The common English names are Madagascar periwinkle and pink periwinkle. Chichirica come in three colors–purple, a lighter shade of purple and white. The plant is a bush that grows to about three feet in height. It multiplies fast as new plants sprout from the shallow roots that creep on the soil. Some medicial uses are ... (more)

A huge floral arrangement featuring yellow and red-orange birds of paradise on the fourth floor lobby of the Holiday Inn Hotel.

They’re called baby’s breath. These tiny white flowers, no more than half an inch in diameter, are used to enhance the apprearance of bouquets and other floral arrangements. They’re inexpensive and they stay fresh for days, often outliving the more expensive blooms that they enhance.

On May 13th last year, less than a week after I got my Canon EOS 350, a Mother’s Day gift from my husband, I went out of the house, took a leisurely walk and took photos of anything and everything that I found interesting. I even went to the subdivision next to ours which has ... (more)

Grass is slippery when it rains and I don’t bring out my camera unless it’s safe. The one morning early this week that it wasn’t raining when I got out of bed to fix the kids’ school lunch, there was this lavender gumamela (hibiscus) that was just starting to open. No longer a bud but not yet in full bloom. Too irresistible. I simple had to freeze the moment.

I really don’t know where the color lavender ends and the color lilac begins. I’ve always referred to these as my lavender gumamela. We have two varieties, the smaller ones that we bought in Los Baños, Laguna, years ago, and the bigger ones with overlapping petals from a cutting given by Jay and Jet David ... (more)

I’m still digging into my old photos and look what I found! These are some of the flowers that used to grow in our garden. We have a lot of new ones now. If the colors appear too bright in some photos and totally washed out in others, that’s because I took these photos with ... (more)

I never thought I’d miss the heat of summer. But all this rain for the past few weeks and I’m really starting to think about flying kites in U.P. Diliman.