Blooms in 2021...

Phew! I have made it back to my blog before I completed one whole year of absence. Well, just about... Because as you can see, my last post was written on the 2nd of October, 2020. After that, I didn't feel like sharing anything on the blog. Instead, I dug deep into my cozy space and got entrenched in an effort to shut out the crazy world as much as possible. 

We have had our portion of goodbyes, the most painful being the demise of a brother-figure, a standup guy who was just 42. As I write this, my sister-in-law and her family are in their second week of Covid infection, resting at home in isolation. Fortunately, all of them are doing ok after the initial fever and symptoms.

Meanwhile, some things have been blooming here at Karthi...

like this morning glory vine that I have managed to keep alive in my balcony garden which you might remember... I bought this vine back in March from a nursery on the way back from Kottayam.

Then there is this beauty... 

... who came with us from Vandiperiyar when we went there in December for the only pleasure trip we've undertaken in the Covid era. She put out her first, single bloom just in time for DH's birthday in August. This time, there is another branch with promise of more to come...

 

This year, I have been able to take better care of my garden, pruning it back into shape, trimming, mulching and fertilizing on a regular basis. My cousin gave me a mulberry cutting three years ago. Look what I found last weekend!

 

 

Sometimes, I feel that the garden I am trying to grow is the one I am recreating from my mother's family home in my childhood. I have succeeded in getting the coral jasmine to bloom. The mulberry is another childhood favorite. My old friend the mulberry tree is still thriving at Kottayam although when I go there, I forget to visit. You could call my mulberry a granddaughter of that tree, because my cousin took a cutting to her home and grew it there, and I got mine from hers. Now if I could only get the plant that we knew as Nakshatra Mulla (star jasmine), a bushy variety of jasmine that truly looked like stars scattered over a velvety dark green bush. Two of those flanked the entrance to the front yard at my mother's home. Our childhood pictures were mostly taken at the side of either of them. 

Apart from gardening, copy editing, and a little bit of creative writing, here is what I have been up to...

This project has just completed two years in the making and is no where near finished. Gaaah!!!

More on that later. Meanwhile, if any of you love books, take a look at the tabs above where I have listed the books I have been reading since 2017! 

Hope to see you all again next week! Stay safe!

Infinite variety

Some people assume that a homemaker's life is humdrum and yawn-inducingly boring. One of my young cousins recently asked me, "What do you do with all that time?" I decided not to deluge her with my repertoire of activities and adventures. Of course, yes, part of it is routine work, like in any profession - cooking, cleaning, washing, ironing, etc. But being in the middle of the country side gives me more scope for adventure. 

For example, two weeks ago, DH decided that his afternoon nap needed a bit more comfort and decided to switch on the AC. All was well until a few droplets of water came dripping into the room. Soon, ice-cold water collected in a pool on the floor. I went out to investigate. I poked an eerkkil into the vent and out came honey bees - the tiny non-stinging kind called cherutheneecha in Malayalam. Suspicious, I tasted a little of the sticky goo at the end of my eerkkil and yes, it was sweet! The service men came out last week and extracted this...

That is one end of my poking tool stuck in the wax. Fortunately, the hive had not become big enough to cover the cooling pipes or there would have been more trouble. This comes of not using the air conditioner for over eight months!

Yesterday morning brought home two workers bright and early. One of our coconut trees had succumbed to a rotting disease and lost its luxuriant head. For a few months it had been pointing an accusing finger at the sky right beside our gate. Passersby were careful to come in and tell us (another country life quirk!) that it was a hazard to the power line, our gate and our wall if it fell towards any of these. So our usual yard helper Vijayan Chettan brought along Mr. Mahin, a professional tree feller who in his heyday had worked in almost every district of Kerala. We also requested him to trim a bit of the jack fruit tree in the front and a cashew tree at the side, both of which were touching the house and were providing easy access for creepy crawlies and some creatures of the slithering variety to our upper floor.

One of my greatest hobbies in childhood was trailing around and being an assistant (read nuisance) to any skilled workers who came to our home - electricians, plumbers, carpenters, bricklayers, stonemasons - nobody escaped me. I would trail around them, fetch and carry for them and pester them with umpteen questions. I am sure that this habit has helped me with the home repairs I can do today. For example, in 2018, we got a kennel made for our half-grown puppy. The workers went away and after the required curing, we moved her to the new abode, only to find her jumping out through one of the several "ventilation" holes at the sides of the kennel! I bought some cement and tools, mixed up a batch with sand and used broken bricks to block the holes partially. Our Houdini was thus contained. 

