Passionfruit magic

It's here finally! My very own 'mmmmm!' moment.
The first passionfruits from my vine have ripened and I just had to share them with you.
Slice them in half and you'll see the most eye-catching combination of red, white and gold. I have to admit that the red and white looked so pretty that I was a bit reluctant to spoil that look.
For about 2 minutes !

Then I grabbed a spoon and got busy scooping up all that juicy, golden goodness. You just can't begin to imagine the flavour if you've never eaten passionfruit before.
Juicy, fragrant, sweet, tart, fruity flavours pop on your tastebuds and swirl around in a heady melange of sensory surprises. Summery fragrances seem to weave around your brain until you can't think of anything else.

There's so little of it, do you moan? But with so much concentrated juicy, sweet flavour who needs a watermelon-ful?
Each little golden smidgen is like a flavour-bomb bursting in your mouth and inundating you with flavours and fragrances till you're replete with the magic of it all.

When I was done indulging myself, I sat there wondering whether I should've waited and concocted some fancy dessert with it instead. You know the answer, right?
Naaah! Maybe another time.
Unless the passionfruit magic overpowers me again and forces me to stretch out for the nearest spoon instead.

A passion for Passionfruits

One of the most exotic (or should that be quixotic?) blooms ever! The passionflower lends itself to science-fiction just as easily as its fruit does to gourmet cuisine.

How else would you explain the inexplicably weird radar-like contraptions that pop up above it?
Or the squiggly filaments, like a tutu gone haywire?

If the stigma and anthers look like alien pieces of technology, the flavour of the fruit too is simply out of this world! A hint of tartness and a touch of sweet melding in the warm sunny days to make its own exquisitely juicy, fruity flavour.

And it definitely has its own very distinctive fragrance too. Very summery, and fruity and tropical island-ish, of course. Check out perfumes like Keiko Mecheri Passiflora which draw on the fruity notes of the passionflower.

I had got a few passionfruits as a gift and saved up one to dry and plant. It ached a bit to not scoop up all that juicy pulp but I told myself that it was in a good cause. So I cut it open and spread the golden pulp on a few layers of tissue paper to dry.

I wasn't too sure whether it would grow because I had been told that the red passionfruits are difficult to sprout. Either that was a myth or I was very lucky because I got about 30 - 40 seedlings scrambling for attention.

You have to be pretty quick to transplant them into their own space, preferably where they can climb, because those curly tendrils take hold of anything they find and are soon clambering all over the place whether you like it or not!

I thought I had found the perfect sunny spot near a chain-link fence for one seedling but the vine just leaped and threw itself all over a nearby custard-apple tree. After encroaching on all available limbs and surfaces, it settled down to blooming exuberantly. And now it looks like one of those exotic experiments with 2 different fruits growing on one tree!

But it's such an amazing transformation, isn't it? From exotic, almost architectural blooms to perfect globes of speckled green, blushing red to summery sweet ripeness.

And if you thought that you're the only one who enjoys passionfruits, meet the Tawny Coaster. This pretty orange butterfly loves to lay its eggs on the leaves of the Passionfruit vine. This one didn't even budge when I zoomed in close for a Macro shot!
I wonder whether its babies will get a taste of passionfruits when they're busy munching on the leaves. I don't really mind. So long as they leave enough for some fruits for me!

Growing my own food

Here's what I hope will be a sneak preview photo of the harvest from my vegetable patch. Somehow food tastes so much better when it's straight out of your garden, doesn't it?
We had a great harvest last year (and this photo is a partial record of that) so this year we decided to try and improve on it.

The first step was to increase the size of the vegetable patch. We somehow managed to cut down on the bananas and ended up almost doubling the space for vegetables. See what I mean?

I couldn't give up my lantana bush, though. It is still slam-bang in the middle of all the activity, attracting butterflies and birds to it.

By the way, did you notice the banana plants to the left? The one on the extreme left is heavy with fruit and is bending so much that it is almost in danger of falling over. My helper tried to prop it up with a small stick while he went hunting for a stronger one. I almost burst out laughing when I saw it... it was like trying to prop up a car with a toothpick!
If any banana farmer sees this he'd probably say I'm growing them all wrong. Officially, you're supposed to make sure there's only one plant growing and remove all the others growing from the same clump. But that's not the way I grow them. I allow most of the others to grow too but remove the ones which are of almost the same size / age. This way I have bananas ripening on my plants every other month instead of having to wait almost a full year to get the next bunch.

Cucumbers, gourds, beans and ladies' fingers (okra) are some of the monsoon vegetables that grow so well in Mumbai at this time.
By the way, you don't need a lot of land to grow most of these vegetables. A large pot in a sunny spot is perfect for okra but you have to provide enough space for cucumber and gourd vines to clamber and ramble. If you can guide them to find their way up or across window box-grilles which are a common feature of most Mumbai apartments, I think they'll be happy enough. Just make sure they're not in the way of salt-laden strong winds. Our monsoon winds can get quite vicious at times and I've had perfectly healthy, happy plants in my apartment garden die out on me in a matter of hours after one of these stormy sessions.

