Shiuli Season

 

When we moved into the ground floor apartment in Gurgaon, one of the first trees we planted was the Shiuli, more commonly known as the Harshingar or Parijat. Though my mother always had a shiuli plant in her well-maintained container garden, it had been a cherished wish of mine to have a shiuli tree of our own. Those lusciously fragrant dainty white flowers with their characteristic orange stems that fell as a carpet at the first touch of the sun tugged at my heartstrings. The sheer number of flowers laden on a tree planted directly in soil took the experience to another level. Those flowers and their heady fragrance held a lot of pleasant memories - of pujo, of the change of seasons and the onset of autumn, of my very identity as a Bengali. 

Shiuli flowers from our tree

The shiuli is a fairly large and tall tree, and an evergreen. It grows rapidly in the monsoon and requires a good pruning, so the flowers can come by autumn. But the flowering happens for only about a month in the entire year. And that month coincides with the peak festival season in most parts of India. Another reason why a glimpse of those flowers has happy associations.

Now the shiuli we planted in our front lawn started flowering right from the second year, giving us handfuls of white and orange every morning during season. As soon as the first rays of the sun touched the flowers, they would start dropping off, creating a fragrant carpet on the grass underneath. So we had a tradition of picking these flowers early morning, as soon as one was through with the morning ablution. Or sometimes between sips of hot tea. It was a revered tradition since the Bengali associate the shiuli flowering with the rise of the Divine Feminine.

Family tradition of Shiuli picking

But each morning as I plucked the shiuli, a few flowers invariably landed on the aloe vera shrub next to it. And aloe has thorns. Every attempt to reach the fragile shiuli flowers and brush them off the aloe reminded me of simple life lessons.

That much like life, the good and bad, the soft and the prickly, always show up together. And we have to navigate through the thorns to get to the beautiful flowers. Just like in life we have to wade through the unpleasant doggedly to get to enjoy a span of charming times. Then again, life is mostly mundane; the high points come only once in a while, like the festive season. And like the flowers of the shiuli. 

The last of the Shiuli flowers this year

So enjoy the good while it lasts, like the month-long shiuli season.

Going Organic - Part 8

 

Writing an organic farming post after a long gap but today I will focus on summer vegetables that are easy to grow. And both of these can very easily be grown in containers, so are a blessing for balcony gardeners. 

The best part is that you do not require any special seeds or starters; just sourcing from your kitchen at the beginning of the season (around March-April) will ensure you have a steady produce in autumn (September-October).

Colocasia

This root vegetable (also called arbi/kochu) has giant leaves resembling elephant ears, and can be a showpiece for the garden all year round. The fresh leaves that come aplenty during the rains can also be steamed and made into a scrumptious side dish (patod/paturi/pathrodu). You can find an easy recipe here.

Colocasia or Elephant ears 

After the first season make sure to remove the produce, cut down the leaves, and replant the colocasia. They multiply easily and quickly; remember the more plants you have, the more produce you get. I had about four-five plants and got half a kilo arbi at one go.

Half the total produce

Bitter Gourd

On spotting well-formed seeds in some karela I bought from the market at the beginning of summer, I planted them on a whim just to see if they take root. And the rest, as they say, is history. 

'Karela' blooms 

Occasional rains ensured that the plants grew quickly, and by the second week of August we started getting flowers and the first batch of bitter gourd.

Five in one go!

Bitter gourd leaves have such a beautiful shape that I love incorporating them in my artwork. Of course, there are other creatures that seem to love this vegetable too! 

My garden of Eden!

So keep an eye out for infestation and spray pesticides if required. Adding NPK mix to the soil in the beginning ensures a good crop.

Happy gardening!

Catching Up

 

Can't believe four months went by without me even thinking about this blog, leave alone posting. Goes to show just how mentally occupied I was with a thousand other things, right from a much-needed family vacation to a wedding in the extended clan.

