More Spring Hues

 

Even though day temperatures are touching beyond 30 degrees (centigrade), areas of our garden are still lighting up with fresh bursts of colour. 

Poppies on the wall

Phloxes are butterfly magnets - a lime swallowtail here

This blue pimpernel showed up by itself

Deep yellow Chinese marigolds

We even got a rare hybrid poppy with multiple petals (instead of the usual five petal variety).

Meanwhile, the mango tree has surprised us with its burst of flowers. Hope that leads to a bumper crop in the summer.

A flowering semul (silk cotton) tree in the neighborhood....

It is a delight to revel in these last few days of blossoming spring before the oppressive heat takes over and renders everything dry.

Snapshots Of Spring 2021

 

Though each new year starts with some dull grey winter days, 2021 was especially dreary because it rained for an entire week. 

We chose to deal with that by cozying up in our woollies and catching up on some long-pending movies. Come February, it felt a bit like spring so here are some snapshots from the garden.

Larkspurs

Marigolds

Ice plants

Kalanchoes

Spring barely lasted this year; the days got warm too soon while the mornings and nights remained chilly. Not the best conditions for good flowering but we still managed to have a good combination of colours and varieties.

Phlox

Poppies, African Daisies and Roses

Petunia and Bougainvillea

The white rose bush that frames the corner of the garden is full of blooms again, and has a new neighbour in the finally flowering creeper rose. 

Yes, it is that time of the year again when I want to be in the garden all day. But alas, it lasts for too short a while before the summer heat picks up.

Butterflies & Blossoms

It is that magical time of the year again, when the garden is aglow with colours and humming with life.

Blue Pansy on yellow chrysanthemum

One steps out into a charmed world full of nature's bounties (and some human-created ones).

Vignettes from the front garden

Bees, butterflies, birds, and squirrels love the colourful space as much as we do. 

Pioneer White on orange marigold

And we can spend an entire day just observing their antics.

Plain Tiger on yellow chrysanthemum

Update 01Jan2021:

Peacock Pansy on hibiscus plant

Mosaic Makeovers

 

We tried out a couple of more mosaic projects around the house (mainly the garden) in the last couple of months. 

Added these hand-cut flowers to a broken cement pot to turn it into a cactus rockery.

Created a blue heart on a stone slab to commemorate 2020, the year of the nasty pandemic that has taken the world by storm. 

This blue heart mosaic stands in our front garden as a mark of thankfulness to all the frontline workers in the middle of these unprecedented times.

Hope our wish for a happier, healthier world comes true soon.

Then & Now: Kitchen

 

The kitchen is perhaps the most important element in a home layout, what I would consider as the heart of the abode. So it is imperative that it not only be designed well but also be functional from a comfort cum practicality point of view.

Now

This is the one area of the house we had to redesign completely, right from scratch. It involved tearing down everything, and rebuilding to our own aesthetic and functionality. 

We consciously avoided adding a chimney as we find current models too bulky and hard to clean. Though my original colour scheme was teal, I have since made peace with this one. Also, I quite like the honeycomb backsplash.

Then

The original kitchen was a horror. Broken countertop, missing pieces of modular ware, and extremely poorly maintained.

At the risk of sounding judgemental, I shudder to think that a couple of kids (apart from sundry adults) were fed from this ill-maintained kitchen. Totally unacceptable in my mind.

Autumn Vibes

With the coronavirus pandemic having waylaid all plans of the Durga Puja-Dusshera festivities, the circumstances have almost forced us to look beyond the clutter. To return to the slow life, where a change in season was heralded by natural phenomena and not man-made ones. Well, that is exactly what this post celebrates.... 

Shiuli (or night-flowering jasmine) flowers from the garden bring in the autumn vibes, along with the perceptible cooling of the mornings and evenings. 

Each morning we are greeted by some of the flowers strewn on the ground, for they fall as soon as the sun rises. And then begins our ritual of gathering them all by shaking the tree vigorously, with newspapers spread underneath to collect the flower shower. The previous days' flowers are relegated to the compost pit while the fresh ones are stored in bowls, their typical sweet scent hanging in the air.

The month-long flowering of the Shiuli coincides with Durga Puja, and these flowers are considered choice offerings to the mother goddess.

Monsoon Memories

Sharing some snapshots of our monsoon days. The rains came towards the end of July, bringing a long spell of unbearable heat and humidity to an end.

Beautiful skies lit up our evenings.

Frangipani Skies

While new blooms in the garden brightened our mornings.

Ruellia

Trumpet Vine

Milk and Honey Crinum Lilies

An unprecedented locust attack was quite an experience.... seemed straight out of a movie, as if apocalypse was at hand.

The downsides: waterlogged streets, the cockroach downpour from the drains, and the day-night electricity outages.