Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Monday, September 17, 2007
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Herbal Plants
I have bought 4 species of Herbal Plants:
Gotu Kola : http://www.mb.com.ph/issues/2006/01/21/BSNS2006012154370.html
http://www.answers.com/topic/centella-asiatica
Lavender: http://www.answers.com/Lavender?cat=health
Tarragon: http://www.answers.com/Tarragon?cat=health
Rosemary: http://www.answers.com/Rosemary?cat=health
Gotu Kola : http://www.mb.com.ph/issues/2006/01/21/BSNS2006012154370.html
http://www.answers.com/topic/centella-asiatica
Lavender: http://www.answers.com/Lavender?cat=health
Tarragon: http://www.answers.com/Tarragon?cat=health
Rosemary: http://www.answers.com/Rosemary?cat=health
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Flowers Galore
It was a very sunny Tuesday so we decided to go to a plant shop somewhere in the metropolis. To my awe, there were lots of plants available. I was supposed to buy the Jasminum grandiflora ONLY but i just couldn't resist the orchid plants so I bought 2 species of those.
Yellow Oncidium or Golden Butterfly Orchid
This is the one I bought:
Plant Care Tips:
Temperature: Most Oncidiums and their hybrids enjoy intermediate temperature ranges: 75-85 degree F. day & 60-65 degreee F. at night.
Light: Most Oncidium and their hybrids prefer filtered, subdued light (from 1000 to 1500 ft. candles). The Oncidiums prefer bright light.The leaves should be bright green as opposed to dark green or reddish green. Reddish green indicates too much light; dark green indicates not enough light.
Water: Oncidiums should become moderately dry between waterings. Generally, they require more water while the new shoot is growing and less once the bulb has formed. Fertilize your plants at least once a month. Take care to keep water out of the new growth at the base of the plant. Never allow the bottom of the pot to stand in water. Never use artificially softened water.
Humidity: Oncidiums enjoy moist air, requiring a minimum of 40-50% humidity in the immediate vicinity of the plant. Humidity should be increased with higher temperatures. The ideal humidity is between 55 and 75%, with as much ventilation or air movement as possible without any cold drafts. Humidity can be increased around the plant by placing the pot on an inverted saucer in a baking pan filled with pebbles, rock chips, etc., and water. Keep water level below top of pebbles so that the plant will not have "wet feet" from setting in water. Morning misting of foliage is also helpful, especially during periods of hot weather.
Potting: Repot Oncidiums at least every two years. As a general rule, repot them when the new shoot is two to three inches tall or when new roots appear. All the old mix should be removed from the roots and any dead roots should be removed. If dividing, keep the divisions in clumps of three to five mature bulbs. Medium to fine fir bark is preferred. The base of the new growth should be potted about 1/2" (no deeper) into the fresh bark. Keep mix barely damp until you see the new roots penetrating the bark, then resume normal watering.
QUICK CARE FOR YOUR ONCIDIUM:
1. When you first receive your Oncidium choose a spot for it and move it from that spot as little as possible.
2. Once the plant gets acclimated to a certain location, they tend to stay the healthiest when left in one spot.
3. After you receive the plant wait 10-12 days before watering it, after the first watering, water it once a week. When watering is complete, ensure that all the residual water has drained from the bottom of the pot before replacing it in its decorative container.
4. It is normal for the leaves and stem of the plant to have a "bent" almost drooping look. This is natural with all Oncidium and will by no means shorten the life of the plant.
Dendrobium Hybrid Orchid
This is the one I bought:
Plant Care Tips
- Light and Shade - Nobiles can and should be grown outdoors in the summer, usually between the first of June and the end of September. If there’s danger of frost, bring them in. They should be grown in 30% shade or bright, filtered sun. In the fall, when you bring them in, place them in either an east or south window. South is preferable. When growing year round in windowsills, try to give them between 2000 and 2500 foot-candles of light.
