Entree Kibbles: Zhongshe Flower Market (中社觀光花市) - Flower Field Zone @ Taichung [Taiwan]

It's a flower filled day for our second day in Taiwan; 30 minutes after leaving Hua Lu Flower Home, we had arrived at our next destination! Zhongshe Flower Market - it has a few zones and we shall be concentrating on the flower field zone.

Following our trusted tour guide, KK.

Two routes to start; most people will go towards the right, since it's "right". I am unconventional and decided to start from the left instead.

Please be prepared for a lot of photographs. This would be more a photo post, rather than one laden with text, especially when I don't know much about flower species.

Some flower beds might have a placard detailing the species, the origin, their special characteristics and what the specific flower is generally used for etc. In Chinese though but not harm for those on tour packages as there was hardly any time to be "educated" given the vast fields ahead of us!

Aside from the flower fields, the number of photo props on the fields would definitely take up a lot of your time! Rule of thumb - if queue is too long, just go for the next photo prop as there were so many and it's impossible to take everything with just one-hour allocated for us to roam about.

Do be mindful that taking photographs can be a chore, given that the pathways could be extremely muddy! During my short visit, I saw two persons getting their hands, feet and clothing dirty! The mud was actually quite dry but can be slippery!

I was a pianist for once! My family isn't musically inclined although I would love to take some lessons to learn to play the piano! My only piece at this moment, was the two tigers nursery rhyme! Embarrassing it sure is.

Giving you a rough idea on how big this place was! Zhongshe is famous for their tulips but the season starts from January and we were a month too early! From January to March, there would be about 150,000 tulips, of different varieties!

No doubt you would find yourself drawn to this uniquely stunning mountain that serves as a beautiful backdrop to some of the photographs taken at Zhongshe.

Known as Fire Mountain, it's about 600 meters in height and its Chinese terminology is the same as the Flaming Mountains in China, although latter would be much larger at 100 kilometers long!

Photographs of strangers!

From far, I thought these were sunflowers. However, once I am nearer, it appeared to be more like a chrysanthemum! And unlike sunflowers, the plants were also shorter in height.

I used to like roses and even though I still like them, I prefer the sunshine look from sunflowers. Life is sometimes quite stressful and sunflowers do portray a bright, positive cheerfulness.

African Chrysanthemums; don't they look like daisies?

Birds of Paradise!

The two types of gourds hanging from overhead pipes. I am more acquainted with the silk gourds as my mom makes a really good stir fried sliced gourd dish; which goes so well with rice!

There's a humongous gourd species!

How did the stem manage to hold the weight?!

My thought in my mind when I saw the above; "are they what I think they are"?! Somewhat hidden at the back of Zhongshe Flower Market, it's so easy to overlook them!

Yes, they are my favorite sunflowers! Do you remember the game, Plants vs. Zombies? The sunflowers in the game can fire sun beams and with the ability to heal; should I redownload? I used to play so often!

Sunflowers and us!

Isn't this a beautiful picture?!

p.s the purple flowers are not lavender.

A few ponds at the perimeter for a different perspective on photo-taking; it's not just flower, flower and more flowers! The ponds were also the nearest to the fire mountain and in my opinion, the best spot to capture the mountain as a backdrop.

There were some flowers in the ponds; likely lotus or water lilies! Do you know how to segregate between the two!? Click here for the answer!

This was a fish feed dispenser!

10 Taiwan Dollars per serving.

Remember I started with the left side earlier? Now going to the right side where there were more photo props and they seemed to center on romance and love! p.s. the one with the carriage was a bit strange though; why was there a pink faced cheshire cat!?

Flower landscapes. I had to admit that while Zhongshe Flower Market won in terms of the number of photo props, the views at Shikisai-No-Oka (四季彩の丘) and Farm Tomita were just too hard to match.

The seven dwarves!

I didn't see snow white.

Statue was at the verge of breaking into pieces!

p.s. already missing a wrist.

Coming to the end of my visit. The above flower signage would be the first thing greeting you should you start with the "right" route. I bet you have noticed there were not that many photographs of my dad. Please be assured that it's impossible I didn't get him as a model.