Growing food for my table

I'm a happy gardener these days. All the hard work in the vegetable garden has paid off and my table is loaded with the fruits and vegetables we grew. Which is a real relief when I read in the papers about the spiraling prices.

We usually grow a lot of veggies during the monsoon season but this year was a strange one. The Monsoons hit us before time and continued battering the city and elsewhere almost non-stop for close to 2 months. And, I don't think we saw bright sunshine until August. So unusual! I've never seen anything like it in all the years that I've been farming.
Now, I love the monsoon season with a passion. But such a strange season got us a bit worried because all the vegetable seeds we had sown at the start of the monsoons either got washed away or the little seedlings just rotted away. Only the really tough local varieties survived (just about. And that's a great reason to grow local, heirloom varieties if you can find them)

The beans were the first to yield and they did so abundantly. With a whole-hearted largesse that makes you glad for such simple, easy-to-grow vegetables.
I don't know why more people don't grow them in the city. What you see here is the yield on a single day from just 2 plants! And that too, at the start of the harvest before the plants came into their full yielding potential.

And the peppers were full of green berries too. Don't you love the way those pepper berries are packed tight? It looks even prettier when they ripen.

If you have a banana plant in your garden, then you're set for several meals. In fact, almost the entire plant is edible one way or the other. It's not just the ripe fruit which you can enjoy as a fruit or dessert. The unripe fruit , the inflorescence and the pith of the pseudostem, all make great ingredients and feature in several of our regional cuisines.
Oh, and you can use the large leaves as a plate and compost it after your meal. No washing up! How much better can it get?

This is another plant from which we got a surprisingly good harvest this season. I'm not too fond of bitter-gourd as a vegetable but I have to admit that it does look pretty. I love the leaves and the simple but eye-catching bright yellow flowers.
Heck! I think we're doing it an injustice by confining it to the kitchen garden!

And I love how tenacious it is. The bittergourd vines can latch on and climb and smother any surface in a cloud of green almost overnight.

Interesting texture, don't you think? And they're very good for you. There are all kinds of reports of it helping to regulate blood-sugar levels.

Every once in a while, a few escape our eyes (well, it's a green veggie on a green plant, after all) . And this is what we find. A glorious warm sunset-orange rind and blood-red arils that rival the pomegranate in glossy, brilliant red-ness.
Definitely prettier than tastier ... to my eyes, at least!

This one I like, though! The Red Amaranth is grown in my garden round the year.The tender leaves and stem are rich in iron and its grain is increasingly being recommended too for its nutritional value.
This season, however I didn't get around to sowing its seeds. But guess what, some of them volunteered to show up anyway. In the stoniest, weediest part of the vegetable garden!
hmmmm.... I wonder if my garden is sending me a message here? "Don't bother weeding and cleaning"?
But here's my story, all those weeds are left undisturbed on purpose. Some of them are butterfly and pollinator food, you know. That tiny blue flower to the left? The Red Pierrot butterflies love them. So, now you know.

And how could I leave out the Carambola? This tree is just beginning to mature but I love how profusely it is bearing fruit on almost  every inch of bare space! This is definitely my kind of tree! Low on maintenance but high on yield.

Wait, there's more. But I think I'll keep those for another post. Maybe by then I'll have more pics to share. Of the tomatoes and other veggies which are growing and soon to yield any day now. Can you see me smiling?

In the meantime, here's a pic of cherry tomatoes from another harvest. Get growing your own food, everyone. It's not so tough. And it's definitely fulfilling. Also, tastier and healthier than the fruits and veggies you'll buy in the market.

And, if each one grows some, we'll all have a table-ful.
Smile, everyone!

When the Monsoon casts a spell

And the rains have come to wash us clean. Refresh us, invigorate us, pour new life into every twig and leaf and parched being.
Oh, Monsoon ... how I do love you!

All the Gulmohurs are soaked and drenched. Fiery Summer meets Cool, Wet Monsoon. Shimmering drops cling to feathery leaves and scorching petals. Such an incredibly beautiful combination!

And every outdoor surface, whether stone or brick or earth or clay, suddenly remembers tales of delicate ferns of yore. And my sterile stone walls and every rock and tiny pebble around forgets the hot, scorching Summer days...