- Temperature - Nobiles are definitely cool growers. Therefore they must have cool night temperatures. To produce good flower count, night temperatures should not raise above 60 ° until the buds appear. After the buds appear, you can keep them at 62-64 ° at night and you should have blooms in January or February. At night one can even put them in the refrigerator until buds appear. Remember that with cold night temperatures one must keep them very much on the dry side. This prevents fungus and rot problems.
- Watering - Nobile Dendrobiums like to be kept root bound in the pot, which means that in the summer, with strong sunlight, you can water your plants almost every day due to increased evaporation and transpiration. In the fall (late September) when the plants are in dormancy, water only enough to keep the canes or pseudobulbs from shriveling (about once per week). Do not resume normal watering (watering when the plant approaches dryness, every 3-5 days) until you see flower buds appear in the sides of the canes. Water in the morning. Rain water, distilled water or reverse osmosis water works best.
- Blooming - Nobile Dendrobuims produce buds from the sides of the canes, generally opposite of the leaf axis. The buds will slowly emerge over a period of about 3 months before blooming. These plants can produce from 10 to 100 flowers at a time depending on the size of the plant.
- Fertilizing - For tap or well water, fertilize with Grow More 20-10-20. At the end of August cut off fertilizing, otherwise you will end up with all growth and no flowers. Resume feeding in mid to late January or after flowers appear. Another highly recommended fertilizer is Green Jungle Orchid Food, especially formulated to work with rain, distilled, reverse osmosis water or water low in alkalinity. Fertilize with Green Jungle every time you water, all year round.
- Potting - Repot every two years or as the plant outgrows the pot. Standard orchid potting mix or
And of course... my wonderful Jasminum plant:
When these particular species of the Jasmine family are in full bloom, the fragrance of these flowers are very nice. =)
Other useful websites for the novice like me:
- Orchid Propagation: http://home.earthlink.net/~iramann/id23.html
http://www.uslink.com/~scl/lab.html
- Orchid Species: http://www.flowerpictures.net/orchids/
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Tibetan Meridien Massage
Thank God I live in this Era! LoL!
I just took photos of the magazine I was reading while waiting my turn in a salon.
I just took photos of the magazine I was reading while waiting my turn in a salon.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
The 2 F-Words You Should Love
Make Failure and Frustration Your Friends: A History Lesson
By: K. Stone
We all experience failure and the subsequent frustration. But how you handle those tormentors makes all the difference in your final outcomes. Oftentimes the peak of frustration comes right before a major breakthrough. That’s if you don’t quit. So don’t quit! Instead use the energy behind that frustration to break through to a new level of strategy. Make failure the friend that brought you to breakthrough’s doorstep! Let frustration be the energy that propels your leap across the chasm!
What follows are several success stories from history where failure was a frequent companion throughout these great people’s lives. Let’s all take some inspiration from their stories.
Abraham Lincoln
Failed in business in 1831. He was defeated for the legislature in 1832. He failed in business again in 1834. Hi beloved, Ann Rutledge, died in 1835. Had a nervous breakdown in ‘1836. Was defeated in election in 1838. Defeated for Congress in 1843, 1846, and for a third time in 1848. Lincoln was defeated for Senate in 1855, and defeated for Vice President in 1856. In 1858 he was defeated for Senate. And finally in 1860 he was elected President!
Thomas Edison
Built 1800 prototypes until he created the first light bulb. He was one of America’s most prolific inventors, and he was granted 1,093 patents by the U.S. Patent office, including motion picture cameras, the phonograph, and the storage battery. But his inventions included such failures as a perpetual cigar, furniture made of cement, and a flying machine.
Alexander Graham Bell
Bell invented the telephone, and yet he found it difficult to secure a major backer. In the same year he patented the telephone, 1876, Bell tried to sell exclusive rights to the telephone to Western Union, the leading communications company at the time, for $100,000. William Orton, Western Union’s president, declined the offer, saying: “What use could this company make of an electrical toy?” The rest, as they say, is history.