But as I scroll through the photos on my phone, I realise there are things I'd like to document for posterity and share with the world. So here goes... a month-wise update seems appropriate.

August

Was a momentous month as the first-born started college.

September

After a long hiatus, I painted bottles again for a local fair. Zero sales notwithstanding, it felt good to reconnect with the old art form again.

October

Was the month of festivals, right from Durga Puja to Diwali. The youngest wore a saree for the first time, and loads of bonhomie and good food marked the various celebrations.

November

As we celebrated two decades of a life spent together, the much-awaited family vacay finally happened.

December

A wedding and get-togethers meant lots of occasions to go out and soak up some fun in the sun. But the real pleasure lay in a flower-filled home full of fragrances from festive year-end baking.

At the end of the day, it is the small joys that give the most happiness! 😊

Autumnal Garden Wonders

 

After a substantial and longer-than-usual spell of monsoon last year, the garden was going wild, with each plant showing extraordinary growth. Meanwhile, the absence of gardeners ('maalis') due to the waxing-waning pandemic didn't make things any easier. 

All the trees in the front yard had grown tall and excessively bushy. Baba's attendant Ramu was already helping with chopping the lawn grass and had no time to give to the trees. That is when the hubby decided to take matters into his own hands, and brought home a couple of fresh blades to saw the trees.

One fine November morning, hubby finally got to chopping the red hibiscus tree. It had been flowering through October, and so was one of the last trees remaining uncut. After pruning a few branches, as we were putting together the wood in manageable piles, we noticed the bright green Jewel Beetle sitting on the main trunk of the hibiscus tree.

Jewel Beetle

Such a gloriously pretty colour it was! Though I recalled seeing one in bright ultramarine blue too, many years back. The next round of pruning revealed something even more extraordinary - a snakeskin lay entangled in one of the topmost branches of the hibiscus.

Snake skin entangled in chopped hibiscus branches

As we all watched in awe, we realized we shared our habitat with a slithery creature. In fact, we had found one sunning itself on our porch on a cold morning. Maybe the same fellow had shed its skin on the hibiscus.

Snakeskin held by Miss P

Gingerly extracting the delicate snakeskin from the tree branches, we examined the patterns on it before putting it away in a box. A gift to treasure from the garden!

Going Organic - Part 7

Pumpkins

Since pumpkin seeds are easy to source (you can use the large, well-formed seeds from market-bought pumpkins), I decided that pumpkins would be a summer staple in our kitchen garden. We had planted pumpkins last year as well but that had only yielded a few flowers back then.

We added some compost and other minerals to the soil, and replanted fresh seeds this summer. To ensure maximum chances of getting healthy plants, I used a mix of seeds from different batches. We soon got three healthy plants that grew well. But the old problem surfaced - only male flowers showed up.

A male flower and a tiny pumpkin

After the rains (that went overboard this year), all the pumpkin plants showed a growth spurt. So fast were they spreading that the hubby uprooted one plant. One died in the strong sun that followed the rains.

Now we had little hope of getting any pumpkins, but were happy with the huge produce of flowers from the single remaining plant. Every day we would diligently pluck them, even distributing some to neighbours and helpers.

Till one day, a couple of female flowers finally showed up! Then there was no looking back.... The bees arrived as if by magic, timely pollinating the female flowers. And our single plant produced four pumpkins within a month.

Pumpkin hanging with support from okra plants

The sturdy okra plants provided perfect support to the pumpkin vine, helping it reach up to the sun. We had to create a hammock for the largest hanging fruit, and keep the pumpkins covered to protect them from fruit flies. 

Pumpkins ripening on a sunny window sill

We harvested the pumpkins around Halloween, and then dried them in a window sill that received direct sunlight. The pumpkins turned out a lovely bright orange from inside, and were delicious in taste.

If you are interested in more content related to organic farming, do check out this YouTube channel for some detailed videos.

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.