safety by trimming the bud-grafted tree so as to ensure it would never grow too tall or big to cause our property or us any harm. That is the preventive measure we have to take for grafted trees, failing which another storm may appear to have the owner of such grafted trees pay a price for his unpreparedness.

A few days after the storm, I saw trees being removed or cut. Grafted trees that had grown too tall were quickly trimmed or removed. Humans react only when lessons are well taught. Nature has taught us many lessons but humans are slow at learning especially when the effects of nature's lessons are not felt. They do not react unless they feel the heat.

Talking about the heat, Northern Malaysia is experiencing one of the hottest spell it has ever had for some time. Humans complain but there are still those who continue clearing forests and burning unnecessarily. Sometimes, it takes extreme circumstances to awaken the need to save Mother Earth. Mild lessons are sometimes not heeded or learned. Perhaps, they live too much in the present moment and forget that there is a future for the human race.

The lessons from the storm.

A hero comes along to make sure the things in his house do not get any wetter than they already are. This brave man rises to the ocassion and was up the roof in a jiffy to repair as well as replace blown away tiles. However, being such a hero is not to be encouraged. Leave such tasks to the experts.

And here's a big awning of approximately 3.5 X 6 meters blown by the strong wind taking it from the front porch over the roof to the back of the house four doors away and placing it in the middle of the back lane.

Look at the roots beneath this huge tree. No main root is seen.

Fallen plants

and branches.

A fallen tree across a road.
***************************

Immediately after the storm, with the last tiny drops of rain flowing slowly into the drains, I went to look at the damage nature has wrought and the amount of work that has to be involved to put things right.

I noticed something peculiar when I looked at all those uprooted trees. All those big trees which were uprooted by the wind and rain had no main root. The exposed roots were merely about three or four feet in the soil. This implies that those trees were planted either from cuttings or grafted. That could be the only reason those trees do not have main roots. (Even if there are main roots for those huge trees that fell, the main roots must be too thin to anchor the trees strongly to the ground.) Without main roots to anchor themselves, it is no wonder those huge tree could be uprooted.

So, trees planted from seeds with their main roots strongly embedded deep in the ground could withstand the forces unleashed by nature from time to time. And that is proved and confirmed to be true when I went up the hill in the morning to see some trees with broken trunks and branches but with the roots intact although the assault on them by the storm was not less strong up there.

Actually, I do not need to go up the hill to know that seeded trees withstood the might of the previous day’s gale better than ‘man-made trees’. I refer to those trees as man-made because nature meant big trees to have main roots to not only be stable and strong but also reach far down for the necessary water during times of drought and perhaps certain nutrients found there. (The soil is fast being drained, deprived or emptied of natural nutrients from decaying organic matter as a result of removing trees and natural space to make way for so called progress.) Here, in my own compound, are trees planted from seeds. There are an Alfonso mango tree with the seeds originating from a plantation in India and a star-fruit tree. They stood strong against the power of the previous day’s blast.

Thus, the next time we wish to plant a fruit tree which can grow tall very near to the house, a seeded plant would be better as it would be stronger and more stable with no chances of it being uprooted. Of course, with a seeded tree, we can never be sure of the taste unless it is obtained from the middle of an orchard where all the trees bear similarly good taste.

Of course, we could still ensure safety by trimming the bud-grafted tree so as to ensure it would never grow too tall or big to cause our property or us any harm.