Tomita Flower Farm, Hokkaido

The Tomita Flower Farm is so huge that you can spend the entire day walking there and yet not see everything there is. Among the most noteworthy are the shops for dried flowers and plants, all aesthetically and tastefully arranged and exhibited on the walls and in shelves so that you can have an idea how each arrangement would look in your house. All I can say is that the cashiers were doing a roaring business, collecting money almost non-stop, even though the items were not cheap!

There were also products that were spin-offs from the flowers and leaves, such as lavender-scented pillows, lavender-scented soap, lavender-flavoured water, exquisite bookmarks made from dried leaves and flowers, etc. There is a whole shop of such products and looking at the crowds, these were very well-received too.



 

 

 






 





 

 

Tiny Flowers @ Fraser'sHill

Quite often we see tiny flowers, sometimes half the size of a one-cent coin, by the roadsides and often growing wild. We tend to ignore them as weeds but they can be quite beautiful if we were to pause to appreciate them (weeds or not) from a closer perspective. The following are some of the more tiny flowers I saw when I was at Fraser's Hill a couple of days ago.

Do not be misled by the size of the flowers you see in these photos. They have been shot at close range and hence, enlarged. We would not have seen such beautiful details with our naked eyes. Nature indeed harbours beautiful wonders if we care to look a little more meticulously.
What we perceive as a weed could turn out to be a thing of beauty.





 

 

 

 

 

 

 





 

 

 

 



 

Yellow frangipani

Yellow frangipani flowers are striking and beautiful. I see lots of pink and red ones and some whites too but when I see yellow frangipani, I will pay attention because they are beautiful. And if frangipani flowers are placed in a plate or bowl of water, they enhance the beauty of the surroundings immediately!

Red Dragonfly

Red on Red! A red dragonfly lands on a pinkish red flower, resulting in a massive clash of red @ Taman Tasik Perdana, Kuala Lumpur.

 

Hokkaido Cherries

Some low-hanging delicious-looking Hokkaido cherries. We visited a fruit farm and the owner allowed us to pluck and eat all the cherries we wanted. No takeaways though. A really sweet experience.

 

Dragonfly

Among the garden insects I photograph, the dragonfly is the specie I love most. It was a much maligned and misunderstood creature in the past and in some cultures they were often associated with bad luck. There were many other negative superstitions based on myths that were told about the dragonfly.

To me the dragonfly represents a creature of grace and beauty, with its slim body and almost transparent wings adding to its allure and elegance. The dragonfly comes in many hues, appealing to our aesthetic senses. They are an embodiment of beauty.

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

The Hibiscus

The Hibiscus is the national flower of Malaysia and I often admire its beauty with pride. Some 15 to 20 years ago, only one specie was seen most of the time and that was the one with big red petals and the stigma protruding out of the flower with is orange-coloured pollen. The flower has seen tremendous transformation since.

We now have hibiscus of many different hues, red, pink, white, yellow, light purple, "golden", etc. The petals could be normal, serrated, warped, tiny, large or even double-layered. Horticultural engineering has certainly taken this flower a long way and made it more exciting, beautiful and exotic.