... and suddenly transforms into a shaded moist woodland! Gone is the parched, baked, blistering-hot earth . Now I live in a primeval jungle, complete with an explosion of waving maidenhair ferns and the creek! of hidden creatures.
Who is to say just what wonders lurk under those arching fern fronds?

This is one of the monsoon wonders in my garden which always leaves me gasping at the sheer unexpected beauty of it. 

Native to our land, it wasn't planted here. It just shows up every monsoon. Like a hostess gift brought by the Monsoons.

So alike, yet so different from the Aromatic Turmeric which I have planted here. It blooms in Summer, giving me a foretaste of the beauty awaiting me in the Monsoon when the Wild Curcumas come into their own.

And, the Carambola is still in bloom! I love its clusters of tiny bubblegum-pink flowers.

So do all the bees and other pollinators, I think.

Another native, the wild Ixora is blooming its head off.

And when the flowers fall off, it's still a pretty sight!

As are all the plants in my garden. De-petaled, or mud-coated or wind-torn they may be but they love the Monsoons. As do I (can you tell?) .

Some more Monsoon links for you  ( I know, the monsoon inspires me like no other season!)  : 

       Monsoons ... the agony and the ecstasy

       Monsoon vegetables in Mumbai

       Monsoon!

      Moss and snails and maidenhair ferns ... 

      It's a wet, green world

      Growing my own food

      Monsoon gifts

      Monsoon blooms

A sense of Spring

Breathe in the fragrance of a new season,
drink in the vibrant colours of a new year (you really don't think January marks a new year, do you? ),
gorge on the flavours of the new fruits weighing down the trees,
smile at the crescendo of joyous bird-calls overhead and faraway and round-about  ... Spring is here and makes sure you know it by a mad, merry, exuberant sensory overload!

When else would you find such a serendipitous juxtaposition of a Blue butterfly sunning itself next to a Rosy Periwinkle?

Or gangs of ants quilting a heliconia bloom? Or could they be the heliconia artists, gently nipping a blush into every bloom? 

Nothing gentle about this exuberant bougainvillea screaming its presence! Rambunctious climber, irrepressible bloom-smith, unfussy tenant .. who doesn't appreciate the bountiful blooms of the bougainvillea when sunny, roasting hot days drag by? 

Sprays of Petrea wrap my garden in a soothing cloud of lavenders and purples fading into silvery grey. Twirling ballerinas of the botanical realm, each bloom matures into a role rarely essayed. How many flowers, after all, can spin and dance on the Spring breeze?  

And sometimes the heavens come down to earth! And high-flying Pariah Kites grant their royal stamp of approval to my humble bird-bath. Spring today, Summer tomorrow; a bird's got to sip and dip. In the meantime, they have an awestruck pair of eyes (and camera lens) following their every regal move!   

High up on the denuded teak trees, the very voluble parakeets screech and gossip about every passerby and every new tree in fruit. They love hanging around my garden now. No one will disturb their babies here and there are plenty of tender cashewnuts on the trees to gnaw on.

Tender cashewnuts, did I say? Oh so young to imagine the trial by fire awaiting it, to prove itself and be crowned king of the palate! Hundreds of bunches of these very quirky fruits are growing now, kissed by the Spring sunshine, dreaming of the day when the cashew-apples will be full-grown and all filled out. No celebrations for a Size Zero here!

Until then these Star Gooseberries are rocking the show in my garden. Clusters and clusters of them crowding the trees until the branches bend down, almost begging to be picked. 

The child in me loves the slight sourness in every pop of these. Have you found the child in you drooling over this too? 

Or, over this? The Carambolas are growing too. These star-shaped fruit are such an attractive sight, on the tree or the table. Or on the hawkers' carts. Did they use to sell the Carambola, dipped in salt and red-hot chilli powder, outside your school too? Does your mouth begin to water when you see this photo, as mine is beginning to?

Spring. And the Winter vegetables are still yielding.
Fresh crisp green cabbages growing among a forest of iron-rich red amaranths. Just as colourful as it looks and a hundred times more flavour-packed.
Did you know that ever since I grew the cabbages among the red amaranths, I've had less trouble with the foliage vandals? All the grasshoppers seem to be drawn to the red amaranths, leaving the cabbage alone.

