A Pepper Tiger

Pepper's my favourtie spice. We never had to buy any in the fifteen years we spent in Moraghat Tea Estate, where it grew in abundance. We planted some vines in Bhatkawa T.E. and some here in Thanai, too. The photographs above, however, are of the peppercorns we bought in Tinsukia town yesterday. Our vines haven't fruited yet.

We bought one kilo of black and half a kilo of green for just R.120. What a steal!

Green peppercorns are popped into boiling water for a couple of minutes, when they turn black and are ready to be dried in the sun for storage. The black ones that we found in the bazaar yesterday had already been boiled and were damp, so we gave them another good boil at home.

I plan to use the green ones for another couple of days before boiling them up.

The veggie bazaar at Tinsukia is one of the most colourful I've seen, and if I hadn't been on a pepper chase, I'd have stopped to take pictures!!

Still Life with Fig

Gul-e-Fanoosh and the Pitfalls of Photography

Here is an old favourite. We had a number of these shrubs in my childhood home, and they all had pink flowers. I would stand under the branches after the rain and get a little 'shower' shaking water off the petals, long after I'd crossed the age when it was alright to play with water. 

The sight of these flowers always reminds me of the end of summer holidays. Schools reopened in the second week of July, some days after the monsoon set in over Delhi. Delhi was really beautiful those days, neither dirty nor crowded, but a city of gardens.

This is the tallest Gul-e-Fanoosh I have ever seen. 

 Botanical names are rarely pretty and lagerstroemia indica is no exception. I found some common Indian names at The Flowers of India website. Gul-e-Fanoosh isn't mentioned there. It's a name I learnt from this lovely old book pictured below, which my brother Raja found in a book godown  in Siliguri.

A 'pitfall' can be quite painfully literal, as I learnt after slipping and falling into this pit of 'jabra mal' or dry leaves and cut grass.

                 

Plum Crazy!!

Plum Crazy! That's what the husband called me when I lopped several branches off a couple of plum trees that were blocking the sunlight from a bed of cold weather blooms last January.

These trees were growing plumb (forgive me, I can't resist) in the middle of a bed of gerberas and nasturtiums, a vivid visual cocktail that was still in the getting-ready-to-hit-you stage. No flower lover could blame me, surely, for wanting to give them their due?? And after all, there were three other plum trees growing in a line nearby with branches reaching up high enough to threaten to bring down all our electric wiring.

As for the fruit, well, here's when things begin to get sour. The plum trees are quite lovely to see. Hands up all those who remember 'Lemon Tree' playing on the radio when you were young. You get it?
When we'd just moved to Assam and to this garden, I'd spent many happy hours photographing the trees with new foliage, then later on with blooms and finally, laden with jewels of fruit.

 The blossoms, above, against the blue cold weather sky

 Harvest! Plum heart with peach border

There were enough fruit to set me off on a frenzy of jelly making. We couldn't eat them just as they were. Our local expert made us a bottle of pickle with a new and unusual flavour, and a bottle of syrup as well. The jelly was much more tart than we'd expected it to be in spite of the amounts of sugar and the number of sweet Assam lemons we'd used up in it.
Whenever I'd made plum jelly in Moraghat in the Dooars, the fruit flavour would begin to 'awaken' after about a month or so and it kept getting better and better over time.  So I took some bottles to family in Delhi - only to find they'd left them in their fridges, months later, almost untouched. The jelly just seemed to be getting more and more sour over time, they said.

My husband didn't exactly say  I was unleashing my anger on the trees when I axed them, but the words seemed to hang in the air alright.

I reminded him of our Moraghat plum tree and how, after one of the April storms that we call 'Kaal Baisakhi' had attacked it we got fruits that were large and juicy. He went away mumbling about forces of nature and madness being two different things.

July is almost here, and the fruit's coming in now. The trees that were left untouched yield plenty of plums everyday- small, hard and sour, but I'm not buying sacks of sugar again! The trees that I, shall I say, treated, have fewer fruit: naturally, because they have fewer branches. But quantity is just not the same as quality.

