Our garden flowers in February 2010
February had been an extremely hot season in our country, Malaysia! Eeek, too hot and humid most days, with very infrequent rainfall.
Of course, sun-loving plants in our tropical garden like the Bougainvilleas, Madagascar Periwinkles, White Mussaenda, Euphorbia milii, Ponytail Plant and Yucca, to name a few just love the heat while the Norfolk Pine, Macarthur Palm and Dracaena Lisa had some of their foliage ‘roasted’…poor thing!
Here’s sharing some of our garden photos, taken in February, mostly from our front yard and a couple from the backyard. Enjoy please!
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February 2010 garden news
Hooray! We’re extremely happy with our garden project for January! Propagation of Cordyline terminalis by tip cuttings and section cuttings showed 100% success rate!
Display WordPress Tags in a Dropdown Menu
It’s beneficial to display tags in any blog/website to maximize the availability of content options to your readers. Tags help to group one’s blog posts by keyword and link readers to such related content. Usually seen at the sidebar, it may be displayed as a tag cloud, tag list or tag dropdown.
How happy I was when I discovered how to add a tag cloud to our right sidebar late last November. However my excitement was short-lived when I observed that the display does look too long and cluttered, without uniformity in text size and colour. And, not knowing how to customize that, I just had to tolerate it as undoubtedly, tags are useful.
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Quisqualis indica (Rangoon Creeper), simply spectacular!
Quisqualis indica (Rangoon Creeper Vine, Drunken Sailor, Scarlet Ragoon, Chinese Honeysuckle)
An extremely spectacular vine that just loves showing off throughout the year in our tropical heat! When in full bloom, this beauty will be dramatically covered with large trusses of tricolored flowers that are very showy and truly a traffic stopper.
Similar to another tricolor beauty, Brunfelsia calycina, the gorgeous flowers of Rangoon Creeper open white, change to pink, then bright red over a 2-3 day period.
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Dagon Design Sitemap Generator, another awesome plugin!
Having installed the WP-Archives plugin (learn how-to here) a couple of days ago and pretty astounded with what it did for our Archives page, I went scouting for a similar plugin that could generate a sitemap for our website.
From the many available, I found the plugin, Dagon Design Sitemap Generator, most remarkable and had it installed pronto yesterday! But later found out that this version offered by Wordpress Plugin Directory was ver. 3.15, an older version.
Preferring to have the latest version 3.17 instead, I returned to its plugin source page at Sitemap Generator Plugin for Wordpress – Dagon Design to get an idea on how to upgrade and was most delighted to find explicit instructions on installation and upgrading. And, promptly carried out the whole process with more confidence this time round.
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Wordpress WP-Archives plugin is so awesome!
Yippee! I just had this cool WP-Archives plugin installed! Check our archives page here and you’ll understand why I’m bursting with joy. This is something I had yearned longingly for so long but clueless about how to get it done. Hehe…now I can give myself a pat on the back for installing one myself, after much researching and trotting boldly ahead.
Plugins? Never installed one before this! Just knew that they were necessary to achieve certain functionality in our site and whatever basic plugins needed were installed by our darling son, David when he initiated the site’s setup years ago.
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Create a Wordpress dropdown monthly archives
I’m absolutely thrilled to have been able to get a dropdown monthly archive at the sidebar finally!
This display is so very short, just perfect to replace the default one that was getting way too long, which will continue growing in length as long as new posts are being added.
Learn how to change that here!
A big thank you to Michael Martin of Pro Blog Design for his awesome tip on how to get this dropdown list!
Here’s how to get a dropdown list of your monthly archives
by just following these simple steps:
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Dracaena deremensis ‘Lisa’ and other cultivars
Dracaena deremensis ‘Lisa’ (Dracaena Lisa, Dracaena Lisa Cane)
An attractive evergreen and shrubby plant with dark green foliage that is popularly grown as an indoor houseplant or outdoors, as a specimen. It can be potted or otherwise.
Interiorscapers just love Dracaena deremensis! With statuesque beauty, great tolerance for low light conditions and resistant to diseases, they make excellent plants for indoor decor.
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January 2010: Propagating Cordylines or Ti Plants
We had planted a beautiful Hawaiian Ti (Cordyline terminalis) before, probably about a decade ago. It grew from a stem cutting (also known as ‘log’) that was presented by a dear couple who returned from holidaying in Hawaii then. But was eventually discarded when it became leggy and unsightly.
Seeing a vibrant variegated pink/maroon beauty during our recent vacation to Felda Residence Hot Springs, Sungkai in Perak, has surely rekindled in us a strong yearning for one!
We’ve never seen this variety of the Ti Plant before with such intense colours, the shocking pink on the glossy foliage is absolutely striking and truly spectacular, in fabulous contrast with the dark maroon and in lovely random blotches. I believe this is Cordyline terminalis ‘Red Sister’
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Brighten up with colourful Cordyline terminalis (Ti-plant)
Cordyline terminalis (Ti Plant/Tree, Hawaiian Ti, Good Luck Plant/Tree)
We’re definitely going to reintroduce Cordylines to our garden again. Gosh, we didn’t realize how gorgeous they can be until we saw this striking variegated pink/maroon beauty at Felda Residence Hot Springs recently!
It sure would brighten up our plot, adding contrast and interest to our current landscape
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