Even today, I love to hover over specialized workers seemingly supervising, but in reality, gleaning new knowledge and listening to their professional lore. For example, all such workers will have at least one story of a miracle tool that was just perfect for their job. Mahin had one too. He recounted the story of a perfect bill hook he once had - he rhapsodized about the temper of the iron and the perfect condition he used to keep it in, only for some one to steal it from him. When he climbed the jack fruit tree to prune it, I cautioned him about my precious passion fruit vines that had finally deigned to give us fruits after four years of growth. He assured me that nothing would happen to them and here they are, intact...

Next he knotted a thick rope at 10-12 feet above the ground around the trunk of the coconut tree and had us assistants hang on to the other end after drawing it through the fork of the jack fruit tree. He was very careful in judging the angle and distance. Exhorting us to pull steadily on the rope, he hacked the base with an axe and made us tug experimentally once before cutting all the way round. Then he cut the other side too and rushed to us. We all grunted mightily and tugged with all our strength  (I forgot to yell "Timber!") and the coconut tree fell straight in to the sturdy arms of the jack fruit tree. The two of them used two thick trimmed branches of the jack fruit tree to lever it off from the tree's embrace. Mahin then chopped the tree into several parts and rolled them off to one side...

You can clearly see the top part that was rotted from the inside. Part of it broke off when it hit the tree as it fell. The marvel of Mahin's work is that no power tools were used - only rudimentary things like a ladder, pieces of rope, an axe, a bill hook etc. I really admired the way he sat down after each stretch of his job to use a file and sharpen his tools. So yesterday evening I hunted up my own file and sharpened my dull bill hook before hanging it up with a gleaming edge.

A homemaker's adventures do not stop there. I am trying a new crochet technique called tapestry crochet. For my first project I chose a bag that I saw on YouTube and purchased the pattern off Ravelry. It went along quite well till I reached the sides. The bag in the pattern's picture had chevron rows up the side, but mine was coming out in diamonds...

Usually I work with written patterns, but this had no color A, B etc. in the written part, only in the diagram. I couldn't make out where I went wrong. So I unraveled back to the point where the pattern began to look different from the picture and I can tell you, unraveling crochet in one yarn is a snap, but a headache with two yarns!!! Then I kind of made it up as I went along and now it looks like this...

That's more like it. Distinctly chevron-y. 

Culinary adventures are a whole another set. This month, I tried making Medu vada or Uzhunnu vada as it is called in Malayalam. All my recipes said "Use as little water as possible to grind the soaked grain" and I succeeded only in heating up my mixer. The resultant vada was perfect in shape, but also was tough enough to fell ripe mangoes from trees if need be. In my second attempt, I used my electric stone grinder and ground the dal very finely, but found that more than the stipulated amount of water is actually required to make the dough/batter fluffy enough to make soft vadas. This time, they were crunchy and tasty, but looked a little wonky...

But then as my DH says, tasty beats wonky every time...😁

So to answer my cousin and several other people who ask, "What do you do at home all day?" I would reply, homemaking is a never-ending adventure of infinite variety - if one chooses to make it so!!!

Spring/Summer Projects

Gosh, isn't it baking hot in God's Own Country these days! In accordance with the government's guidelines, we seldom venture outside between 11 am and 3 pm. Even at 9:30, our yard becomes unbelievably hot and we retire into the cool interior of Karthi, not coming out till it's well past 4:30. But some people in our yard seem to find this weather all very fine. Don't believe me? Then what do you make of this?

Just look at those lilies trying to compete with the fiery ball in the sky!

And what about this jasmine? Bringing the star-studded sky down to earth seems to be its ambition!!!

And the frangipani that needs a trimming is just reaching into the sky with all its blossoms. Our garden is nothing if not ambitious!!!

As for the denizens of Karthi, at first the biennial festival at our local temple had us waiting for sundown to join the festivities. It culminated in the Pakalppooram and this time I was lucky enough to get a ringside seat for the shinkari melam...

