I've joined the Hong Kong Garden Society and it's the season that everyone shows off their gardens. So to gain ideas for my roof-top design I've been visiting other gardens. One lady was into recycling odd objects to use as planters on her roof. Here is an old waterbed frame she put a pool liner in and has created a home-made water feature.

We've finally moved from our service apartment (hotel) into our own flat. We are on the third floor with no elevator and the stairwell is not air conditioned. I hope this will take off a few pounds. The good thing is that the third floor is the top floor so our unit comes with the roof-top terrace. The owner who lived here (a German without a green thumb) did nothing with the roof-top so I have a blank slate to create my own oasis. I plan to become the queen of container gardening. Our building is right next to the harbor in the old fishing village of Sai Kung. This is where the seafood restaurants are that you go and pick your dinner out of the live tanks. There are a lot of westerners in the community so the local grocery store actually has a Mexican food section and there are plenty of non-asian restaurants and British pubs.

I haven't taken any interior shots of the flat because we haven't furnished/decorated yet. We have a bed and a sofa so far. Just got a couple bedroom night stands and lamp so we're making progress. Laine will help when she comes back with me for the summer.

Here I am with my Stitch & Bitch group in Macau. Macau is about a 1 hour ferry ride from Hong Kong and was a Portuguese settlement until it was handed back to China in 1998. It is famous for it's casinos, but we never went to those. We went sightseeing checking out the Portuguese architecture and their very cool Modern Art Museum.

We stayed at the Banyan Tree resort in Phuket in a villa that had our own private garden. The Thai people really know how to garden.

Easter weekend here is a 4-day work holiday so Denis and I escaped to Phuket, Thailand, a 3 hour plane ride away. This is wherethe tsunami struck, but the tourist areas have recouperated quickly. Here is our favorite beach bar and our favorite beach dogs.

For spring break Laine and her friend Maria came to visit. Laine found it so interesting she is coming back for a longer stay over summer. Here we are at the Wong Tai Sin temple worshiping with fortune sticks. You shake the can until one fortune stick falls out. It has your lucky number that you can take to a fortune teller who will then tell you your fortune. The kids were there for a field trip. If they'd had orange billed hats they'd look just like rubber duckies.

The last week of March is the Hong Kong Flower Show. Here are some scenes.

It's easy to go into sensory overload from the bombardment of signage in Hong Kong, but ya just gotta read the signs because they can be so entertaining. I thought my friends back at NAMG who work on the Cooking and Gardening magazines might enjoy the info provided by the sign about "Tomatoes." The other sign is in a shopping mall not far from Denis' office.

For the best shopping deals Hong Kongers like to head over the border into China to Shenzhen. This is only about a 45 minute train ride from our house. The key is to go with someone who knows the ropes and can get you into the hiddens markets for the best knock-off items. I went with my stitch & bitch buddies we had directions from someone to go to the shopping mall just over the border and find shop 417 and ask to see the backroom. So we did this and the person in the store contacted someone via walkie-talkie who came to the store. He looked us over to see if he thought we looked ok to take to the hidden room. He then watched the hallway outside the store and when he determined the coast was clear he led us across the hallway to a store that looked like a closed tatoo parlor. He unlocked the door pushed us in and locked the door behind us. Ahead of us was a 15 x 15' room encircled with shelves floor to ceiling full of purses. When we were done shopping a person in the store called the person in the hall on the walkie-talkie who unlocked the door and let us out.

Next we had directions to an underground DVD supplier. We had to find our way to a different part of town and find a building that looked like it was all mobile phone shops, across the street from Pizza Hut. We found it and then had to find the stairs to the basement. These ended up being crumbing cement (no signs and no lights other than the sunlight filtering in). The basement was unfinished but a small DVD store was set up in a corner. We again asked to see the selection in the back room and again we were eyed to determine if we were safe to let in. We looked shady enough so they took us to a different part of the basement and pushed aside a sheet of plywood so we could get into the back room where the 5 of us bought over 300 DVD's for $1 USD each. Of course I wasn't able to take photos of any of these secret places, but I thought the China border crossing was interesting.

How many of you have seen or read Memoirs of a Geisha in which the girl must go to school to learn the talents of a Geisha? Well, since coming to Hong Kong I have been going to classes to learn the talents of a Tai Tai (Chinese wife). I took a series of 5 classes in Ikebana, the art of Japanese flower arranging. And I've had 3 classes in pearls so that I can evaluate, grade, string and design pearl jewelry. I took these photos with my camera phone, so they aren't that good. The photo of me with the pearls doesn't look like me at all.

Do you suppose she means call her to help her with her spelling?

Should I climb out and get it? Guess I shouldn't shake the sheets outside the window.

While driving through the English countryside we decided to take a detour to Stonehenge.
What you can't tell from these photos and all the others you've ever seen of Stonhenge is that there is a road just 50 yards away. This really distracts from the historical feeling. The Stonhenge logoed ashtrays, keychains and such in the gift shop don't do much for the ambiance either. Whole story is cool though.

From Istanbul we traveled to the shire of Northhampton about a 1 1/2 hour drive north of London. Denis' company has a printing facility here. Denis had a weekend off so we rented a car and drove to the southern coast to the Isle of Wight (White in American). This is a bustling tourist sea resort in the summer, but a quiet coastal town in the winter. We stayed in a lovely inn with a view looking out over the English Channel. The village had three pubs, we tried them all.

One of the cool things in Istanbul was the 5-times-daily call to prayers chanted over loudspeaker systems. It echos all around the city. I was able to record the chant on my cell phone and was going to use it as the ring tone on my cell phone until I found out, thanks to the cartoonists, that the Muslims have no sense of humor.

Here we are in a predominately Muslim country and Denis is standing, gun in hand, shooting.....balloons! The Turkish entrepeneur had put strings of balloons out in the Bosphorus and supplied a round of ammo (air pellets) for target shooting. As Denis was on his second round of ammo a crowd was gathering as he had not missed a balloon. The Turk would not sell Denis a third round of ammo as he did not want to run out of balloons in the river.

Denis had business to do in Europe over CNY so I was able to tag aloong to Istanbul and the UK. Istanbul is wonderful. Great history and great shopping. We stayed in the Ciragon Palace Hotel on the Bosphorus.
Every morning a magnificent breakfast buffet was served so after Denis left for work I would wonder down to breakfast through this palace in my sweats (velour mind you).

Before Chinese New Year a big event is the fair in a park in downtown Hong Kong. The fair started out years ago as a flower and plant market because it is a tradition to have lots of new growth in the home to bring prosperity for the new year. Well, the fair has commercialized and expanded over the years till now it is what I found to be the "State Fair" of HK. The biggest difference is that here they haven't discovered the value of food on a stick. In fact, the only food on a stick we saw was saltine crackers sandwiched on a stick with some sort of spread in between. These are all scenes from the fair.
Lots of "dogs on sticks" since the year of the dog. The dressed up guy is the Wealth King, the Santa of CNY.

Unfortunately we were out of HK for Chinese New Year, but it was fun seeing all the preparation for the festivities. I went to a feng shui class to learn about the traditions that go along with welcoming in the new year like:

• Displaying the King of Wealth on your front door to bring prosperity for the new year.
• Orange trees are displayed everywhere like Christmas trees then the oranges are thrown into the water like coins in a fountain after the new year.
• You must cut your hair before the new year to promote new growth in the new year.
• Within the first hour of the new year you take a shower and put on new clothes.
• Also in the first hour of the new year you must open your front door as much as possible to let in the wealth for the year

Despite the population density in HK there are many beautiful remote areas.