Winter cool...a cool winter

The winter has been nice and cool this time around - and for a change we are not envying our brethren in the north of the country. Now even we got to flaunt our woollies.

The cool winter seems to have agreed with the plants too. Of course, it was a good time to be doing changes - shifting the beds into our new crates and transplanting all the growing stuff into their new homes - 'cos the weather must have lessened the shock on the plants. We even transplanted some plants bearing fruits, and even they did not protest too much.


Its definitely been the fruiting season - all our tomato plants have been loaded with beautiful round darlings - lots of green tomatoes for our favourite 'rasavangy' subji - we even took a bunch to chennai and made Amma do the honours to them. A yummy tasty meal for 4. And then we came back after 10 days to find a whole lot of red ripe tomatoes - juicy and attractive - we are still feasting on soups, rasams and tomato-gravies. There were atleast 3 different kinds of tomatoes at one point - the slightly oval (longish) ones you normally find in the market these days, the round but squat ones a.k.a 'naattu-thakkali' which are really tart and great for rasams and finally the small round cherry tomatoes.

The green tomatoes along with the chopped sponge gourds and the laal maath/ lal bhaji

And then there was that lone cabbage sapling, which survived beyond all odds and finally developed a nice little cabbage after being transplanted into a crate.

One of our older vines finally showed its true colors and produced 4 cute little sponge gourds - promptly turned into tasty 'thuvaiyal' to go with hot rice. After a rather long wait, our brinjal plant produced a purple-and-white-striped beauty - and a double conjoined one at that - this one made a great 'thaan' in the sambar.

The sponge gourds on the vine

Double Delight

Our baby papaya tree is a baby no-more - it is already producing baby papayas - we are so looking forward to these :-))

The bumper harvest of this winter, however, has undoubtedly been the mango-ginger - almost 2 kgs - here are the pics of shirish harvesting them - behold and feel the thrill of this harvest - its just beyond words.























For a while, our terrace garden got really populated, as we had to move all our pots from our balconies to the terrace too. This was because we were going to be away for almost 2 weeks and this way we could ask our watchman to water all our babies. See how lovely they look close to each other and sharing the warmth and happiness - i wonder if they also compare notes on their lives, health and well-being like long lost relatives meeting at a wedding (wink!).