Frank Herbert
Herbert is the author of Dune, the epic science-fiction tale. The book was rejected by 13 publishers with comments like “too slow,” “confusing and irritating,” “too long,” and “issues too clear-cut and old fashioned.” But Herbert was persistent. Dune went on to win the two highest awards in the science-fiction writing and has sold over 10 million copies.
Albert Einstein
Einstein was a poor elementary school student. He failed his first college entrance exam at Zurich Polytechnic. However he went on to develop one of the greatest theories of Physics, The Theory of Relativity. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics and today his name is synonymous with the word “Genius.” He will go down in history as one of the greatest scientists in the history of the world.
Henry Ford
Ford failed in business and went broke five times before he finally succeeded. In his first car, he forgot to put in a reverse gear. Then in 1957, he created bragged about the “car of the decade,” the Edsel. This car was infamous for its doors that wouldn’t close, a hood that wouldn’t open, paint that peeled, a horn that stuck, and a notoriety that made resale impossible. Despite this, Ford went on to much success.
Col. Harland Sanders
Yes, the Kentucky Fried Chicken Guy. Before his original recipe made it to the big time the Colonel traveled across the country trying to franchise his business. On the 1009th try he got his first sale. Today, KFC is a worldwide success story.
What’s your favorite success story that began with many failures? Where have you succeeded after many failures?
By: K. Stone
We all experience failure and the subsequent frustration. But how you handle those tormentors makes all the difference in your final outcomes. Oftentimes the peak of frustration comes right before a major breakthrough. That’s if you don’t quit. So don’t quit! Instead use the energy behind that frustration to break through to a new level of strategy. Make failure the friend that brought you to breakthrough’s doorstep! Let frustration be the energy that propels your leap across the chasm!
What follows are several success stories from history where failure was a frequent companion throughout these great people’s lives. Let’s all take some inspiration from their stories.
Abraham Lincoln
Failed in business in 1831. He was defeated for the legislature in 1832. He failed in business again in 1834. Hi beloved, Ann Rutledge, died in 1835. Had a nervous breakdown in ‘1836. Was defeated in election in 1838. Defeated for Congress in 1843, 1846, and for a third time in 1848. Lincoln was defeated for Senate in 1855, and defeated for Vice President in 1856. In 1858 he was defeated for Senate. And finally in 1860 he was elected President!
Thomas Edison
Built 1800 prototypes until he created the first light bulb. He was one of America’s most prolific inventors, and he was granted 1,093 patents by the U.S. Patent office, including motion picture cameras, the phonograph, and the storage battery. But his inventions included such failures as a perpetual cigar, furniture made of cement, and a flying machine.
Alexander Graham Bell
Bell invented the telephone, and yet he found it difficult to secure a major backer. In the same year he patented the telephone, 1876, Bell tried to sell exclusive rights to the telephone to Western Union, the leading communications company at the time, for $100,000. William Orton, Western Union’s president, declined the offer, saying: “What use could this company make of an electrical toy?” The rest, as they say, is history.
Frank Herbert
Herbert is the author of Dune, the epic science-fiction tale. The book was rejected by 13 publishers with comments like “too slow,” “confusing and irritating,” “too long,” and “issues too clear-cut and old fashioned.” But Herbert was persistent. Dune went on to win the two highest awards in the science-fiction writing and has sold over 10 million copies.
Albert Einstein
Einstein was a poor elementary school student. He failed his first college entrance exam at Zurich Polytechnic. However he went on to develop one of the greatest theories of Physics, The Theory of Relativity. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics and today his name is synonymous with the word “Genius.” He will go down in history as one of the greatest scientists in the history of the world.
Henry Ford
Ford failed in business and went broke five times before he finally succeeded. In his first car, he forgot to put in a reverse gear. Then in 1957, he created bragged about the “car of the decade,” the Edsel. This car was infamous for its doors that wouldn’t close, a hood that wouldn’t open, paint that peeled, a horn that stuck, and a notoriety that made resale impossible. Despite this, Ford went on to much success.