See the picture!! Guess which ones came off which trees!

Joy in the Morning!

In the Maize

          
It's one of those post rain mornings. The wind lashed about last night after a hot and humid day, and the corn in our mali bari suffered its effects.

 The corn wasn't flourishing anyway, not with all the birds pecking away at it happily.

Just last week, we put in some scarecrows.
These men of straw were laid low by the rain and wind, and they looked quite wretched in the morning. I kept thinking of Ruth amid the alien corn. Some had lost their shirts as well - no doubt they took them off, as Nirmal the bearer said, because yesterday was so hot!!

                    Dignity restored!!

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!!

Bittersweet

Bittersweet the taste of cold weather in the morning air, bittersweet the taste of these sweet limes, mussami, harvested yesterday.

 Mussami juice was something that figured on hospital diets when I was a child. For years my mother associated it with illness! Whenever Dr. Hingorani visited and prescribed juice, it meant mussami juice. There wasn't anything more fancy - packaged or unpackaged - available in those days. Those fruits weren't like the hybrids we get today; they were full of fibre and seeds, just as God made them.

It was a chore to extract juice from them. For some reason, wedding guests used to get them in traditional goody bags or Thamboolam. Those days, the mussami -saathukudi in Tamil - used to taste more bitter than sweet. Our eldest brother-in-law was the only person who really enjoyed drinking that juice.

 Now I find all my childhood tastes reversed. I've started liking home-made white unsalted butter. When we were children, home-made butter was such a punishment, while Amul Butter was so yellow and salty and so desirable!! Mohan and I are enjoying this bittersweet tough old juice from our home-grown mussamis much more than the smooth juice made from bought fruit. We're growing up? Or old?

 
  The gardener is ready to harvest the fruits of his labour. Bittersweet was the goodbye I said to the garden I loved for so many years, but how sweet it is to savour what someone planted many years ago in the garden I love today.  


Bittersweet, all these fire ants on the tree? I don't know and don't want to find out!

Flowers From My Friend

Manashi's Garden


Antirrhinums: 'Madame Butterfly'

Nothing gives me a bigger kick than other people's gardens. When I look around my own, I see dead leaves somewhere, an unwatered plant somewhere else, weeds, or something to do. Other people's gardens offer a complete break from thought. You just look, enjoy, and absorb.

Manashi's garden was wonderful when it peaked in February with dahlias everywhere. That was more than a month ago. Now that the dahlias are gone, the 'late latifs' are having their day.

Phlox were late in all our bungalows. These pink beauties are like little rosebuds, aren't they?


Carnations brave the Dooars weather! I have never succeeded in growing them!


The drought in the Dooars is alarming now. Manashi told me that she'd heard some crackling sounds coming from the garden yesterday afternoon. When she went to the verandah to check, she saw one of the big bamboos at the edge of the compound had caught fire! (You can see the bamboos in the first picture).
Over 120 days - that is four months - without rain. The husband, poor man, found a forecast by the BBC which said it would rain tomorrow. It's brought him some comfort. The BBC, he tells me, actually records daily temperatures in Siliguri, a place that other major news channels ignore.


Manashi's Bungalow at the DBITA

Star Quality

These are starfruit, or kamrak, and like all the goodies of the season, they are golden and juicy. Around eight years ago, a boy came up to our bungalow gate on a bicycle and asked the gardener if he could meet 'Aunty'. He said he had many fruit saplings for sale. Mithhoo made him wait at the gate, and came to ask me if I'd like to take a look. We needed to plant some fruit trees in the compound, so I said I would. Like most salesmen, the boy talked too much and tried my patience. He did have some interesting saplings, including starfruit, chikoo, litchi and hibiscus. He swore they were excellent, all of them. He was quite dramatic, wanting to make a good first impression, and he ended each declaration with 'Aunty!' Mithoo wasn’t very pleased. Once the boy went away, he told me he thought that 'Aunty Wala' talked too much.

