Mid Hill Footpath - early September

This morning I notice that the white caladium cover plants along the mid hill footpath are in excellent condition. The same goes to the cordyline terminalis ( Red Ti) planted at the opposite end of the caladium. Below is a view of the mid hill footpath taken from the top hill location.

View of the mid hill footpath, looking east.

Love those caladiums

Been back from Kuching, where we spent about a month of holiday. At the first opportune moment yesterday, I went to the mid hill footpath to check on the caladiums I planted sometime in early July.  To my amazement, they grew like ..well crazy. I had purposely planted these caladiums as ground cover for the heliconia strictas section of the footpath.
Their excellent growth must have been due to the filtered light, rich forest soil and the regular rain experienced in Bintulu lately. Caladium x candidum have large ovate heart leaves and may come in various colours and combinations of colours.  As an example above, the green veins spread over the white wash leaves.  Generally they like sunlight but not direct. You can get heads over heels about caladiums when they are at their best colours.  As such there are one of my favourite foliage plants.

Mid Hill Footpath

View from the East. Ati is in the process of planting the 'lipstick red' heliconia, from which is derived the name of the mid hill footpath.

Lipstick Red Footpath

The Mid Hill Footpath is today being planted with Heliconia stricta, seen on the left of the picture. Towards the bottom right of the picture are two varieties of heliconia which has strong orange colour and the other a mixture of yellow and orange colours.



View from the west. Observe the belian log that has been cut by chainsaw in the middle of the picture.

The Mid Hill Footpath

With the aid of the mighty chainsaw, our morning's work in cutting this extremely hard fallen log of the belian tree was carried out doubly fast. Below is the view of the footpath from the east and Ati is somewhere in the middle of the footpath. There are at least 50 species of trees within this small vegetation island. I have not yet inventoried the trees. My knowledge of the trees of Sarawak is limited. I think when I am free in future I will seek the assistance of my class mate who worked with the Forestry Department till retirement to name the species found here.

Anyway, the species that stood in our way in the picture above is the familiar belian species ( Eusideroxylon melagangai). Here in Sarawak and just as well in Brunei, we use belian timber to build our traditional houses because it its the hardest tree available in Borneo Island, well you can say that it is equivalent to the teak tree of Thaliand. In Bintulu's kampungs today you can still see the houses built totally of belian from posts to shingles intact even after 80 years ago. Of course the belian posts can last a lifetime even when submerged in water. Life time means , yes a hundred years. Belian timber never rot .

The above picture is taken from the proposed top footpath.The' sassy pink' footpath can be slightly seen from the picture i.e. the the lower section of the hill.

And finally , the footpath is more or less delineated and cleared. I think planting can proceed tomorrow. Not bad for a good morning's workout.

View of the footpath from the west. Total man hours spent = 10 man hours, Ati and me included.