The Garden of Eden?

Had enough of the Niu Year? (For the uninitiated, "niu" is cow in chinese). Last night (eve of the 9th Day of Chinese New Year), the Hokkein's in Penang prayed to the heavens. I remember my in-laws used to do it in Air Itam and we would stay up and have mee suah soup with one hard-boiled egg each, courtesy of my mum-in-law. Around my house, several families had huge joss-sticks (which are still burning now) and altars. Usually at midnight there would be helluva noise from the firecrackers. Last night was pretty quiet. A sign of the times.

We did go to the CNY celebrations at the heritage enclave in George Town on sunday night. Will try to post some pictures. The amount of garbage everywhere was just horrendous - polystyrene containers, paper cups, plastic cups. We didn't buy any of those, in fact, we brought our own drinking water in a sports bottle. And we chose to eat at a heritage restaurant so that we don't contribute to the problem.

Here's Eden-in-the-making. Am trying not to use fertiliser but my compose heap is still not "bearing fruits" yet. Also trying to avoid pesticides but I get a lot of fungus attack and there's a species of moth with is too productive leaving cocoons all over hanging from the leaves and sucking the plants to death. My solution? Surgery. I just trim off the affected leaves until sometimes the plant is almost bald and let it grow back. So far so good. With biodiversity, hopefully this problem will be less. Everyone loves the beautiful bamboo but I have be vigilant and trim it so that it won't encroach into my neighbour's territory. Well, at least not below that roof overhang which the neighbour has built right to the property line. Sigh. Had a tiff with the neighbour about that. Can you imagine if I did the same?

A closer view. Am trying to create an informal feel to it. See the white "pebbles"? They sort of light up at night so you can walk on the path without any lights.

Found these "love birds" in my backyard on my Pinang Tree. So which is the dominant sex?