Trumpet Vine

 Blue Trumpet Vine, Laurel Clock Vine, Thunbergia laurifolia

A native to India,  it is a fast-growing ornamental vine with showy violet, white or blue trumpet-shaped flowers.  It is locally known as kar tuau in Malaysia and rang jeud in Thailand. Thunbergia laurifolia leaves are opposite, heart-shaped with serrated leaf margin and taper to a pointed tip. Flowers are not scented and borne on pendulous inflorescence. The hermaphrodite flower is trumpet-shaped with a short broad tube, white outside and yellowish inside. The corolla is pale blue in color with 5–7 petals, one larger than the others.

The plant flowers almost continuously throughout the year with flowers opening early in the morning and aborting in the evening of the same day. Carpenter bees are frequent visitors, creeping into the flowers for pollen and nectar while black ants are present probably as nectar scavengers. The plant develops a very tuberous root system.

  

In Malaysia, juice from crushed leaves of T. laurifolia are taken for menorrhagia, placed into the ear for deafness, and applied for poulticing cuts and boils. In Thailand, leaves are used as an antipyretic, as well as an antidote for detoxifying poisons. Several Thai herbal companies have started producing and exporting rang jeud tea. The tea has been claimed to be able to detoxify the harmful effects of drugs, alcohol and cigarettes.

 Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us on a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it. 
~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

 

 

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Balimbing blossoms

Balimbing blossoms

Balimbing is the local name for Star Fruit or Carambola.

In Philippine politics, Balimbing, a fruit with many sides,  is often mentioned in the same breath as a turncoat---politicians who change political alliances every election season.

To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulne­ss while telling carefully constructe­d lies, to hold simultaneo­usly two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradict­ory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy …. – 1984 by George Orwell

Don't tell me what you're not, or what you're against! Tell me who you are and what you stand for. ~ Mario Cortes

It is said that every people has the Government it deserves. It is more to the point that every Government has the electorate it deserves; for the orator of the front bench can edify or debauch an ignorant electorate at will. ~ George Bernard Shaw

 

 

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Heliconia

Heliconias are also called Fake Bird of Paradise or Wild Plantain. They are tall, spiky, with red-orange-yellow bracts with unique arrowhead-shaped petals. They are named after Mount Helicon, where Greek mythology placed the Nine Muses of science and the arts. A gift of heliconia symbolizes inspiration, intuition and divine guidance.

Photos taken at the park in Greenbelt.

 If you want to know the truth of who you are, walk until not a person knows your name. Travel is the great leveler, the great teacher, bitter as medicine, crueler than mirror-glass. A long stretch of road will teach you more about yourself than a hundred years of quiet introspection. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

 

 

 
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Yellow Gumamela

When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life. ~ John Lennon

Be grateful for and celebrate the beauty in all things because beauty is everywhere; and ignore all limitations and boundaries wherever they are found, because they are illusion. ~ David Sanders

I think over again my small adventures,
my fears, those small ones that seemed so big,
all those vital things I had to get and to reach,
and yet there is only one great thing:
to live and see the great day that dawns,
and the light that fills the world.

~ Innuit Traditional Song

Grant me daily the grace of gratitude, to be thankful for all my many gifts, and so be freed from artificial needs, that I might lead a joyful, simple life. ~ Edward Hays

 

 

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Red Crown of Thorns

Crown of Thorns, Euphorbia milii, Christ plant

Please know that I am aware of the hazards. I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others. (--in a letter to her husband, before her last flight) ~ Amelia Earhart

Most of us look at our ideals, say how far we are from them, and get depressed. But it is heroic simply to say, "Here are my ideals," state them before the world, and then spend your life trying to live up to them. ~ Keshavan Nair

When you meet someone better than yourself, turn your thoughts to becoming his equal. When you meet someone not as good as you are, look within and examine your own self.

~ Confucious

Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. ~ William Faulkner

The Question: What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail? ~ Robert Schuller

 

 

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Copper Leaf

Copper Leaf, Chrysothemis pulchella

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.” ~ Albert Einstein

“I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than closed by belief.” ~ Gerry Spence

 

 

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Yellow Caballero

Caesalpinia pulcherrima, Dwarf Poinciana, Caballero

 I have posted the red/orange variety here and the pink here.  I found yellow ones, too.  

"Time doesn't always heal:  it just breathes and swallows memories like the seasons change---sending showers; beating flowers into the mud.  And nothing is forever in this place.  Nothing but the way my heart fits in your hands; the held breath of hope."

 

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Moth Orchid

For every beauty there is an eye somewhere to see it.

For every truth there is an ear somewhere to hear it.

For every love there is a heart somewhere to receive it.

~Ivan Panin

 

 

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