The dancing and the drumming had me itching to join them, I can tell ya! 

That over, we braved the heat and drove to Guruvayoor just before the holiday rush started and had a peacefully unrushed opportunity to say our prayers, especially for a good academic year for our elder son who has his 10th standard board exams the coming year. 

And what was happening with my balcony garden in the meanwhile? Did the climbers languish or shrivel while we were gone? See for yourself!

Not only are they happy, they have grown!!! And what is the secret? See those plastic bottles sticking out of the pots? That is what kept them going while we were gone for three days! I can tell you I was so happy to see them peeking above the balcony railings when we drove up!

This week the kids (aka conscripted labor) and I have been working on a new project. We're clearing swathes of our back yard jungle. This is the uncleared part...

and this is the cleared half...

The difference is more noticeable when seen together...

The aim is to relocate all the dead leaves (safely transported to the bases of our coconut trees to decompose there in peace, not burned!) and remove undesirable vegetation, leaving the kind of ground cover that I like to have in my backyard. Because don't make the mistake of thinking that all that brown stuff is dead. No sirree! In the first magical rains of the monsoon, all that area will erupt into lush green vegetation to tame which I will have to resort to my trusty grass cutter. My gardening team and I are taking it easy, working only half an hour each day to save ourselves from burnout and dehydration. 

One of the highlights of the week was my first proper homemade pizza. This week it was my fifth attempt to make pizza. I've tried baking them in my OTG and my microwave. Each time something or the other seemed to go awry. Almost always the base turned out uncooked and soggy in the middle and tough and overcooked at the edges. This time, I baked the base alone first for three minutes before taking it out and putting on the toppings - and they came out perfect!!! Okay, they were not picture perfect - but the flavor of the toppings and the baking of the base were spot on!!! It was definitely much, much better than the pizza we ordered in from a local cafe two weeks ago. And this brings me neatly to the news that our little corner of the world is finally in the Uber Eats service area. (And to avoid any temptation, I have NOT installed the app on my phone)!

So what are you up to these hols??? Are you prepping your garden before the monsoons? Or is it still too cold to work in the garden in your corner of the Big Blue Marble? Let me know!!!

Beginnings of a balcony garden

Our front yard, being a little spacious, is the favorite play area of our sons' friends. I love having them over and hearing their constant teasing and mild trash talk while they are playing. I love knowing that they are building their bodies and friendships and not sitting all hunched over cellphones or tabs and obsessing about some trashy online game. It especially soothes my heart to watch them scarf down the snacks that I occasionally make with healthy appetites and evident enjoyment despite the imperfections of my culinary products.

But, well, nothing is perfect in this world, huh? The price for the above is that I cannot grow anything in our front yard. Neither can I have any hanging ornaments on my porch. I had to keep seeing beautiful clay creations, so lovingly hung up, break apart piece by piece and finally get rid of them altogether. I have one row of plants along the wall separated by a diagonal brick border. The bricks  of the border are so broken and battered, they look like old people's teeth now. The plants, being sturdy varieties like hibiscus, ixora, and mussaenda stick around despite getting battered by footballs. But they are not happy, they are not happy at all. When I go to water them, they show me their mangled and stripped limbs, seeming to wail, "Why, why???"

But the worst fate was not reserved for the ornaments or the plants on the border. For years, I optimistically bought clay pots during the rainy season and planted beautiful flowering plants in them to grace the front of our porch, only to have them broken apart in the playing season. I switched to cement pots. If the clay pots were turned to powder, the cement pots simply broke into bigger bits. At least clay gets mixed up with the soil. But I couldn't have big bits of rubble littering our yard, could I? So I gave up trying to make our front yard pretty. 

When you can't go under or around an obstacle, try climbing over it. That is how I started looking up and thinking about a balcony garden and wondering how to go about it. Of course the queen of procrastination drew out the process by planning up a number of steps and a grandiose plan. And then kept it on the shelf to ripen and mature! 😁 But this month, having some time on my hands after quitting my job, I finally managed to garner the supplies and set it up!!!

My idea is to start a quartet of climbing plants first. For the frames, I bought 6-foot lengths and 2.5-foot lengths of PVC pipe and fixed them up as frames with PVC elbows. Then I tied them to the railing with rope. I fixed wire netting to the frames with cable ties. To prevent being overwhelmed, I did one frame a day till I had all of them up. Then I had my kids help me with acquiring some dried cow manure, some soil and brought up a block of cocopeat.

