Life and Spirituality

My daughters took some time off from their busy jobs and visited me with grand children. As the kids went for an afternoon nap, I snapped a picture of my daughters relaxing in the garden, enjoying the afternoon sun ever so pleasant in winters. Then my younger daughter snapped a picture of me and the older daughter. I posted some of these pictures on Facebook and friends commented that I have a lovely garden. Yes truly nature has been kind. However my response was, Mother earth has a lovely garden for all willing to help her a bit in some planting with their hands and hearts.  My own hands have planted and watered all the plants and trees in the picture.

Sparrow by   Laitche My home is more than two and a half decades old. I built it in bits as and when I got time off from work in other cities but right from the start I began planting trees around the boundary. Some became too large with the years and had to be removed. They were put to good use. Seasoned and converted into furniture around the home as it expanded. However, the most delightful aspect of the trees was that neighbors too loved the idea and planted more and a variety of birds moved in to nest in them. Their tweets delight the soul all day, beginning well before dawn. A few like crows were irritating but thankfully, they are not visiting the area now and there was that naughty kingfisher that ate all my lovely little fish in a tiny cemented pond in the garden. I stopped keeping ornamental fish since and keep the pond dry most of the year. In monsoons its is used to collect rain water. Unfortunately, a few years ago I had to remove a large bougainvillea bu...

The new rockery T o begin with here is a quick gardening tip  - attempt to include the five plant types and five basic garden components, howsoever small or large the garden. Large gardens may include additional stuff like garden ornaments, drift wood streams and groves of trees, but whatever the components, let them be nature like rather than geometric style e.g. an  irregular flower bed rather than a rectangular patch, a mixed flower bed rather than one filled with just a single variety etc for maximum effect.. The five plant types are ground hugging plants and flowers that may be perennial or seasonal but less than six inches tall; other plants some flowering and seasonal that are taller; bushes; climbing creepers against walls and finally trees Patches of the sixth- moss are also great if one can manage to grow some in a blank patch.. Even in nature, forests that include plants from all the five plant families mentioned here besides moss are the most beautiful o...

A Compost Heap in a corner of the Garden I f one lives in a home with even a small garden, a lot of leaves, clippings, dried out flower beds, cut grass etc. collects. Some people just discard it with difficulty, others collect it and burn it but that is such a callous waste and also harmful to the environment. It is really beyond common sense and logical thinking as to why people do it. It is very easy to collect it in some corner of the garden or home and it does not look ugly if you care not to add kitchen waste to it, or if you do to take care to hide it under other stuff of the pile. In a year’s time it converts into wonderful organic compost that may be returned to the garden. That is exactly what we do and the photo shows our compost heap under a tree in the south-east corner of the home. If you would like to do the same, then find a spot for it in the garden, dig about a foot or two of some ground at that place and start dumping your leaves and cutting there. On...

A white rose bush at home W hile our planet has numerous pretty flowers, the rose somehow has a very special place. The sight of a rose never fails to gladden the heart despite the fact that it has thorns underneath, perhaps as a warning to life that beauty must be treated with delicacy and care or it will bite. The home in which I have stayed most in the past quarter century was built by me bit by bit in a rather dry and hot part of the country. As a result rose bushes do not come up as well as in cooler northern parts that I have lived in too from time to time in this quarter century. Nevertheless rose bushes may be grown and they do bloom well for a part of the year with a little care for the plant.  White roses My favorites are the yellow and white varieties but these bloom with less profusion here than reds and pinks. Therefore in the first fifteen years or so the yellow and white varieties died off quickly. However a change has taken place in the last sev...

Flowers in Garden After deliberating on how much money it costs to extract the shit out of some of the leading lights of our one percent world in the previous post, whether it be on wall street or whether it be in a government planning department, I suffered from a perception that my soul too is getting filthy, for whatever a human focuses on, he tends to partake a bit of it. A cleansing exercise was needed and what better an instrument for it than flowers.  This year because of a severer than usual winter, there were fewer flowers in the garden than in most January. Therefore this morning I visited a nursery and brought an assorted mix of flowers to plant in an empty patch. A humming bird hiding in the bushes was thrilled. She immediately jumped on the flowers to suck the nectar. The bird is not in the photo because she moved away when I approached for the click. The flowers planted today were enteranium, flocks, petunia, shasta daisy and marigold. There are alr...

A lot of my friends on facebook and other places liked a picture of my garden that is greener than other times because it is still the monsoons here in Jaipur. This time I snapped a picture from the north side to get a different view. There is a small pond towards the north with a small concrete bridge over it. At one time I use to stock it with gold fish but then the fish eating birds found out and that had to be stopped. Now it is a part of the rain harvesting apparatus of the home. Shyamu the boy who has looked after the home and garden for the last twelve years is shown standing in second photo and I am seen sitting in the first identical one. Just click on the picture for a bigger and better view of the photo. Our photos are tiny because the idea was to get in as much of the garden as possible rather than us. As you can well make out I have planted as many trees as possible all around my home and many on the street sides too. If I had more space I would have planted more...