2 Asian Water Bowls for the front of the House and a Big Vase/Planter

R liked the water bowls to my surprise and even suggested getting one for the patio too. We bought a large black one for the front and found a large planter/vase in dark grey/black to go next to the water bowl. We will eventually get a big plant for it, maybe a palm.

It became clear to me why R had agreed to get the bowls so easily, apparently, he liked something he saw outside a store in Seremban, it was a big water bowl with only big green leaf flowers floating in the bowl. He said he wanted something like that. So I went back to the site of said water bowl and had a look for myself. After doing some searching online, I determined that the green leaf 'flowers' R likes are Pistia or commonly known as Water Cabbage or Water Lettuce. And so I went about finding some Water Cabbage to fill our new bowls. Not easy in Seremban, but I finally found a place and bought all they had. They scouped the Water Cabbages and all of their roots and sludge into plastic bags. I came home and then washed off each 'rosette' and added them carefully to the water bowls. I was going to use the Water Cabbage in the front larger black bowl and add a small flowering Lotus with its lily pad type leaves to the blue water bowl on the patio. However, at the nurseries I found out that water Lotus plants, along with other water plants' roots need to be in soil at the bottom of water bowls.

This was a surprise to me and I wasn't really prepared to put soil at the bottom of either bowl. Because we put pretty black polished pebbles in the bottom of the black bowl and the blue bowl has a beautiful blue glaze color at the bottom (of course now, I see that it doesn't matter because with all of the water plants, the bottom doesn't show anyway). Nevertheless, I opted only for 'floating' type water plants for these water bowls. At another landscape shop, I found a lovely blue flowering floating plant (in the photo above it is the plants with the tube and bulbous stems in the bowl). I brought the plants home with blue flowers, but the next morning the flowers were totally gone. Maybe because they were nearing the end of their blooming, or maybe because of the stress of the transporting/transplanting the flowers died. Weird though, they buds totally disappeared. This blue flowering plant, I searched it and found it, is a "Water Hyacinth" check the wikipedia article on the plant and how they are one of the fastest growing plants in the world. The Water Hyacinth is also considered invasive because it grows so quick that a formation of multiple plants can block ships from traveling through waterways due to their thick roots. Very interesting. Let's see how fast mine grow!

Blue water bowl on Patio with Water Cabbage and some strange flat round floating leaves made up of numerous diamond-like leaves

We went back to get a big blue bowl for the patio so that there could be two, but the large blue bowl was imperfect. We should wait to see if the place gets another or one in black/blue.