Mixed them all up on a crumbly old plastic mat right there on the balcony and filled the pots. Here are my plants.

Please don't expect me to know the names of these plants... I went to the nursery and asked for climbers with pretty flowers. The one above and another one with pretty yellow flowers(shown below) are what they gave me!!! I've lined the top of the pots with coconut husks to prevent the soil from being completely dried out by direct sunlight. As part of the mulching process for the dry season, I've swept all the dried leaves around the plants and trees in my yard and weighted them down with coconut husks. These will provide protection during the dry season and will help catch the rain and rot down into the soil later.

I've also planted two pots with passion fruit vines. The common variety of passion fruit available here is lemon yellow in color and so sour that even ladles of sugar can't make its juice sweet. But I got another variety from a cousin in Kottayam. The vines bear purple fruit and the pulp is so sweet that there is no need to add sugar. Even though I was the one to first grow the seedlings and gave some away to my father and neighbors, it was my father's vine that just took over a golden shower tree and has become so prolific that my father can reach up his hand and pluck a fruit from his front yard whenever he feels like it. What happened to mine? Yeah, well, it was in a huge cement pot right next to my front porch. Shall I stop here or show you the shards? It's so depressing!!! Another one has climbed up the jackfruit tree that you see behind the frames in the photo below. I think it's still trying to find a bit of sunlight to work with.

This photo is in the interest of fighting perfectionism on the internet. Just to show that my once pristine balcony is now messy as can be! No doubt it will get messier as I add more plants.

And finally, here are the guys who did all the dirty work. Let's give them a big hand!

Oh , yeah, they've had a good soaking to remove the loose dirt and have gone to the wash. Which reminds me... I have to go and water the new plants. See y'all later!!!

How to bring back the green...

Back in 2007, when we bought the land for Karthi, it looked like this...

There were coconut trees that looked tired, a few jack fruit trees and a jungle jack that towered above everything else. There was little ground cover, and what little there was was mostly the thorny touch-me-nots. The plot, open from both sides was the grazing ground of local livestock which ate up any grass and left the thorns. Since the owner was away and didn't bother to fertilize or otherwise take care of the coconut trees, the coconuts were taken by anyone around and any dry thing that fell was taken away for firewood. 

After we leveled just enough space to build Karthi, we faced a lot of trouble with soil erosion, lack of nutrients in the soil to support plants and all-pervasive touch-me-nots which tore at our feet and ankles if we dared walk anywhere other than the front yard.

Neither DH nor I were any good with combating any of these problems. Back at my home, my gardening experience was limited to sticking anything into fertile soil and have it grow and be fruitful. DH hadn't even done that. So we had to read, ask for advice and simply blunder our way through fixing things.

 

Here are the things we have done to combat these problems:

1. Terracing: One of the most efficacious things we did in our upper yard was to dig rainwater ditches. We had come across rainwater-harvesting ideas while building Karthi. So when we got workers to make proper coconut thadams, we asked them to dig wide ditches to hold water during the monsoons. The ditches were kind of random and made walking in our upper yard a bit difficult, but they did help with water retention and soil erosion. But eventually they naturally filled up.

After a few years, we hired an excavator for a day and did some real landscaping work on the upper yard. The whole yard was dug up, the extraneous vegetation matter was pushed deep into the soil and we made two proper terraces. This had proved very good in catching water and improving the soil's fertility.

2. Culling:  Our property contained 8 jack fruit trees and a towering jungle jack tree that cut off most of the sunlight in the morning. At the beginning, we felt reluctant to cut down any tree. But finally we had to admit that all this abundance of trees, especially the luxuriant wild jack that was not even putting out fruits anymore were not contributing anything good except dry leaves. 

So down came the wild jack, one old jack fruit tree that was too close to a younger one and hindering its growth and another one that again stood on the eastern border, blocking the light. This opened up the yard to plenty of sunlight. And in addition, selling the wood gave us enough money to buy a weed trimmer.

