IamOK's Blog

Eureka.....
Sep 21, 2010 | 10:28 AM PST
Tags: gingko biloba , bonsai , under-ground potter-wasps

I was not looking for anything in particular...... just outside my windowsill where I have kept my three flower pots with bonsai (in the making), ginkgo biloba, fig and wisteria. I was attracted by a sudden movement at the base of the gingko biloba sappling and what I saw was something the least expected.... a potter wasp had just landed and it was dragging a caterpillar.

Wonder of wonders...... it had dug a neat hole at the farthest extent of the flower pot and I had no clue of its labor of love. It took all the time it wanted to clean up the larva, at least that is what it appeared to me. The wasp would sting the larva again and again as it it was injecting some fluid inside the larva in preparation of the diet for its baby. Finally it appeared satisfied and dragged the still wriggling caterpillar down inside the dark chamber.

Internet does not talk about potter wasps who live underground. The ones I had written about earlier had made pots of the regular shape and size and the wasps were themselves as close relatives of paper wasps.

My wasp today is of iridescent blue black color and half the size of its cousins reported earlier.

With due apology to the poet: "Men may come and men may go, the potter wasps go on for ever". 

Wisteria and Gingko Biloba
May 3, 2010 | 4:03 PM PST
Tags: bonsai , medicinal plants

I am a natural gardener, untaught and unread. I do my gardening instinctively.

I do not plant my flowers in flower beds. I love azaleas because they do not demand a lot of care and they bloom where they are planted. Azaleas put to shame many other "delicate" flowers when they burst out abloom. The way my azaleas are blooming clearly tells me they are as happy as could be, but not so my hydrangeas; the overgrown crepe-myrtle is too much of a deterrence.

Now, it is time for bonsai-ing a wisteria and a ginkgo biloba. My bonsais are not tiny, I let them grow up to around fifteen to eighteen inches. I have written in my earlier blog that I moved into my present house only couple of a months ago and these bonsais are the very first ones in this house.

I have taken a two years old wisteria plants from an old vine to start my bonsai but my gingko biloba will be growing out of a seed I bought on ebay. I have been fascinated by this plant.

During World War II, Nagasaki and Hirosima were flattened, razed to the ground by the first even nuclear bombs. No one knew how long the two cities would remain thus in ruins but come Spring season, everyone breathed a sigh of relief when a green sprout emerged from the desolate landscape; it was gingko biloba that had stood there for more than two centuries before being burnt to ashes by the nuclear inferno.

I also strongly believe in its medicinal value and hence my favorite subject of bonsai.