We referred to him as 'Aunty' after that. The sales talk turned out to have been justified. All the saplings took root, grew well, and produced what he'd promised they would. 'Aunty' came by to check their progress, and sold me chrysanthemums. We grew exotic hibiscus: yellow, mauve and orange. The chikoo and guava plants did well. The star of the lot was the kamrak.

The little thing grew quite well, and I ignored it, thinking it would be many years before it produced any fruit. It looked quite pretty as a young bush. Within two years of our planting it, we got fruits - and how! Every branch and bough seemed to hang with fruit. My friend Usha called it a 'teenage pregnancy' and asked me to take good care of the plant. The tree - actually hardly that yet - fruited twice a year after that first time. We had to add vertical supports to the boughs. You can see why, in the picture.

Every rainy season, the tree begins to look like a green cave. It is the best garden umbrella you could have. The area under it serves as a rest and recuperation outpost for weary indoor plants. And it's a good hideaway for anyone feeling a bit grumpy.

Mohan agreed to pose under the tree to give you an idea of its height.

In the Nursery

Buying flower and vegetable seeds and seedlings for the cold weather necessitates a long road trip to Siliguri or to Mal Bazaar. It’s a bit like an annual pilgrimage. We (women) obsess and worry about whether we'll be too late in the year to plant, whether we'll get seeds, whether the seeds we do get will germinate, and what the weather will be like. A friend's husband asked us why we did it at all if it was so painful. Men never understand that we love to complain to them about the things that we really like doing. We enjoy the whining as much as we do the planning, purchasing, and the planting itself.

I like visiting the Paul Nursery in Mal Bazaar to pick up seedlings and seeds. It’s a favourite haunt with most tea garden people. I first visited the nursery in 1988, and have been a regular there ever since.

Paul Nursery was established in 1957 by Mr. Jyotirmoy Paul. He is in his late seventies now, but is actively involved in the daily business of running the nursery.
He remembers every one of his regular customers. It is obvious that his family reveres him. They all pitch in and work there, collecting and packing seedlings for customers, watering and tending the plants, writing out bills and so on. No one ever rushes around in a hurry or talks loudly. They answer all the customers’ questions about plant care patiently. Mr. Paul has given me some great tips over the years. This time I met his young grandson (in the picture, with his parents and grandfather), who was home on leave from his army posting, and helping the old folks out. The nursery’s a good place to spend some time in, just walking about and looking around. It isn’t a ‘garden’ but it fits my idea of what a garden should be like – it soothes and relaxes the spirit. There’s a sense of order and of peace. The courteous welcome, the presence of the family, and the old world atmosphere make each visit a happy experience.

Pretty (and) Sturdy

That's what these plants are, having survived a month of the monsoon. Gallardia is an ugly-sounding name for this really pretty flower, which I have never seen in this shade of yellow before.

                                        The 'standard' colour is orangey red - like this one, here.

Gomphrena -- Another awful name for these bright and unpretentious 'Bachelors' Buttons'. They are tough plants, and they're nicely filling up the bed where the zinnias died out.

White crocuses spread like a rumour, outnumbering my favourite pink and yellow. They're bordered by portulacas, (below)which only peep out in the early morning.

They close up tight after 10 a.m. There are two varieties: single and multi- layered. Again, the common name, Moss Rose, is so much prettier than the 'nursery' name. They did very well in our Delhi home in the early eighties.
We grew them in two old kitchen sinks. When my nephews came home for the summer holidays, these flowers were beautiful in the cool early hours of the morning. They looked like fragile little roses, and the colours included magenta, bright orange, white and yellow. An image comes to mind - of my father smiling as he watched his eldest grandson sitting and watering each tiny plant gently.




 

 I love the shape of this ixora bush

Below: A pot-pourri by Mithoo the flower artist - an arrangement combining bamboo orchids, heliconia, some geraniums that bloomed by mistake, bachelors' buttons and foliage.