3. Giving back to the soil: Most people around us deal with weeds and natural refuse in two ways: a) Whatever is dry, they burn. b) They use spades to dig out the weeds. Both these management techniques are harmful in the long run. Burning increases pollution (as we see when large-scale burning of the refuse in Punjabi and Haryanvi fields causes smog in Delhi). When weeding using a spade, the soil loses its fertile top cover and the lack of roots encourages soil erosion. 

As novices in the art of land management we were under a lot of pressure to do an annual digging up of weeds and even using an excavator every year to improve our soil. Even I reveled in doing some spadework, thinking of it as "prettying" my garden by eradicating all the weeds. But after reading books on permaculture, especially Fukuoka's works, I finally put an end to the systematic impoverishing of our already poor soil. 

As much as I can, I let the dry branches and leaves rot wherever they fall. The leaves that fall in our front yard get swept and put around garden plants. It's only when the plant beds can't hold anymore that I resort to a little leaf-burning.The dry coconut leaves also get to rot in their respective thadams... If they pile up too much or stick out into our paths, I reposition them or get a bill hook and chop them up into smaller pieces. 

Our weed trimmer does exemplary work in this field. I take it out for a spin and all the nutrient-rich green parts of the weeds fall back into the soil to rot and provide even more nutrients. At the same time enough of the weed survives to grow back and provide much-needed root support to the soil and prevent it from flowing away in the rain. I've decided that having a natural "lawn" looks much better than naked soil around my plants. I still root out some 'undesirable' weeds by hand, especially the thorny ones or ones that grow too tall and strong for my weed cutter. But those are appear very sporadically now and plucking them out does not harm the soil.

4. Coco peat: Oh, I could sing paeans to coco peat all day long! Our soil is predominantly clay that becomes spongy and squishy in rainy weather and iron-hard in summer. Even if I added cattle manure and bio-gas slurry to the soil, it didn't help much. On one of my jaunts to the garden shop I noticed these blocks of material and asked about them. The shop guy talked of it as a soil substitute made from coconut fiber. I certainly had lots of soil around!!! But I bought a block after reading the instructions, fascinated by how it said that the block would expand to several times its size after being soaked in water. Talk of buying things for the wrong reason!

Once my curiosity about its expanding qualities were satisfied, I experimentally added coco peat to the soil and found that whatever I planted in it grew immeasurably more luxuriantly that it did in our plains soil EVEN WITHOUT ADDING FERTILIZER. I read up more on coco peat and found that it is indeed added to clayey soil to make it porous and allow the plant roots to penetrate it better!! What a serendipitous discovery!

I hope these tips help anyone starting out in land management on their own. Currently I have a new adversary. I don't know what it is called, but it is a wild climber of the legume variety that is rapidly taking over yards everywhere, even destroying forests. Its lavender flowers beguiled me for a while but then I saw its truly heinous propensity of choking even sturdy and well-established plants. THAT is one weed that needs to be uprooted, even more so than the bloodthirsty touch-me-not.

So, on with my trusty gardening gloves! See you later!!!

Monsoon blues and greens

The dirty breakfast dishes are still waiting in the sink. The laundry is calling out loud from the washing machine. My SHE cards tell me that I have a full day of chores ahead. But when I stepped out to close the gate after my family departed, for the first time in several months I felt the urge to take out the camera, to write, to share. So my dear dishes, laundry and chore home-blessing cards, please wait a bit while I get this done!!!

The first thing that called to me was the sun...

...shining on the rain-drenched Napier grass through which I had mowed a path last week. The camera is a poor instrument to catch the magnificence of the light on the bright green. I stood a full minute enjoying the light before I ran in to get the camera...

My coral jasmine has decided that it is Onam already, making floral carpets and lending her blossoms to sundry bushes near her while vying for space with my plumeria.

Oh how I love those blossoms... they bring back the best memories of my childhood...

The color-changing bougainvillea that I had trained over the wall to say "Hi" and nod its blossoms at all passersby was blown right back and snapped in two by the wind last Saturday. I am not sad, because I know how soon it will grow back. In fact, the wind has done me a great service by sparing me the job of trimming it 😊. Now if I can just bring myself to cut it in manageable parts and get it to the top end of our yard where it can rest in peace without the thorns damaging me...

The globe amaranth providing much needed color relief from the rampant greenery...

The sun struggling to penetrate the vegetation of our absentee neighbor's overgrown yard into our backyard...

