More Flower-Nose, and New Garden Inhabitants

A bit after I posted about sesame flowers looking like noses, and some other flowers (Gmelina asiatica) used in Indian texts as nose references, the great website Indi Journal (which documents indigenous Philippine trees and plants) posted about Gmelina philippensis. I grew excited as I was greeted by a photo of a similar flower. The photo below is from Indi Journal.



On a related note, the rains are prolonging the harvest season of sesame. I know why they plant them for summer harvests. They aren't going to be ready anytime soon.



Okay, so we have two new friends in the garden: a male and female goat! Our grasscutter is perenially ill, so we have decided to procure some friends to eat their way around the area. This makes the transfer of plant matter to the soil much quicker (in the form of fecal matter), and is a better option than using gasoline to cut.



The female is, in the meantime, tied up. The male goes free. Before you draw up any parallels and raise a protest banner, this is just temporary, until they get their bearings. We find the male on top of strange things. They are not doing a very quick job of eating the grass (as you can see above), but we are so happy to have them.

They are still scared of people, with the female warming up faster. We've been feeding them a bit of salt everytime we give them water. They have been eating our sweet potato plants. As you can imagine, I am awoken by the confused rooster (citylights messing his instinct up), and all day listen to bleats, barks, tweeting birds.