Flower plantation: making the bouquets

After visiting the flower plantation, we went to have a glance at the massive garage they use to make the bouquets ready to export abroad.

The process, briefly:
The flowers are cut from the plantation and put carefully in fabric beds as we can see below. Then, they are sent to fumigation, in order to kill insects that could destroy them later. Afterwards, women take flowers one by one and send them to the right bouquets. All the bouquets are put in boxes and sent to the fridge (2 to 4 degrees) for about 2 to 5 hours before being exported by plane.

Thanks very much Lucy for the visit! It’s always interesting to know where our supermaket’s products come from.

Flower plantation

Did you know that Colombia was the second largest flower exporting country in the world? I didn’t.

Last week, I was very lucky because my English friend Lucy took me to one of the places where she works: a flower plantation close to Tenjo.

Very inspiring for textures and colours.

This plantation is only making carnations and roses and some of them are sold in supermarkets like Sainsbury’s, Tesco, or Waitrose in the UK.

Orquideas in Tabio

In Tabio, walking down the streets, we discovered an exhibition of orquideas. It happened that the person who has a dessert’s shop also have a collection of Orquideas in the backyard. Better than in the Botanical Garden… Those guys are geeks of Orquideas for somehting like 12 years and we were completely amazed!

Wow, wow and wow!

I did the cat eyes to Mario to get one but…

The place is called Cuchipanda and is run by Zoraida Granados and Alvaro Arjona. Email them or call them: (0057) 311 265 9646.

Botanical garden of Quindío

Very nice botanical garden close to Armenia, in Calarcá to be more precise. It looks like a jungle as it is more in a natural state than usual botanical gardens. They also have a beautiful place with butterflies.

This is the coolest bean I have ever seen: you can even sort your waste!

More information about this place, find out here.

Girasoles (Sunflowers)

I was happy taking pictures of sunflowers I bought in the flower market today. Well, I am a bit upset because I tried to negociate and I did. But another woman we met afterwards managed to get 3 times more flowers for the same price. And she was white like me! Grrr! I still need to learn!

Just training in photography as light in the living room was amazing. The light of Bogotá is amazing (when it’s sunny) at around 4.30/5pm. Just before the sun goes down.

Almanaque

For the first day of the year, I will show you a calendar that I have found beautifully designed. This is an almanac that includes information on what, how and when to plant in Colombia at different time of the year. It has been made by Puslar de la Tierra.

This one is from March 2012 until March 2013.

Like this Colombian movie very much: the Wind Journeys.

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2013!

Jardín Botánico

When we talk about design in Colombia, we have to include the design of Nature. Colombia is the second country after Brazil that has the most biodiversity.

Here are a couple of pictures of the botanical garden of Bogotá. It was badly flooded last year and has lost a lot of species, but still amazing. An incredible lung in the heart of the city…

Aloe Vera (sábila)

Aloe Vera is a plant that grows here and we all know it is used in beauty products, for its softener properties. My daughter Carmen had a very bad fall the other day. She fell down face first and you can imagine the harm.

So, we went to a market called el mercado de Paloquemao in Avenida 19 # 25-02 and bought this plant called here sábila.

Mario prepared the magic potion and we apply on her twice a day. Colombians adviced us to use it for cicatrisation, and it seems to work very well.

Poinsettia

This plant called Poinsettia is the Christmas holly of Central America. Everybody has one here in Bogotá, and me too! I don’t know what happen to them after Christmas though…