The fragile little "springs" that my ivy gourd is putting out to catch hold of its new trellis. I moved its pot to a different spot since a falling papaya tree broke the net I had set up for it earlier. Those tiny springs inspire me with so much hope and happiness...

Just take in this list for a moment...

1. A childless aunt has multiple hospitalizations for acute diabetes issues.
2. Husband and one child contract a nasty virus that combines fever, cough, sneezing, vomiting and consequent dehydration which last more than a fortnight each.
3. Another kid contracts a urinary tract infection that has his bilirubin shooting up and gives him high fever.
4. A cousin's wife and two kids have a serious accident. The lady is bedridden with multiple fractures on her legs. The kids survive with a fracture each.
5. The cousin, a high-functioning alcoholic who had been restrained till then by his wife's loving supervision, decides that his wife's bedridden state is the ideal time to leap off the wagon, goes on an alcoholic binge and ends up in a coma. In the ICU for two weeks without knowing if he will survive. Now recovering, but still not mobile and has a food tube and breathing tube. Still in hospital after a whole month.
6. A nephew gets acute appendicitis and gets hospitalized just in time to avoid appendix rupture. Still has a painful recovery.
7. Dad needing and getting cataract surgery.

This is what we have been going through from the beginning of this year.  I have had to personally care for only four of these people, but the sheer stress has been drawing out all joy in life. So much so that happiness seems even more fleeting than usual! 

Movies, books, summer outings - those go-to remedies for the blues - were just momentary distractions in the doom and gloom.

Today, it's different. Today once again I feel that life is not a burden. Today I've decided that enough is enough. It's time to get on with writing, baking, sowing those new seeds, going beyond mere housekeeping routines to do something creative, something extra. 

The sun's rising brightly over Karthi once again!

Sisyphus! I feel ya bro!

Was it just yesterday that the whole of Kerala was broiling in the high 30s? It's 4 in the afternoon now and I feel I should snuggle beneath my blanket and burrow into my pillows to take a cozy nap! I haven't seen the sun in a couple of days. Karthi was hit by the seasonal cold and cough, just in time for school reopening. Our kids grumblingly went back to school and I did the victory dance at home at the beginning of the month! Yay, free, free at laaaast! 

After our Lakshadweep trip (Click on the numbers to see Parts 1, 2, 3 and 4.), I devised a project for the kiddos and I to do this summer. Karthi's garden was sadly neglected, fully overgrown  and undernourished. So for a month, everyday for an hour before the sun got hot, we hoed and swept and pruned the areas around Karthi till it was all neat and clean. We even made slanted brick borders - that is, the kids carried the bricks for me while I made wonky, wavering lines with them. We got a load of cow manure and fed each and every plant in our yard. My hands got scratched by the bougainvillea that I tried to tame and  train over the wall so that next February the people who pass our road too can share the joy of the blossoms. 

And see what it looks like today!

See that brownish line going off into the distance? That is one of my beautiful (if I say so myself) brick borders that is currently being choked by the rampant weeds!!!  Does it even look like I was trying to hand-weed the whole as it was growing everyday in June???

So I had to break out the big guns again!

Yep, the rake and the hoe are back and fighting the good fight once again after a verrrrrry short break. Don't they look a bit shell-shocked?  "Oh no, not again!", they seem to be saying. Now my garden team and I know what Sisyphus felt like. But hey, you should feel my arm muscles! Nothing better to build strong arms than half an hour's hoeing each day!

Meanwhile a few blooms here and there smile at me while I work. 

And I almost burst with pride when I look at this guy...

Doesn't look like much? Well that is a Parijatam (we call it Pavizha Mulla too, a tribute to the flower's coral stem) that I have been trying to grow for several years now. My attachment to this plant is a little story. The first place in my peripatetic life that I really called home was my mother's home where my cousins and I played beneath one of these very trees. Every morning there would be a carpet of the distinctive orange-stemmed blossoms beneath it. I always collected them although they wilted pretty quickly, tired out after working to give off their fragrance the whole night. 

When my parents quit the Gulf and settled in Kerala, my mother got a bit off the old tree and planted it near their bedroom window. It prospered and I got to see the same carpet of flowers for years afterward. The years passed and they sold that home to settle near us. One of the things I asked them to bring from home was a cutting of this very tree. But it did not take hold. For four years afterward, I tried the same several times, but it just didn't take root.

