Roses are red and violets are blue...

As promised in my last post, I'll be writing an essay about "My garden" today. Hehehehe, I promise to not make it sound like an essay :-D. There have been so many posts on others' blogs about their gardens and pictures of their flowers, that naturally I got jealous ;-). I already had a planted garden which had lots of flowers, I had also taken photos of the flowers and I still had not put up a post on it? Hmmmm. It was time to rectify the mistake :).

Some history before I say anything on my current garden. Gardening is not a hobby for me, it kind of is habitual. My parents are fond of gardening and since, we have mostly lived in independent houses which had land suitable for gardening, we always have had flowering plants and potted plants at our houses. So when my parents built their own house, obviously they left some space for gardening. Only its not a sophisticated compact garden, it has all sorts of plants/trees (its a have-it-all :-D). They have 2 coconut trees, 2 arekanut trees (no, my parents aren't farmers :-p), 2 avocado (butter fruit) trees, 2 guava trees, some banana saplings, many rose bushes, many hibiscus bushes, some curry-leaf plants, some crotons, some hedges and what not! They also have many potted plants and a space in the back where they have a papaya tree, colocasia and turmeric plants and a current vegetable plant (I think its avarekai as of now - we've had everything from brinjals to bittergourds there ;-) :-D). There's not too much space, so its kinda a mess, but I still love it, because its a haven for plants. Its almost as if no plant is refused shelter ;-).

I'd help out in trimming the hedges (there was no gardener available nearby) and watering the plants (whenever I got up early ;-), which was not often :-p). So I've always wanted to have a garden. After we came to US, we mostly lived in apartments, so a garden was not really an option. Even potted plants make a mess, so we didn't really want to buy any. But when we shifted to an independent house here in US, we had a lawn and some space in the back too. There was already a tree and a holly bush planted, but no flowers as such. So I started plotting :).

The gardening concept as such is very different in US as to what it is in India. There is huggggggggge sections allotted to gardening in supermarkets. There are lawnmowers, leaf-blowers, edge trimmers, various tools for gardening, seeds, potted plants, various types of soil and fertilizer mixes, plant food (:-D), weed/grass killers, insect killers and on and on and on. Since we had a lawn, one of our first purchases was a lawnmower due to the do-it-yourself policy. The first plants to arrive were 2 rose plants (potted), one red and another cream coloured. But buying plants means more buying ;-). We had to buy pots and then 2 bags of potting mix (its soil mixed with essential nutrients :-D). We also bought a jasmine plant (not the Indian variety I like :(, couldn't find that anywhere - we went to some 6 different nurseries) called Star jasmine and spearmint (pudina :-D). I meticulously planted these in the pots we bought using the potting mix. But I really wanted some sort of flowers planted in the lawns at the sides of the garage path. I looked and looked and was never satisfied with the plants and prices. Then the season of chrysanthemums (sevanthige hoovu) started :).

Here were flowers that were colourful and that had fragnance (believe me, fragnance is something thats not associated with most flowers available in US :-p). We bought 4 yellow, 4 orange and 2 pink chrysanthemums + 12 croton plants as fillers for inbetween. We also got pink and red geraniums. Next was planting time. So we even bought tools for the same. There was a seperate planting mix available for plants in grounds, so we bought that too :-p.

One fine day, we started off. I had planned precisely what plants go where, so we both started digging holes and planted 22 plants distibuted between the 2 sides of the garage path :). The geraniums, we decided to keep as it is (jn their containers)and not plant :). Since one side did look a bit empty, we even got a small stand and a hanging pot containing white, blue and red petunia flowered plants to hang on the stand. The flowers bloomed for sometime and then all faded away. Well, the plants do look better in shops, but this was the limit. But slowly, after days of pruning and watering, the flowers bloomed again. Meanwhile I bought 2 more yellow crysanthemum plants and put them in the pots. So totally we own 6 potted plants, 2 geranium 6-each potted sets and 22 plants on ground. Here's a comparison on how the house as such looked earlier to now (the photo angle is a bit different, so kindly adjust :-D).




The individual sides look like this:








As for the flowers, as I mentioned in my Deepawali post, they have been a total joy to me. They look oh-so-good! Its a plus that I have been able to make garlands and we have been able to use them in festivals and poojas :).




I made the above picture myself using Paint Shp Pro. It did take some time, but it came out nice. It cannot really be called a collage, but its a collection of snaps. You can see the individual snaps at flickr here. Well, I am having a 2-way hobby here - gardening + photography :-D. I daily water the plants, prune them often and Sri's role is to mow the lawn regularly.

Whats next for my garden? Tulips!! We already have bought Tulip bulbs pertaining to various colours. The bulbs need to be planted in autumn for them to flower in spring. We still haven't done that, so our next task is going to be, yup, you guessed it, digging holes again and planting them :). But its getting too cold to be outside for long hours and we are biding our time.

Sadly the flowers are not going to last long. There was a slight snowfall just a day ago (it happened in the night, so we didn't see the snow fall. Got up and went outside to water the plants and there was a thin sheet of snow on the grass and the flowers) and this is going to increase as days pass. My potted plants are all going inside the garage at night. But nothing can be done for the ones in the ground. Hopefully the supermarket will have some material to protect the roots of the plants (I'm sure it will ;-) :-D), for them to survive the winter.

Ok the essay is done :). Hopefully I'll have a post on the blooming tulips next spring :).


Where flowers bloom so does hope - Lady Bird Johnson.

Flowers are not made by singing "Oh, how beautiful," and sitting in the shade - Rudyard Kipling.

Flowers leave some of their fragrance in the hand that bestows them - Chinese proverb.