April Fuel

April is bonus time for garden lovers.

Showers bring the last of the cold weather flowers to life and they bloom with renewed vigour, shimmering against rain-washed skies and new foliage. Heaven knows the same plants were looking dead just two weeks ago.

When the beds are filled with flowers in February, I'm already sated, but greedy. Where I'd longed for abundance, I expect perfection.  I'm impatient if all the beds aren't in sync, and feel sad if something hasn't come up to the previous year's standards. And then the heat picks up and I've learnt my lesson.

Then April weather comes along, and, gosh, are those the dahlias we were going to yank out of the ground?

 

 These gerberas are picking up so well! They are certainly not worrying about how summer or the   monsoon will treat them!

This azalea bush sulked through the cold weather, and has suddenly decided to have its own Matsuri!

 These salvias were planted - as fillers - in the bed where our showy Inca marigolds held sway till mid-February. They look all stylish now!

              Was someone calling us 'junglee'??

                                               

 A little wilderness where we saw the resident 'dhamna' snake in its usual corner for the first time this year.

                   Easter lilies are the new stars in the garden, popping up like magic everywhere.

         And there are new delights, the flowers of the season :passion flowers, orchids, cosmos, cannas.

Each year, the sounds, scents and sensations of April bring new hope and a sense of rejuvenation. It's an end to my moaning about how much I will miss the cold weather. These 'in-between' seasons have that quality; they change the way you look at the world.

Celebration Lilies

 Easter lilies are so special. They almost always bloom on April 14, which we celebrate as 'Vishu' or New Year's Day. There would be a vase full of them in my mother's 'Vishu Kani'.
My mother remembers that when I was very young, I'd  pluck all the buds which were just about to open. She and my father would be waiting  to see the flowers and all they got was headless stalks.
 I must have been a monster of an infant. Thank God for parents who brought me up anyway - and passed on their love of flowers to all of us.

 

What joy to go around a new garden, checking what plants there are! And what joy to see Easter lily leaves, to know that there will be flowers in March or April. Those few days when they bloom are enough to keep you going through the year.

Our garden at Moraghat Tea Estate had both red and white lilies. The reds bloomed first and then the whites. Once the flowering was over, we planted the bulbs out in rows - something we carried on doing for the fifteen years we lived there.

The nuns from St.James School and Holy Cross School at Binnaguri would drop in to collect lilies from us to decorate the church on Easter Sunday. We shared our bulbs with them too and in time to come, they had enough lilies in their own gardens. I did miss their annual visits!

                                Moraghat Bungalow                    
                                                                                        

                                Bhatkawa Bungalow

Our next bungalow was at Bhatkawa Tea Estate, and my garden there didn't have a single Easter lily! I moaned about it for all the three years that we were there. You don't find Easter lilies in nurseries, you get them from friends. My friend in the neighbouring garden didn't have any in her bungalow either, and between us we knew no one in the district on whom we could descend to beg for bulbs.

There are several Easter lilies in the garden where we now live and I'm grateful to the people who must have planted these. They bring back so many memories.

 A good way to start another New Year, giving thanks for life, for family, for friends old and new.
 

Smelling of April and May

When the drought is over and we've had some rain we get to feast our eyes on these signs of moisture. It's a surfeit of flowers and new leaves everywhere. No need to plan out beds or plant seeds like the cold weather, because what's already in the garden starts blooming. There are lilies, hibiscus,hydrangeas, magnolias and gardenias. The grass is green again.

Thank you to the person who planted these hydrangeas. They're pink and lilac in one border and blue in another.

Almost like a forest floor under the mahogany trees.

Delicate blooms of bougainvillea.

Heady and intoxicating, the fragrance of the magnolia blooms - alas, I can't capture that!

Gardenia - what I choose to call myself on this blog.


There are many fellow creatures celebrating life out there. I captured the most eye-catching of the lot.






I salute the Maker!!

April Love

Thank God for April. The cold weather is officially over, but we can spend hours outdoors in this season. The best part of living in the Dooars is the amount of time you can spend outdoors in the year.

The cold weather is the time for cultivated blooms, but come April, and you can sit back and watch things grow. March is still 'winter' in this age of climate change, but days get hot because it remains dry.

April is a time of growth and of destruction. The storms that occur at this time of year, the 'Kaal Baisakhi', as they are called here, are like tornadoes. They begin with sudden cloud formations, high speed winds, and, if tea planters and the local farmers are very unlucky, hail! Then the welcome rain comes lashing. Tea garden managers rush out after each storm to assess what damage -- if any -- has been done, and they send up heartfelt thanks for rain. However, I am sure their petitions to the Almighty are peppered with many conditional clauses. It is impossible to find a planter who is entirely happy with the amount of rain he's received, and how, and when, and in what concentration.

On most mornings, I see something in the garden which makes me rush back inside to get the camera. The dark, poky, secret corners of the garden often house shy beauties like this wisteria, which has been growing here for years. Nature lovers have to venture into these corners in the tolerant spirit of acceptance, and be prepared to face snakes, insects, or painful bites from hairy caterpillars!
 Petrea - at the time of writing this post, I mistook it for wisteria
This star apple tree has no fruits on it now, but offers a nice place to hide in (and to sulk), if anyone should need to do so.
 The garden has many little hidey-holes for a child to play in. Our girls have left home now, so I particularly enjoyed having our friend's daughter, Susan, a sunny sixteen year-old, stay with us while she prepared for her board exams. Like all tea garden children she would wander about outside with the dogs, lost in her own world.

One of the things the Mali has learnt over the years is the art of seed propagation in plants which are traditionally grown by other means.

Plants like lilies are generally propagated through bulbs.

Easter lilies always produce thousands of papery black seeds which burst out of tight pods, though we never used to bother with collecting them. Mithoo, the Mali, scattered some of these seeds around, and behold, what emerged was this striking flower, almost a Tudor Rose of a lily, combining red and white so perfectly !