The flip side of the monsoon has to be the soil erosion in my sloping garden. I had worked hard at building up the soil and enriching it with well-composted cow manure and ash. But within a few days of heavy rains I found that most of it has flowed off downhill and left behind a whole lot of pebbles and rocks and other nasties.

Whoever said sparrows are hardly seen in Mumbai nowadays will be happy to know that they're thriving in my garden! In this uncultivated corner of my vegetable plot, I found a whole flock of them chirping and squabbling among the grass and weeds that the monsoon has encouraged.

Incidentally, did you notice the weed growing in the foreground (extreme left of picture), in front of the Caladium ? That, my friends, is Phyllanthus amarus, one of the most effective medicinal herbs traditionally used to treat jaundice and now has been found to treat Hepatitis B too. Just imagine how many other potential medicines in our gardens are pulled out as weeds.
As good an excuse as any if we want one to put off weeding, don't you think?

Anyway, back to the sparrows, I found this one perched on an old stump, keeping watch.

And his wife was busy stealing fibre from the dried banana-stem strips used to tie the trellis canopy together.

I wish she would have just pulled some from the bitter gourd plant. Definitely not my favourite vegetable, though my husband loves it. But I do love how it looks and its bright yellow flowers are quite pretty among all that green. I wish I could grow it just for its flowers and not let it fruit at all!

It's a wet, green world!

Green is my world and as wet as can be!
I feel as if I'm living in a rainforest. Everywhere I turn, Mumbai is a palette of every shade of green imaginable. But nowhere more so than in my own garden.
From the deep, dark primeval greens of trees clasping branches with each other and creating cocoons of mystical calm, to the fresh clean greens of maidenhair ferns waving at me from every nook and corner of my garden.

Raindrops mist the petals and roll down leaves. Silvery balls of cool washing the earth clean and soothing it awake.
Or, thrumming in with lashing wave and frenzied winds, tossing blooms and whipping leaves, shaking my garden alive.

And in one corner of my garden I spot this little vine, planted years ago and half-forgotten. I had sown the seeds with no great expectations and was thrilled to see them grow. And grow, without showing any sign of doing much else.
It had clambered all over a custard-apple tree, ran along an electric wire and draped itself in great big looping garlands.
And then grew some more. Until now.
Now is the time the passionflower has come into its own. Perfect timing, don't you think?

Moss and snails and maidenhair ferns ... that's what monsoons are made of

It's Maidenhair Fern season again!
Every inch of wall space is cloaked in black-ribbed fern green, waving in glee with every cool breeze that hint at a touch of rain. Maidenhair Monsoon is what it should be named in my garden!
It makes no difference whether it is stone or brick or mud, wall or just a happy incline, smooth surfaces or jagged cracks ... the Maidenhair ferns are partying everywhere!

And another Monsoon visitor, the wild Safed Musli, has woken up too. These are true Mumbai natives and don't need to be pampered like the exotics do.
There is a white-and-green carpet of these pretty flowers everywhere I look. It's almost impossible to avoid stepping on them and I wince everytime I see my dogs carelessly trampling them. But there seem to be at least 10 popping up to replace every damaged bloom-spike, so maybe I should just sit back and enjoy the moment.
And don't you just love that mossy rock look?

The rains haven't stopped the bananas from bearing fruit. This one has such a huge inflorescence that it almost looks as if it is on steroids!

And this is definitely one visitor I can do without! But come Monsoon, and sad to say, the snails and slugs are making their presence felt. This one was looking for a way out of one orchid pot to the next, before I sent it packing to The Great Big Garden in the Sky.
Gardening does make one so vicious sometimes!
If you don't believe me, ask these ants. I think they were trying to pull open the bracts on this heliconia and posting danger signs to anyone daring to come close.
Or were they trying to staple it closed?

Monsoon!

The Monsoon is here! Season of moss and fern and everything green. Of lush verdant growth and moist cool days. Of receptive Earth, urging seeds to grow and plants to ramble.

All over Mumbai, Gulmohurs lay out a red carpet for the Monsoon. Everywhere I look I can see brilliant red swatches of colour painting the ground.
Red does seem to be the colour of the season. And it shows up so beautifully amidst all that Monsoon refreshed green.

My tardy Gulmohur alone seems to stick out as the last bastion. Late to bloom and stubbornly last to fall. I'm not complaining!

Long-forgotten Caladiums are now popping up everywhere. These were growing wild in a vacant plot of land when I persuaded them to shift to my garden.
I gave them a spot near the Vincas thinking that when the Summer blooms of the Vincas are done, the Caladiums would add their splotches of colour. But they seem to be very happy to grow side by side even when the monsoon winds have blown the Vincas all asprawl over the Caladiums which were cosying up to a young Geiger tree.
And as if that weren't enough for this picture of monsoon harmony, can you see the roots of the Dendrobium orchid (not in the picture) slithering down from the tree to join in all the fun?

One of the first things that I did was to make sure I re-stocked the water on the verandah with plenty of guppies and other fish to take care of any mosquitoes which have ideas of moving in and turning it into a maternity ward.

