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.
 

Red and White

Easter is a big flowering time in the garden. Ever since I can remember, we had Easter lilies (Hippeastrum) growing at home. Huge trumpets of red lilies and lovely succulent white ones. These gorgeous lilies bloom once a year, and only for a few days.



All lilies are really easy to care for, and they propagate like anything, if you take the trouble to separate bulb clusters and plant out the bulbs. We had a clump of them growing here when we moved into Moraghat -- in a little bed behind the bathrooms, at the back of the house! They were removed carefully and planted out in the front, and for the last eleven years, they've bloomed in thousands. No credit to anyone. They are hardy plants, and are just waiting for a chance to thrive.

My friend Lesley had another variety of Easter lily, Amaryllis, growing in her garden in Gandrapara. She gave us a few bulbs, and now there's a profusion of these, waiting to burst into bloom. These are pure white in colour and have a lovely fragrance. Up in Sikkim at Saramsa Park last weekend, I saw them in another colour. They were in beds as big as small lawns, and only one or two of those hundreds of plants had opened a few buds. They were in the colour that was called Crimson Lake in our school paintboxes. To think that that garden must be in full bloom now!



Over the last few years, our Easter lilies have bloomed and disappeared well before Easter. Sometimes, however, they bloom as late as April, in time for our Vishu Kani. Today is Good Friday, and they're just beginning to peep out. The red always bloom first, and when they have almost all wilted, the white ones come out. It's as if they're telling the story of the Passion (suffering) and the Resurrection of Christ.

P.S.Today is the first Sunday after Easter, and a number of white lilies are out in the garden.