To be with nature with mum

Last week, I took time off to drive mum to visit Laman 2008 at the Perdana Lake Gardens.This landscape and gardens exhibition is around every two years and this year it was held in our scenic gardens in Kuala lumpur.
When we arrived, being a local, I did not seem to be welcomed bcos the car park at the entrance was so fulled.After a few times patrolling the area, I eventually found a car park in front of the Kuala Lumpur Open Birds' Park. Mum and I got down to walk up the steps to see the Orchid Garden opposite.
The blooms were so beautiful and there was really no regrets to be there! They have doubled up the number of species of orchids in the garden with the expo on. I just could not resist taking the beautiful pictures of each and every specie of the orchids and the counter of my camera showed a total of 150 pictures taken.It is so nice to be walking around this garden with my mum during my retirement days. I really felt so thankful that we both had grabbed this opportunity to be with nature even though we live in the city.My mum is very independent and she moves around either alone or with friends very often. I treasure the times I have outings with her bcos we both share the same liking for plants and flowers.

The Orchid Garden is such a serene place for us to visit whenever we feel like to be close to nature. Besides us, we saw some students with their teachers, some photographers getting the best shots of the rare orchids and some foreign visitors. When mum took a shot of me in front of the abundance orchids, one of the students asked permission from my mum to take a shot of my mum with his camera! I was so surprised for my mum to be asked for such a pose. I suppose that he must have admired her to be so passionate with flowers bcos the radiance on her face always show this quality of her.She is very active and passionate with plants for her age!

From the exhibits, we moved on to buy some orchid plants. These stalls are permanent stores in the garden and they are opened for business everyday.After my first round of survey of the three shops, I realised that orchids are sold here at very reasonable prices.The usual dendrodiums cost about RM10-15 for a pot whereas the phalentrophis are sold at RM35 a pot or RM100 for 3 pots. My hands were full with these orchids as we moved to my car to park the orchids.

Since we were in the site for the exhibition, I decided to get a convenient ride on the shuttle service coaches which is a free service for visitors to move around freely. Both of us hopped into one and there we were on the way to the entrance of Laman 2008! The round-about in front was so beautifully decorated with bonsai and orchids. I moved on to the ticket booth to purchase my ticket and mum enjoyed a free ticket in. Children below 6 yrs and adults above 60 yrs were free to enter without any ticket purchased!

As many as 50 stalls were selling plants and gardening gadgets at the entrance's open space. I was looking for peat soil to germinate my petunia seeds , found it being sold very cheap but it was just too troublesome to cart it for it 's 10kg! I shelved the idea and decided to look at the beautiful orchids, air plants and some beautiful earthen pots! Mum was attracted to the catteya cuttings becos she has green fingers with this species and she has propagated so many for both my brother and me. She was given only one starter cutting and today she has easily more than 20 pots hanging in her garden at home. With these new cuttings she will end up having a good collection of catteyas of all hues and colours.

Some yrs ago, I was with my children when they were 6 and 9 yrs old in the same garden. The sunken garden in the centre still brought back memories of those days when mum and I took the children there for outings. So many yrs had gone by but today this sunken garden is relandscaped with different plants but the centre still locates the fountain against the deep blue mosaiced pond base .The Parliament Building can be seen in the far background and it was so nice to be with mum after so many yrs when the children were still small. Now, both of them are in their twenties . Both of us behaved like sisters and an American couple offered to take a shot of us together!

Moving on, we felt that we had to have a bite at the temporary food stalls there. Nothing much was offered and we decided to buy the corn in a cup for a prelunch snack. We needed this supplement to move on . With this bite, we were more energetic to walk another distance to the Edible Garden and the Floral enclave. Within the huge white tent which was airconditioned, we saw a number of gardens layout , flowers display and arrangements. Some of these displays were internationally owned and we could see the owners exchanging the faded flowers with fresh ones to last for the next few days before the closing ceremony on that Sunday which was four days away.

Besides the exhibition, there were still many available permanent gardens which are open to public everyday. Over the hill slope in front of the Floral enclave, I saw many umbrellas of red, yellow and green colours spreaded in a design over the green hill slope to create the sculpture effect to our gardens. Malaysia has indeed many places for us to explore nowadays.

On our way back, we stopped at the park entrance to wait for the shuttle service to get to our car. This time we waited for less than an hour bcos the crowd grew being past early lunch hour. We rushed to the coaches and managed to grab two seats which were singlely spaced. Never mind, somehow, we arrived at the Birds Park to get our car . It is indeed very convenient to get close to nature any time at our own disposure! My mum and I had good times together and we told ourselves that we will go close to nature again and again ! There is so much to share during our walk around.

During the last leg of our time out, we drove to Jaya One to have our lunch. There is a variety of eat-outs there to choose and eventually we settled in one of the Hong Kong style cafe to have a nice meal before going back home.