⚡️ What is Mickey Mouse Plant?

🐭 Ochna integerrima - Vietnamese Mickey Mouse plant, Hoa Mai.

• ⭕️ Its seeds and sepals resemble the face of Mickey Mouse, hence the common name.
• ⭕️ Hoa Mai, also known as Yellow Mai Flower, is the quintessential symbol of Spring in Vietnam, especially during the Tet celebration.
• ⭕️ "Hoa Mai" translates to "yellow blossoms," highlighting the bright yellow flowers that bloom during Tet.
• ⭕️ Ochna integerrima is a medium-sized shrub that can be trained into a miniature tree, making it a prized plant for exotic collections.
• ⭕️ In winter, it is covered with bright yellow flowers, which are believed to bring good luck and prosperity during the Tet celebration.

🛒 Get your own Mickey Mouse Plant

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💐 What is the best flowering shrub for a shady spot?

• 🚩 Aphelandra is hands down one of the best solutions for a shade garden where you want to see more colors. It is a great addition to a collectible tropical butterfly garden, can grow into 4-5"tall bushy specimen. Tolerates both sun and shade.
• 🚩Aphelandras have beautiful lush foliage and showy, long terminal inflorescences throughout the warm season.
• 🚩These flowers are loved by hummingbirds.
• 🚩Aphelandra hartwegiana - Yellow Aphelandra. Yellow flowers emerge out of long orange stalks in the fall time. Pretty and unusual!
• 🚩Aphelandra squarrosa Dania (Snow White) - White Zebra Plant. It is also one of the best house plants, not only pretty because of its white-veined"Zebra"foliage, but also for the apical inflorescence with its beautiful yellow bracts.
• 🚩Aphelandra sinclairiana - Panama Queen, has extremely tropical look and fragrant flowers of unusual color combination: orange and pink.
• 🚩Aphelandra x panamensis - Scarlet Candle - a rare hybrid with bright red flowers

📚 Learn more from previous posts:
Panama Queen
How to grow Zebra in container?

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🍇 How Mulberry fruit helps with diabetes

• 💜 Mulberry Tree (Morus x Alba hybrids) originated from China. Everyone knows this sweet, tasty, juicy fruit but very few people are aware of its amazing health benefits.
• 💜 Mulberry fruit can lower blood sugar levels in patients with diabetes. They improve the absorption of carbohydrates in the gut. Eating this fruit slows the breakdown of sugar in the stomach so that it's absorbed more slowly into the blood. This helps the body keep blood sugar levels in a healthy range.
• 💜 Mulberry fruit have a low glycaemic index, making them suitable to consume after meals to avoid spikes in sugar levels.

💜 More health benefits of Mulberry:


- help prevent fatty liver diseases, and lower cholesterol levels.
- Mulberry leaves show their benefits against cardiometabolic risks, including antioxidative, anti-inflammatory, antiobesity
- Due to flavonoids and other phytochemicals, Mulberry juice has been shown to have anti-cancer properties, specifically against breast cancer cells.
• 💜 Mulberry is called Tree of Life for a reason.
Revelation 22, Verse 2: "In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month, and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations."
• 💜 Mulberry Tree is very cold hardy and can grow in wide range of climate zones, from USDA 5 to 10. Dwarf cultivars available - perfect for container culture. One of them is called Dwarf Everbearing - it fruits virtually year around!

🛒 Plant your own Mulberry tree

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🍾 What is the safest alcohol?

• 🍹"Rum and Tequila are the safest alcohol drinks", - says Addiction Specialist, - "But only when consumed in combination with fruit juice".
• 🍹Rum is considered the "safest" alcohol due to its content of zinc, potassium, and phosphorus, which result in a less aggressive impact on the liver. It should be mixed with fruit juice such as Mango or Orange (Check out our Mango Gelato Recipe)
• 🍹 Tequila, often consumed with salt and lemon, introduces sodium chloride and vitamin C into the body, which can help reduce hangovers.

📸 Mango Xoai Thuong (Elephant)
Citron 'Buddha's Hand' (Citrus medica var. sarcodactylis)
Variagated Lemon "Pink Lemonade"

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What is the best Avocado variety? Five more most popular Avocado cultivars - total of 10!

🏆 We introduced 5 most popular varieties in our previous post. Here is 5 more, making it 10 total.

6. Joey - very cold hardy variety. Produces medium size, egg shaped purple-black fruit. It has excellent flavor. Heavy bearer. Season: September-October. It survived temperatures around 10F near San Antonio, Texas (Zone 8b). Can take temperatures down to 15F for a short period of time without significant damage.

7. Day - green, smooth skin and is shaped like a club. The fruit is of very good quality and has a nice buttery consistency. The slender tree is very cold tolerant and produces July through September.

8. Ulala (Super Hass) - sometimes called Uhlala or Uh-La-La. Cold hardy variety that can take temperatures down to 18F for short period of time without significant damage. The fruit is black skinned, with smooth texture. Seed is very small.

9. Fantastic - very cold hardy variety, supposedly the most most cold hardy of all avocados. Produces green, paper thin skin. The fruit has a creamy texture. It survived temperatures around 10F near San Antonio, Texas (Zone 8b) and can take temperatures down to 15F for short period of time without significant damage.

10. Monroe - inherited from its Guatemalan-type parent some degree of cold hardiness. In addition, the trees produced a very large, elliptical-shaped fruit with good eating qualities. Good producer, commercial cultivar in Florida. Legend has it that "it was found in Homestead, Florida on a cool dark rainy night after a meteor crashed into an abandoned papaya plantation."

📚 Learn more: Avocado Variety Guide - check this out for interactive chart of Avocado varieties and sort them by flower type A or B, tree habit, fruit shape and quality, cold hardiness, origin, season and more!

❔ What is your favorite Avocado variety?
Share in comments👇

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