Flowers in our garden

After so many years of trying to grow plants in houses which didn't get enough sunlight, We are thrilled to be able to have so many plants in our house now, especially plants that give us a pleasant surprise with their beautiful blooms.

The first one to light up our eyes was the bougainvillea plant which we had planted by getting a cutting from a friend's place in Satara. The cutting seemed to adopt us quickly enough and also started putting forth bursts of white-pink flowers, which delighted us.

Another plant that has grown steadily and stable-ly is the Adenium, which came to us from Lucknow, propagated through a cutting by Baba (Shirish's dad). We have potted this in a Bonsai tray and it seems to have taken to its home rather well, twisting and turning to find a comfortable position. Some of our friends recently raised questions about the 'humane-ness' of growing Bonsais - essentially a practice of providing lesser space for the plant to grow, in essence, making it stunted and contorted. Though we don't resort to such measures as pruning the roots/ branches etc. and continue to give it lots of love, we have so far not moved it to a spacious home yet. Neither have we concluded whether what we are doing is right or wrong and hence if we should be doing something different. However, going by the constant blooms that it sports, it seems to be rather happy...and so we are happy too.

Do also notice the lovely yellow rose peeking into the picture above - this is a rose plant we bought soon after we moved into this house and have been waiting for it to bloom to see what colour would the roses be. I was only overjoyed to find a yellow rose greeting me one morning - since that happens to be my favourite colour. Here's another close-up of it. Don't you love the slight orange-ish outline of the petals?

Two other plants that are recent additions to our garden are from the Dianthus family - both were flowering profusely when we got them from the botanical garden and continue to delight us with their white and pink flowers that look like pencil shavings.

A blue beauty has in the meanwhile silently appeared and disappeared on many days - we had got this plant from a nursery and knew that this was a creeper and so had provided ample support and access for it to climb and spread. But we had forgotten that it would also bear these lovely conch shell shaped flowers - called Gokarna in marathi and Shankhapushpam in tamil, these are wispy flowers that bloom in the morning and wilt by next morning.

Now that summer is upon us, summer's friend jasmine (mogra in hindi, malligai in tamil) too is paying us a regular visit - this reminds me of my uncle's place in chennai, where they had a 4 ft. high jasmine shrub which seemed to always have ready flowers that the devout used to pluck on their way to the temple. I can still remember their sweet smell in my uncle's front yard.

                                                             

A recent addition to our garden, which came to us with a profusion of its lovely bright pink flowers, is the boungainvillea shrub gifted to us by our friend Divya. This shrub has nice hardy branches, tiny bright-green leaves interspersed with the pink of the flowers. Though the shrub is yet to receive a permanent home to rest and grow in, it right now occupies one of our buckets and seems to be happy in it. Just yesterday we have got a few old tyres, with which to make a home for this plant that has brought joy to our hearts. We hope to soon have this shrub well settled and adorning the balcony outside our living room in its new home.

The most surprisingly wonderful bloom, however, has been the Gerbera. Surprise, because, we did not know that we had a Gerbera plant in our house. A few months back we saw a few saplings lying downstairs in polythene bags - the kind you get saplings from nurseries in. When we asked our watchman, he told us that one of the guys from a nursery, who comes often to sell plants, had left this and a few other plants, apparently abandoned. When we asked if we could take it up and adopt it as our own, he gladly gave it to us. So we got it, potted it, watered it and waited to find out what kind of a plant it was. Yeah, we could probably have gone online and checked it out or asked someone else, but we just decided to let the plant let us know about itself. And it sure has been worth the wait. A week back we saw the bud appear and then we knew, but we were still curious to see if we would actually get a flower like the ones we see at the florist and what colour it would be. See for yourself what a lovely gift it has been. We are overjoyed and eager to share our happiness with everyone.