The petrified frog

Many of my young visitors think that the rock is an enormous frog in disguise, who will come to life at night!There are lots of the real frogs too, in my garden. We are all waiting for the rain.

More hoyas

Here are some more of those fragrant beauties.

bracket fungus in the jungle

This is a bracket fungus I saw in the rainforest of the Western Ghats. Our guide said that these are food for some denizens of the forest. The food chain is so delicately balanced that even removing a fungus might disrupt it.

Monsoons

The monsoons are playing hide and seek with us in India. I hope it will rain really soon.

Hoya, ahoy!

I have just planted out some chrysanthemum seedlings- some will give golden yellow flowers and some, mauve flowers with white tips. To avoid the aphid infestation, I have planted garlic berween the plantlets.My hoya creeper is sleeping after its stunning display last month.

This

This is a bilbergia with a stupendous flower, although the plant itself in not attractive. I had to coax the plant to flower by strewing rotten tomatoes around it!The plant took two years to make up its mind to reward me with its flower.

The picture should be turned, but I don't know how to do it.

red salvias attract honeybees

Bees

I have been reading that all kinds of bees including honeybees and bumblebees are becoming rare. Fortunately, since I have a fairly large garden with a good bio diversity, bees visit my garden daily. I see them gathering nectar from the flowers of the teak trees (25 feet) at noon, and they are busy gathering pollen and nectar from the flowers in my mint patch at 3 in the afternoon. But bumble bees are rare visitors. Last year, they used to come when the Cassia flowere. This year, the Cassia has not yet flowered. The Climate change seems to have affected their flowering.Honey bees and bumble bees are essential for the fertilisation of many flowers.