Dear Talipots, Our next outdoor sketching session is on this Sat, 16 Sep. Please meet at the Visitor Counter, Botany Centre, SBG, at 9am. See you there.
Posted here is a pencil sketch of the area we will be doing our outdoor sketching.
Dear friends, This coming Sunday (27 Aug 2017) our end month outdoor art session will be conducted at Sungei Buloh ‘s new Visito r Centre. Please meet there at 830am. If you are late please ask the security guard for directions to our sketching spot.
See you there and enjoy your weekend outdoors in our beautiful wetlands.
Try spotting the kingfishers in the painting.
Took a walk and settled down for 2 sketches at the Main Hide this morning to celebrate my 15 years of helping out at this wetland reserve.
Chatted with Mendis and Raj, and had a meeting with Halilah and Shufeng on coming art and conservation activities for Loyang Sec School. Then hitched a buggy ride to the New Visitor Centre, stopping enroute along Kranji Trail to look at salvaging fell tree parts for use as materials for installation art here.
Felt good about having served 15 years already and thankful for the chance to continue my volunteering for nature here at Sungei Buloh Wetlands.
Jokingly mentioned that Buloh can use my numerous past sketches to chronicle its changes when I reach 20 years of volunteering.
While we lament the fall and demise of this grand old tembusu tree at Palm Valley at SBG on 11.2.2017, at 425pm, and also for the 3 injured and 1 dead, we celebrate the good that this tree has provided us all these 270 years, providing oxygen, aesthetics and awe inspiring vision for all who admire its presence along the road at Palm Valley. Its one of the heritage trees that is designated as such in this garden and it will be missed by those who know it, including me.
After the traditional Lo-hei, the delicious vegetarian salad was a great start to good nature practice, followed by mangrove tree planting just outside the Visitor Centre, in a small plot of converted landscape, to be used as a mini wetlands for young visitors.
Watched a demo by a Nparks staff, Win, and donning a pair of oversized Phua Chu Kang Boots (yellow), my digging was started literally with a bang. My specially designed shovel struck a big rock! With help from ShuFeng and another we extracted it and succeeded in planting my first mangrove plant, a Bruguiera gymnorrhiza (Tumu in Malay). Happy and very satisfied with myself, I started on a second plant.
My choice of the next mangrove plant was a more ambitious one. A much larger one with help from Mr Wong T W , this time an Ultraman, as Mr Wong called it. Its the Heritiera littoralis, or Dungon. The seeds, winged ones, have some semblance to the Japanese cartoon sci-fi character by the same name.
Here are the plants I planted.
Its was a great start to a new year with the group’s contribution to our wetlands, in this small but symbolic way of conservation and a common spirit of comaraderie-for-nature.