On the roads, the Rain Trees are dotted with flowers. 

In my home, a few brave (and fool-hardy) centipedes try to barge in and are summarily tossed out on their ear!
But I do sneak an admiring glance at those mango-yellow boots. This gal has style!

And why am I repeating a pic of this Blue? Just because. 

Because it's so pretty and has a cute up-turned nose and big, big eyes.

Because it has a model's poise; look at the bend of that knee.

Because it knows where to hang out ... in my garden.

Because I like this photo.

And because it's Spring!

And because Spring means that all kinds of pretty fragrant flowers like this Vallaris are making the air heady with their scent. 

sigh .... did I mention that I absolutely love Spring? 

Pink and Purple Perfection

Every time I see this hot-pink Cosmos beaming at me, I can't help feeling a huge smile building up inside me. It's as simple a flower as can be; absolutely nothing complicated about it. And, it's perfect!
Brilliant colour, easy to grow, a snap to maintain ... what more could a gardener want?
Did someone say 'fragrance'? hmmm ...

I wonder if it's the colour which makes it especially attractive for me?
But no, I'm not that crazy about pinks usually, though I'll always make an exception for Hot Pinks. Or Rani Pink, as we call it in India. Bright colours always get me going!

And then I looked around my garden (and in the hard disk of my computer where all my garden photos are stored) and realised just how many pinks and purples-bordering-on-pink I have cheering up my bit of growing space.

Well, what do you know? Maybe I do have a thing for Pink after all!

Like this very small, very pink bloom. 

I had bought the plant along with a bunch of others but hadn't got around to planting it in the ground yet; it was still in a regular-sized pot. And before I knew it, I was dealing with happy blooms. 

Wow! This is one easy-to-please plant!

And when those pretty blooms grow into fruits, and that too on a plant which is just 1'-tall now if it really stretches, then you know you have a winner on your hands.
And when those fruits are such an unusually pretty shape, appealing to the eye as well as the taste-buds, you know it is Olympic medal-worthy.
Oh, how I love thee, Carambola!

Almost as much as I love the Pride of India. May Queen, Queen's Crepe Myrtle ... call it what you will but this is one spectacular bloom to have colouring up your garden. Or rather, drifts of blooms.

 Even if it isn't exactly pink. Actually, there is a pink-coloured variety too but it never ever bloomed for me.

Yes, it happens to all of us!

But why would I quibble over colour when I have these purply clusters of blooms around golden centres and tipped with silvery gray-green buds. What a palette of colours to tease the senses! 

Incidentally, the internet is no longer content with just good ol'-fashioned lilac, mauve, violet, purple, etc. It insists that this shade of purple is 'Orchid' (not the flower, but the shade) . 

Which Orchid?

This one?
 

Or this one?

Or... the mind boggles ... could it be this orchid that they've named it after?

 LOL!

Still, for some strange reason I've always been fascinated by the different names we give to shades, such as ' cherry red' or 'peacock blue' or 'vermilion'. I can't always differentiate the minute variances in shade and hue but I love scrolling through colour charts with evocative names like 'pink cloud' or 'plum pudding' or 'purple fish' (seriously? Purple FISH?). 

I feel like I'm reading a children's fantasy book! Or Dr. Seuss at the least.

Then there is this silvery-leaved begonia which blushes very prettily with  a touch of sun.

Ignore those passionfruits, okay? That was just a hijacker trying to take over all available space. And, also ignore that large hole in the begonia leaf. (I'm told that it is usually a sure sign that chemical pesticides are not used in this space. So, yeah... that's my story and I'm sticking to it!)

A few pale pinks do make a timid appearance in my garden. They're pretty in a way, I suppose, but in my opinion, pale pastels tend to blend into the background in the tropics. It's something to do with the way the sun glares at them. That super-bright light just bounces off those pale petals until it looks like the nuances are washed out and there is only an eye-scrunching blinding white to be seen. 

It's not so bad when they're indoors. Those pale, pale pinks do look much more attractive away from the sun. Or maybe it's just because it's on an orchid that does it. 

But as far as pinks go, I'm beginning to really love this Hot Pink 'n Sulfur Yellow combination. It's like a blast of steamy tropical colour that shocks you out of your soul . But, hey! I'm nothing if not Tropical with a capital T!