Hey Hive! I’ve slowed down on posting lately, but staying at home for 2 weeks straight kind of left me with no content (at least travelling content). I have the doggies around and they are the cutest but posting about them for 2 weeks straight would’ve been a bit much (maybe). I just don’t like posting for the sake of posting and want to try and stick to quality. I’ve been spending a lot of time playing video games but not sure my usual audience would be excited to see yet another 30-40 min read post about a random video game I play. (Let me know if that isn’t the case..I may spend another 10-12 hours writing about something almost nobody will read 😄) However 2 weeks without touching a camera or editing a single photo felt a bit odd.. That’s why I decided to leave the premises of the house for a little longer (I mean the only times I did leave them was to get a food delivery and even that I only did like.. twice) and spend some time taking photos in our lovely garden. I realized we have quite a good amount of trees, flowers and even some wildlife living with us. The doggies followed me for an afternoon run around the yard as well so today’s post will include a bit of everything.

A Look Into Our Garden

So I tried taking some photos around the house once before, when I tried out the new macro lens I got my hands on. The photos were pretty bad though and not really worth sharing. This time around I took my new favorite lens with me - the 16-135mm f3.5-5.6 all arounder and things look a bit better. It helps that the shutter doesn’t sound like a machine gun and I could actually take some photos of the birds around without scaring the life out of them. (The macro is way too loud, but I assume flowers and insects don’t mind it so much.)

My plan was to find some of the birds that usually pop up in the yard in the afternoon. There are some natural habitats that aren’t commonly seen in Europe, that I see regularly flying around or looking for food in the grass. My plans were very shortly ruined by Stormi and company. Someone let them out right behind me and Stormi the menace, quickly got rid of all of the birds, running and chasing after them. There weren’t even any sparrows or doves left around after that.

So Who let the dogs out? Anyways they are always good fun and posed a bit for the camera. Can't complain about having them around.

Also remember how I told you about Casper and how he likes to roll around in the grass. Yeah.. he does that everytime. He thinks noone is watching and then just awkwardly stands up and pretends nothing ever happened.

However I found something while taking photos of the palm trees and bonsais. There was this little nest right under the balcony of our bedroom that I somehow missed before. These birds Are very common here. I have no idea what their name is but I haven’t seen them back in Europe. (Quick disclaimer: I suck at plant, flower and bird names.. unlike my mom @nelinoeva who’s an expert in the field, I know little to nothing about these. So excuse my lack of common knowledge while I’m sharing photos of “red flowers”, “grey little birds” and “trees with long leaves”)

Ofcourse I needed better photos of it and since the nest was right below my bedroom I just went back home to take some extra photos.

As I popped up and pointed my camera at the bird and the nest.. momma bird just bailed. Got scared and left her children out all alone. Just like that. I mean I can't possibly reach them from my balcony unless I fall and break my legs in the meantime.. but don't think these birds are particularly smart. That gave me the opportunity to take some pictures of the little birds.

On the roof of our garage I noticed more of these birds. These weren't fully grown either but were considerably bigger than the chicks in the nest.

I believe at this point it’s needless to say I am not the one who takes care of the plants around the house, having “proudly” shared my ignorance about it just a minute ago. Our gardener P Paul is the person who stands behind the beauty of our front and backyards. As for me.. I know we have banana, mango and papaya trees but I can’t even say which one is which.. that’s how bad I am.

All around the house and even at the office we have a lot of bonsais. These are a bit bigger than your average bonsai and from what Nat has told me it was her mom that used to plant them many years ago. They are apparently hard to grow and people used to buy them from her for a fairly profitable amount back in the day. Nowadays P Paul is the one looking over them and growing new ones too. I’d say they are very beautiful when they bloom and their flowers could range in color.

Some of these are over 20 years old.

I think this may be one of the banana trees? It's super tall so I hope P Paul isn't climbing there to get bananas.

At the back of the house we have mostly trees planted and some more bonsais. There is something new that Nat’s mom wanted to plant here as well. It’s the only plant I actually know the name of, which may not speak good for me, but let me explain. First of all it was Nat’s mom's idea to plant these and If I didn’t know about it I may have been as clueless as to what it is, as I am about the rest of the plants around. Long story short - they legalized weed in Thailand. You can grow it in your garden for personal use and need a special license for selling it. Nat’s mom wanted to try growing it for research purposes and see how hard it would be. Not sure where we’ll go with this but so far it looks alright I guess. And no I’m not going to smoke it. I’ve tried weed before and it always feels bad. Cigarette smoke irritates me a lot and weed isn’t that different. It screws up my throat and I lose my voice for a week. Back in the day when I used to sing for a living, it was a definite no no. Nowadays I just don’t feel like it. I guess I have become a boomer. (Hello 30s.. here I come) There.. for all the people that thought I was one of the cool kids, growing weed in my backyard - expectations shattered.

I know I come as this outdoors social guy from my posts, but in reality I am as introverted as one can be. 2 weeks at home was something I was actually looking forward to. I feel like i’ve turned into the guy we all hated as kids. You know.. the one that came out and scared us off when we were loud while he was having his afternoon nap. Well I’m kind of that guy.. although I learned something from him and moved to a place where there aren’t that many kids or even if there are, I can’t really hear them because they are far enough away. A slight miscalculation on my part.. the neighbour sheltered some stray dogs. The stray dogs had puppies. Now the neighbour has around 10 stray dogs living outdoors and not being trained. It’s a pack that just barks all day and all night for little to no reason and makes me wish it was just kids shouting for a few hours instead. It’s okay though.. I am finally getting used to it and mostly ignore the noise at night. Our dogs at least are sensible and ignore them too.. can’t even think of what it would be if our dogs started responding to the barking.

I don’t know if this is one of the quality posts I usually strive for but it’s been awhile and I am not ready to be completely forgotten. I hope you enjoyed my little stroll around my garden. I do have some big news too. It's still somewhat early but we are having another dog in about a month. Since our old doberman passed away, the house hasn't really been the same. We’ve seen lots of people showing interest in dobermans as well, so Nat decided to try and breed them. We’ll see how it goes, we have her dad’s doberman (coming from a pretty decent bloodline) and we ordered a female from Russia (daughter of champions from there). I am excited and a bit stressed out about the new responsibility coming up. I’ll make sure to share a bunch of photos from that adventure for sure!

Thanks for reading! Hope you are having a great week! My quarantine is coming to an end but Thailand isn’t anywhere near handling the pandemic so I guess no traveling for a while still. I hope you stick around for the non travel posts meanwhile and to see you again soon!