Market Friday: a big olive tree and cacti at a weekend market.

I had not visited one of my favourite malls on Rama 3 road for several months. So, I went to Central Rama3 to check out the decorations and how lively the atmosphere would be like before the end of the year. To my surprise, the car park was almost filled up so I had to park on the fourth floor of the car park. It would be nice to catch some of the festive vibes inside the shopping mall. The food hall and restaurants were quite crowded on the fifth and sixth floor of the mall.

I was glad to see these restaurants bring noisy for a change. People have returned to their normal pace of lifestyles and life seemed to have picked up speeds. I usually walked around the walkways on each floor from top floor to the basement as my routine walking exercise. The supermarket was in the basement and a good selection of streetfood stalls could be found there. Although there were several posh coffee shop at this mall, I found a small coffee stall there with the best coffee, chocolate cakes and home made gelato. Whenever I wanted to reward myself for the day, I would either have the gelato or coffee at this corner coffee shop.

I checked out the Christmas decorations in the big hall on the ground floor. The Christmas tree was at the same corner every year with lots of colourful decorations. But the Father Christmas this year turned out to be huge inflatable red doll. A fake fire place with red chairs were available for taking selfies. Parents would take their small children there to take photos and let the children running around in excitement. The deep red and green colours did give a lift to my moods. There was a new sense of hope and excitement in the air as people were more willing to splash out on having a good time before the end of the year. The whole dining area became very vibrant and noisy with lots of children.

I discovered there’s a weekend market for some unique plants and cacti. It seemed this weekend was the last days of the plant market, vendors were giving big reduction as they didn’t want to carry their plants back with them. I had no need for more plants on my veranda and several pot plants were waiting for ne in the countryside. But I was very tempted to get a pot of Anthurium as the red flowers were very attractive and a good boost for my mental energy. These pot plants were too big and heavy to be carried onto the train. I might have to find a small plant from a nursery in the countryside later on.

I looked at the various collections of small cacti which were quite disappointing. The last flea market had lots of big cacti with lots of flowers, and some vendors brought lots of orchids too. This time, vendors brought small pots of cacti to sell at lower prices. They thought cheap cacti would increase their sale. I just knew that Anthuriums were supposed to be unlucky as they were often used for decorating funerals in temples, especially white Anthuriums were quite a taboo. Nowadays they became too expensive for decorating funerals. So, I should look out for some red and pink Anthuriums for my garden next year.

Two strange looking trees in enormous pots attracted my attention. These trees had no flowers and they looked too big to be pot plants. The vendor told me that these talker trees were olive trees! I was very surprised to see old olive trees surviving our humid weather. To my disappointment, these olive trees were the same as those which had edible olives which could be pressed for olive oil. I was hoping to get some olive seeds to grow in my garden. Then one day I could press my own olive oil.

The other tree was a type of green pine tree from Japan. Their deep green leaves were very attractive. But I wasn’t really interested in trees without edible fruits. I wondered how many trees the vendor did manage to sell at the mall. I noticed that the vendor didn’t look very bubbly nor energetic.

It’s strange how some people were attracted to some particular trees or plants. The trees probably attracted some people into their frequencies so they were subconsciously bounded to those trees. This actually happened to me with orchids; I was attracted by some wild orchids and came under their spells! From then onwards, I kept looking at orchids and desired to have some expensive orchids one day.

The miniature plant boxes escaped my logical mind. It seemed so unnatural to me to try to put so many tiny plants into small spaces. I would have thought these plants would feel claustrophobic and couldn’t breathe properly. But the vendors had the patience and determination to put these tiny plants into very small boxes to display their artistic designs. I thought the choices of plants and trees could somehow reflect the owners’ personalities. I liked wild natural plants so I tended to favour pets with emotional independence and wild instinct for survival.

I had a good walk around all the vendors’ stalls to observe all the tiny plants and things I might have missed. These vendors were hoping I would be buying some plants. But I told them that I couldn’t carry these plants onto the train with me. I wished the train station had not been moved to a new location. The original train station was much more convenient with shorter distance to the train platforms and there were also porters to help with heavy luggages. Life has to go on and I have to stop pining for the good old days of traveling by trains. At least the trains were still running despite their old age! I am always amazed by how our country could muddle through so many hurdles. Hopefully Lady Luck would continue to look after us and be on our sides always.

Wishing you peace, good health and prosperity.

Stay strong and cheerful.

#marketfriday hosted by @dswigle