Hail Monsoon

It had been an uncomfortable last month; june was exceptionally hot. Looking at the burning landscape made me feel that it had never rained here. Whenever I read the posts of my fellow bloggers from south India, where the monsoons arrived earlier, it felt as if they are some distant lands where rains happen and clouds are a phenomena seen in foreign lands or geography books. Then it happened. Yesterday morning I woke up as usual expecting the strong morning sun to greet me, but the darkness around had me befuddled. It was a completely overcast sky waiting tensely to open up.And open it did. It poured. The rains were heavy and continuous for at least 6 hours – something rare for this place – yet within an hour after they stopped; the Earth around me was quite dry, signaling its remarkable absorptive power on account of absence of rains for so long.
Thankfully, yesterday was not an isolated munificence on the part of rain Gods; it has been raining continuously since yesterday night. It is music to the ears to be sleeping cozily with the sound of raindrops on the rooftop interrupted only by an occasional thunder.
The parched earth, the thirsty birds, the drying plants, the heat paralyzed me…we were all waiting for this moment, and it’s finally here. May it rain the way it should and the way it has not for the last few years, so that all the miseries get drowned in the cleanest water from the heavenly abodes.

Cherry Blossoms

This spring I tasted a different kind of bloom, thanks to my blogging friend Geek Gardener and another generous gardener Thomas whom I met on Orkut.
Thomas was kind enough to send some seeds from the wonderful place, Kerala, where he lives. It was around one year back that he sent a scrap about having couriered seeds of tomatoes,beans,bitter gourd and brinjal. The seeds turned out to be of excellent quality and the lovely tomatoes which grew out of them are the tastiest and juiciest I have ever had.
Geek Gardenerfrom Bangalore gave the seeds for cherry tomatoes. A lot bloomed for me this spring, but these cherry tomatoes in four different shapes were unlike anything I ever had. They were very different from tomatoes I had seen in real. In fact, my friends and neighbors were quite amused to see these little, shiny tomatoes, a sight they were not used to.





Cherry tomatoes are not very common in my part of the country, though, thanks to the plethora of cookery shows, things are changing. I had a lot of them growing but didn’t have much idea on what to do with the pretty harvest. Googling for recipes, and with a little improvisation I prepared this salad, which was a little sour but was praised by my guests; a part for the novelty and a part for the health benefits.Blogging is so good, healthy and…tasty too!

A Sackful of Potatoes

We have all learnt something new and inspiring from our fellow bloggers. I, for one, have to thank one of the posts by a very talented amateur gardener, Jamie, for this bountiful harvest of potatoes, I got in a sack.



Here, in my city, we use and reuse these flour sacks for carrying wheat flour. I bought four of them from my local flour mill. The guy was quite amused at the alternate use I was going to put his flour sacks to. After filling them with soil I sowed potatoes in it, and it was with the joy of a high school student whose science experiment has come right that I greeted the first potato shoot. One has to keep the top margins of the bag rolled outside, so that when the shoots are around 8-10 centimeters long you can unfurl it and add more soil/compost.



I face a huge termite problem, and as a result the potatoes sown in the ground fail to grow properly. Sowing potatoes in a sack circumvented the termite problem effectively and as a bonus I did not have to worry about water logging either.In a matter of three to four months, the potatoes were ready for harvest.
Here is a comparison: On left is the potato harvested from ground and the right one is out of the flour sack.
Imagine a life without potatoes, without all those seductive French Fries and Potato chips...scary, to say the least. No wonder, my daughter feels that I have hit a jackpot by being able to grow the starchy tuber in a sack.