I reasoned that the cuttings probably died on the journey from Kottayam to here. So in 2014, I asked my aunt to take a cutting of her Parijatam (which came from our old one, see, it's a family thing!) and grow it in a plastic bag. She planted several cuttings and one took root. When I went to Kottayam for Onam that year, I collected the bag and brought it here. It had a tiny, weak stem and four light green leaves at that time. For almost 6 months I kept it in the shade and took care of it as if it were a baby. I watered it, fertilized it, talked to it, in fact I did everything short of playing Beethoven to it till it grew stronger stems and put out the dark green leaves all over.

Last year, on my fortieth birthday I planted it near our bedroom window and have been taking good care of it since. This January, when Ma died and my aunt came, she found that it had flowered! There were one or two blossoms clinging to the tree precariously even in broad daylight. I think it must have been especially for Ma and my aunt because since then it has grown taller than me, but there have been no more blossoms...

So much for reminiscing. Back to work...

My gloves will tell you of my hard work. Oh, I have to introduce you to my new gloves. Ever since I wore out a pair of gardening gloves that a dear friend of mine brought me from the US, I had been looking out for new ones. All I could find were latex ones that tore at the least provocation. Then a few months ago, I saw these at Pothys! They are made of knit cotton and can stand up to hand weeding and touch-me-not prickles. They can handle roses too with a little care and if they couldn't prevent the bougainvillea from hurting me, it was not their fault. See, they cannot hop on to my hands by themselves, can they? Yeah, I am intrepid like that. I fight the bougainvillea with bare hands. Ouch!!!

The only problem is that the kids think these gloves are good for wicket-keeping and take off with them. So I now have several pairs. In fact, it seems I pick up a pair whenever I go to Pothys these days! At around 40 bucks a pair, they are quite affordable. They are made here in Thiruvananthapuram, so I get a boost out of supporting a local manufacturing business too when I buy them (gimme a reason, any reason!). I wash them under the garden tap to remove the grit and toss them with my daily wash. And I have extra pairs on hand for the next day because in this weather, they take a little long to dry. Happiness is truly in the small things!!! 

That's all for now. For all my griping, am enjoying the rains very much! As is this guy on our front porch!

Wanna meet him? That's another post!

How the year has begun...

It's the middle of February now... We got only a few really cold nights this year. But our jack fruit tree is up to his old tricks again. He chuckles quietly when I shake my fists at him for littering the yard when I've just finished sweeping it. But both of us know it's just in jest - he has to do what he has to do this time of the year and I hold no grudges!

This was our combined activity in Karthi last month:

Our coconut yield was smaller this year - must've been due to the extra-dry summer.  So in two weekends DH finished dehusking, I shielded my hand with a pot holder and smashed them all open (got any violent feelings to dissipate - I recommend coconut smashing as the ideal activity!!!). The kids carried the husks to be put down around our coconut trees - to protect the root area in summer and to add to the soil cover by decomposing, of course. Most of the coconuts were dry already so they required only a week's drying before they turned into this...

...around some 7.5 liters of coconutty goodness - yellow now because I added dried whole turmeric to it to prevent it from getting rancid. Some say adding sea-salt crystals and putting the jars in the sun would do the same thing, but I prefer the golden color and not adding more sodium to our diet.

Then I noticed that most of my kitchen rags were literally that, rags!

Poor thing was just begging for retirement! I always recycle any old cotton dresses to make kitchen rags and this has been one for at least 3 years! So it was time to rouse my trusty sewing machine from hibernation and sew up a new set!

They are so thick because I used one layer of cotton and one layer of toweling...

Also with a loop of the cotton material to hang them up by if required...

And then after a lot of drama and diva-esque behavior later, it was time for our histrionic member of the family to do a star turn.. well two actually!

There he is shaking a leg or waving his hand rather, in "Shalala la la la" on his school annual day.

And here he is charming Cinderella as ... who else, Prince Charming himself!

That WAS a good month, wasn't it!

Happy 8th Day of the New Year to you all!!!