Col. Harland Sanders
Yes, the Kentucky Fried Chicken Guy. Before his original recipe made it to the big time the Colonel traveled across the country trying to franchise his business. On the 1009th try he got his first sale. Today, KFC is a worldwide success story.
What’s your favorite success story that began with many failures? Where have you succeeded after many failures?
18 Tricks to Make New Habits Stick
Wouldn’t it be nice to have everything run on autopilot? Chores, exercise, eating healthy and getting your work done just happening automatically. Unless they manage to invent robot servants, all your work isn’t going to disappear overnight. But if you program behaviors as new habits you can take out the struggle.
With a small amount of initial discipline, you can create a new habit that requires little effort to maintain. Here are some tips for creating new habits and making them stick:
1. Commit to Thirty Days - Three to four weeks is all the time you need to make a habit automatic. If you can make it through the initial conditioning phase, it becomes much easier to sustain. A month is a good block of time to commit to a change since it easily fits in your calendar.
2. Make it Daily - Consistency is critical if you want to make a habit stick. If you want to start exercising, go to the gym every day for your first thirty days. Going a couple times a week will make it harder to form the habit. Activities you do once every few days are trickier to lock in as habits.
3. Start Simple - Don’t try to completely change your life in one day. It is easy to get over-motivated and take on too much. If you wanted to study two hours a day, first make the habit to go for thirty minutes and build on that.
4. Remind Yourself - Around two weeks into your commitment it can be easy to forget. Place reminders to execute your habit each day or you might miss a few days. If you miss time it defeats the purpose of setting a habit to begin with.
5. Stay Consistent - The more consistent your habit the easier it will be to stick. If you want to start exercising, try going at the same time, to the same place for your thirty days. When cues like time of day, place and circumstances are the same in each case it is easier to stick.
6. Get a Buddy - Find someone who will go along with you and keep you motivated if you feel like quitting.
7. Form a Trigger - A trigger is a ritual you use right before executing your habit. If you wanted to wake up earlier, this could mean waking up in exactly the same way each morning. If you wanted to quit smoking you could practice snapping your fingers each time you felt the urge to pick up a cigarette.
8. Replace Lost Needs - If you are giving up something in your habit, make sure you are adequately replacing any needs you’ve lost. If watching television gave you a way to relax, you could take up meditation or reading as a way to replace that same need.
9. Be Imperfect - Don’t expect all your attempts to change habits to be successful immediately. It took me four independent tries before I started exercising regularly. Now I love it. Try your best, but expect a few bumps along the way.
10. Use “But” - A prominent habit changing therapist once told me this great technique for changing bad thought patterns. When you start to think negative thoughts, use the word “but” to interrupt it. “I’m no good at this, but, if I work at it I might get better later.”
11. Remove Temptation - Restructure your environment so it won’t tempt you in the first thirty days. Remove junk food from your house, cancel your cable subscription, throw out the cigarettes so you won’t need to struggle with willpower later.
12. Associate With Role Models - Spend more time with people who model the habits you want to mirror. A recent study found that having an obese friend indicated you were more likely to become fat. You become what you spend time around.
13. Run it as an Experiment - Withhold judgment until after a month has past and use it as an experiment in behavior. Experiments can’t fail, they just have different results so it will give you a different perspective on changing your habit.
14. Swish - A technique from NLP. Visualize yourself performing the bad habit. Next visualize yourself pushing aside the bad habit and performing an alternative. Finally, end that sequence with an image of yourself in a highly positive state. See yourself picking up the cigarette, see yourself putting it down and snapping your fingers, finally visualize yourself running and breathing free. Do it a few times until you automatically go through the pattern before executing the old habit.
15. Write it Down - A piece of paper with a resolution on it isn’t that important. Writing that resolution is. Writing makes your ideas more clear and focuses you on your end result.
16. Know the Benefits - Familiarize yourself with the benefits of making a change. Get books that show the benefits of regular exercise. Notice any changes in energy levels after you take on a new diet. Imagine getting better grades after improving your study habits.
