Earlier this evening, I got to meet up with Kate Flint from Hills and Plains Seedsavers. It was just shortly after she alighted from the plane. Singapore is her first stop and she has just started her six week long tour which she calls it as the “Voyage of the Vegetable Vagabond” that takes her from her home in Adelaide, Australia to Singapore, United Kingdom, France, United States of America and Canada where she will visit fellow organic vegetable gardeners and seed-savers.
I am so honoured to be able to meet up with Kate and be her host. I also took the opportunity to ask Teresa from Balcony Greens to come to see Kate in real life. Kate has been a frequent visitor to Teresa’s blog where Teresa shares her experience as a highrise apartment vegetable gardener. This is the first time that Kate and I got to meet up with Teresa.
Before we left the hotel for dinner, we asked the hotel staff to snap our very first group photograph at the lobby. Strange, as you can see from the picture below, that there are three obvious orbs that appeared on the right side of the picture. My friends who are into photography told me the orbs appeared due to the presence of dust in the air or it could due to my dirty camera lens…
We went to Food Republic at Wisma Atria Shopping Center for our dinner. Teresa and I got some local fare for Kate to try and we were glad that Kate found the food nice and delicious. We got to know each other better, especially on what we grow, how we started our gardening hobby and so on, as we chatted along over dinner.
Many thanks to Teresa who drove, we were able to bring Kate on a short tour in the car around the Singapore city center where she got to see some of Singapore’s famous landmarks, which included some new ones such as the Singapore Flyer and the bright flood lights that were switched on as part of the preparation work for the upcoming Grand Prix F1 night race that Singapore is going to host for the first time in a couple of days’ time.
Tomorrow will be a long day but I hope it will be a fruitful, enjoyable and memorable one for Kate. She will be visiting two community gardens where one of which is mine at Serangoon North. Mount Faber Park is one of next stops and if time permits, we will also bring Kate on a visit to the Singapore Botanic Gardens or even HortPark – the gardening hub.
I would like to thank Kate for her generosity. I got a mousepad from her that depicted Australian aboriginal art, which will be an important keepsake to remind me of her visit, as well as, some vegetable seeds she had saved from her community garden.