What a perfect day to start blogging in the new year! All day it has been cloudy and overcast with little intermittent showers to keep things fresh and sparkly. Yep, down here it is a GOOD thing! The kind of weather in which you want to wrap up in a cozy blanket and snuggle down with a hot cuppa tea and an old-fashioned detective novel. Well, that's exactly what I did after the tasks for the day. Lord Wimsey kept me company with his irreverent and highly intellectual badinage in a venerable library edition that seems to be older than me!

First, here is a bit of color from me to you in this new year!

Looking back at the last year is somewhat inevitable for this first post. What peaks and vales I see! I think the theme of the garden fits my 2013 very well. As most of you know by now, the soil at Karthi is my special despair. I had fancied myself as a fine gardener when I was growing up because I could stick anything in the soil and make it grow, I begged and borrowed plant cuttings and seeds wherever I went and gave them all a good life in my garden. My topiary bushes and 12 varieties of hibiscus bushes were my special pride.

I thought I could bring it all back once I settled in Karthi. Nope! It's made me plumb the depths of my fitness to be called a gardener by insisting on letting only the weeds grow aplenty while the plants I cherish have a gargantuan struggle just to exist. And this summer, there was scarcely enough water for the humans that I couldn't water my plants as well as I would've wanted to. Several plants died off. But the ones that remain are strong and can survive anything. One of my good neighbors generously gave me several cuttings when the monsoons finally came and I am glad to say that they have ALL thrived although they are slow to grow. I got help twice this year to hold back the weeds, and now am managing a little each day on my own. 

And then come these little miracles, you know....

like this self-seeded wilderness...

this plant that grew up EXACTLY where a variegated plant had breathed its last in the summer heat (oh yeah, I am a little out of practice with my topiary skills and the bushes take a loooong time to grow)...

And this little bit of lusciously bright color growing all on its own in my back yard when I had tried and failed to make some grow in the past three years!!!

As many of you know, 2013 came with very bad news about my Ma's health. She was diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer with metastases even in the lungs. In her already frail state with diabetes and its accompanying nerve debility, we wondered if it was even advisable to let her go on a regimen of chemos. One of her much younger and healthier cousins had just undergone a course of chemo for the same problem and had had severe reactions which we didn't want Ma to be subjected to. But she chose to go ahead and see what lay in front of her. I cannot but bow before her courage. 

Ma went through a course of 6 chemos and then underwent surgery and coped with all of them much better than we expected her to. She has always been good about medications and although the vagaries of blood sugar levels have sometime caught her unawares, she absolutely strictly followed doctors' instructions for caring for herself through the ordeal. She also took aloe vera juice and various herbal decoctions to control her diabetes. Yes, she lost her hair and asked me to make bandanas for her which I made from my cotton duppattas. 

Last month, Dad and Ma had their 40th wedding anniversary. My sis and I planned a surprise party for her with a few of our relatives from Kottayam coming over to join us. On the 22nd of December, we invited them to lunch at our home ostensibly to celebrate my niece's birthday in advance. And then we had the joy of surprising them with a whole crowd who went "Happy Anniversary!!!"

That's my Ma on the right, her hair grown back into a pretty bob and not wearing her pink bandana for once. 

It was not only Ma's courage and good medical treatment that held us up in this ordeal. At first Ma wanted no one but immediate family know about her condition. But I went out on a limb and contacted her old colleagues from school who also happen to be my teachers. They responded with lots of love and care. They dropped in as if on a casual visit and Ma shared her diagnosis with them. They joined her in prayer and reassurances. I am absolutely positive that helped a lot in her recuperation as did the support of other relatives. We all owe them a huge debt for their support.

I too found help in a lot of friends - friends in the midst of their busy lives took time out to listen to my fearful rantings and outpourings and doubts and helped me in coming to terms with my pain. CANCER is a word that strikes fear into the bravest and I am but a poltroon. I am so grateful to all my friends for reaching out and being there for me. You know who you are!!!! Every little bit helped. Thank you all so much!!! 

So it is with a full heart that I turn back to look at 2013. The searing summer took a lot out of us, but we have survived just like my garden, stronger for all of it and with lots of good surprises and a lot of support from our dear ones.

As for my gardening this year: Do you know that 2014 has been designated the Year of the Kitchen Garden? The State Horiticultural Mission has just delivered 25 grow-bags and seedlings and seeds for rooftop cultivation, along with a very helpful booklet on organic gardening. Stay tuned for serious vegetable gardening attempts at Karthi!!!