17. Know the Pain - You should also be aware of the consequences. Exposing yourself to realistic information about the downsides of not making a change will give you added motivation.
18. Do it For Yourself - Don’t worry about all the things you “should” have as habits. Instead tool your habits towards your goals and the things that motivate you. Weak guilt and empty resolutions aren’t enough.
With a small amount of initial discipline, you can create a new habit that requires little effort to maintain. Here are some tips for creating new habits and making them stick:
1. Commit to Thirty Days - Three to four weeks is all the time you need to make a habit automatic. If you can make it through the initial conditioning phase, it becomes much easier to sustain. A month is a good block of time to commit to a change since it easily fits in your calendar.
2. Make it Daily - Consistency is critical if you want to make a habit stick. If you want to start exercising, go to the gym every day for your first thirty days. Going a couple times a week will make it harder to form the habit. Activities you do once every few days are trickier to lock in as habits.
3. Start Simple - Don’t try to completely change your life in one day. It is easy to get over-motivated and take on too much. If you wanted to study two hours a day, first make the habit to go for thirty minutes and build on that.
4. Remind Yourself - Around two weeks into your commitment it can be easy to forget. Place reminders to execute your habit each day or you might miss a few days. If you miss time it defeats the purpose of setting a habit to begin with.
5. Stay Consistent - The more consistent your habit the easier it will be to stick. If you want to start exercising, try going at the same time, to the same place for your thirty days. When cues like time of day, place and circumstances are the same in each case it is easier to stick.
6. Get a Buddy - Find someone who will go along with you and keep you motivated if you feel like quitting.
7. Form a Trigger - A trigger is a ritual you use right before executing your habit. If you wanted to wake up earlier, this could mean waking up in exactly the same way each morning. If you wanted to quit smoking you could practice snapping your fingers each time you felt the urge to pick up a cigarette.
8. Replace Lost Needs - If you are giving up something in your habit, make sure you are adequately replacing any needs you’ve lost. If watching television gave you a way to relax, you could take up meditation or reading as a way to replace that same need.
9. Be Imperfect - Don’t expect all your attempts to change habits to be successful immediately. It took me four independent tries before I started exercising regularly. Now I love it. Try your best, but expect a few bumps along the way.
10. Use “But” - A prominent habit changing therapist once told me this great technique for changing bad thought patterns. When you start to think negative thoughts, use the word “but” to interrupt it. “I’m no good at this, but, if I work at it I might get better later.”
11. Remove Temptation - Restructure your environment so it won’t tempt you in the first thirty days. Remove junk food from your house, cancel your cable subscription, throw out the cigarettes so you won’t need to struggle with willpower later.
12. Associate With Role Models - Spend more time with people who model the habits you want to mirror. A recent study found that having an obese friend indicated you were more likely to become fat. You become what you spend time around.
13. Run it as an Experiment - Withhold judgment until after a month has past and use it as an experiment in behavior. Experiments can’t fail, they just have different results so it will give you a different perspective on changing your habit.
14. Swish - A technique from NLP. Visualize yourself performing the bad habit. Next visualize yourself pushing aside the bad habit and performing an alternative. Finally, end that sequence with an image of yourself in a highly positive state. See yourself picking up the cigarette, see yourself putting it down and snapping your fingers, finally visualize yourself running and breathing free. Do it a few times until you automatically go through the pattern before executing the old habit.
15. Write it Down - A piece of paper with a resolution on it isn’t that important. Writing that resolution is. Writing makes your ideas more clear and focuses you on your end result.
16. Know the Benefits - Familiarize yourself with the benefits of making a change. Get books that show the benefits of regular exercise. Notice any changes in energy levels after you take on a new diet. Imagine getting better grades after improving your study habits.
17. Know the Pain - You should also be aware of the consequences. Exposing yourself to realistic information about the downsides of not making a change will give you added motivation.
18. Do it For Yourself - Don’t worry about all the things you “should” have as habits. Instead tool your habits towards your goals and the things that motivate you. Weak guilt and empty resolutions aren’t enough.
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