This is a large black jar which I had planted with some waterlilies and kept in the sunniest corner of my verandah. Unfortunately, the crows soon discovered this new watering-hole and with a couple of strong tugs, pulled out the interefering water-plants until they had clear access to all that lovely water.
It made no difference to them that there was a bird-bath kept filled with clean water just a few feet away. They obviously didn't want to mix with the hoi-polloi and staked out the jar as their own.
After several attempts at rescuing the poor waterlilies and several incidents of finding them tossed disdainfully to the floor again, I gave up. Now that jar is the pit-stop of choice among all the crows who fly in. Not the other birds, though. They, like well-brought up birds, prefer the bird-bath.

I keep a pot of bamboo behind the jar and I love seeing its reflection in the water. Somehow it looks just that little bit more eye-catching than the real thing. Especially when the fish weave in and out of the reflected leaves and sky. There's something a bit surreal about it.
I do add a couple of large leaves for the fish to hide under when the crows are on the prowl.

The Monsoons also bring a windfall, literally, for these Red-vented Bulbuls. This banana plant with a ripening bunch heavy on it, toppled over and before I discovered it, the bulbuls did. I found this pair feasting on it and looking a bit annoyed at being disturbed.

I dont know what they're grumbling about. They've been feasting all these days on the Carissa carandas, or 'Karonda' as they're commonly called here.

On the brink of the monsoons

The Gulmohurs are blazing in my garden! I've been waiting for them all season long and I love driving down the Mumbai roads and seeing huge swathes of scarlet everywhere. These dramatic trees are grabbing as much attention as they can get now but it looks like their days in the sun are almost done.
The Monsoons are on their way!
This is my favourite season. I love the rains ... even when it blows all those lovely blooms off the trees. And even when it rains non-stop for days on end and everything is a big squelchy mess. Actually 'rain' is such a bland word for the sheer drama that our monsoons bring... I just can't wait for the show to start.

Oh, it's still as hot as ever in Mumbai but the sea got a whole lot rougher and huge puffs of thunderous-looking dark clouds have been teasing our skies. The countdown has started, though. The day the monsoons reach the Malabar coast of Kerala, the people of Mumbai start counting off the 10 days they have before the Great Monsoon Spectacle lavishes Mumbai with some much-needed rainy affection

But that also means that I have just that many days to get my garden monsoon-ready.
The preparations have been going on for almost a month now. The vegetable plot gets a lot of pampering, naturally. The monsoon season is the best time to grow vegetables here and the area where I grow my vegetables has been left fallow for the last 3 months. Building up, conserving all that earthy goodness for the season of abundance.
Then, about 3 weeks ago, the land was cleared of weeds, ploughed up and dressed with a healthy mix of sun-dried manure and wood-ash.

Did you know that wood-ash is an important part of traditional Indian farming practices? It is a deterrent for soft-bodied pests and is also fantastic for conditioning the soil. Oh yeah... the things you learn! I never knew this when I started gardening but I saw the local farmers regularly heap up tiny mounds of dry leaves and grass on their fields and burn them in May. Which makes a lot of sense; kills the weeds, kills the pests and conditions the soil. Of course, you have to be alert to prevent the fire getting out of hand but these are really small heaps, less than a foot high

Now the vegetable plot is done .... terraced on the slopes and heaped in small little mounds in other places. All I'm waiting for is the first drops of monsoon showers to soak in and I'll be out planting seeds.

But my garden isn't done with just that! The coconut trees are being fertilised too. Truckloads of manure and sacks of dried fish have been bought and put out in the sun to dry some more before being used. The sacks were a bit 'alive' much to the delight of this Magpie-Robin who hopped on to snack on the beetles crawling on them.

Wide troughs have been dug around each coconut tree and filled up with layers of dried manure, dried fish and wood-ash. On top of all this, a layer of green leaves is added ... the cherry on the cake!
I would've loved to add some pressed and powdered neem seedcakes too before the pit is covered up again but I didn't get any this time. I think I'll add some later on but I wish it could've been done now. It would've driven away a lot of pests and diseases.
By the way, did I mention that I only used natural fertilisers? I love making my earth happy. A happy earth means happy plants, naturally.

Of course, I have to admit that all this needs a lot of labour and very strong muscles and I had to hire some locals to help me out. Isn't it fantastic that India is an agricultural country so I don't really need to explain to them just what needs to be done . Nor do I need to even supervise the work... what a great excuse to get busy with my camera !

Adding a touch of beauty to all the hectic activity is a restless cloud of butterflies attracted by the strong smells of cow manure and dried fish. What a perfect counterbalance to make up for all that smelly stuff!

And, just as I'm typing this, the sky darkens and a cool breeze gusts through the city with a welcome swoosh of lovely, cool rain. It's a precursor to the real thing and will be called 'just a pre-monsoon shower' by the papers tomorrow, but oh what a wonderful gift for a city that has been seething and simmering in Summer's cauldron for so long now!


(I'm a bit handicapped now because my trusty desktop computer has conked out and I'm just not comfortable working on my laptop. So please keep that in mind when looking at the photos because I just can't make out how good or bad the quality is.)