Season of harvests

Hiya there,

Yeah, u guessed it. The mood is upbeat. Our garden has been a great source of joy for us in the last few weeks. With the weather cooling down, the plants once again started thriving and also reproducing - it was time to put out the pretty flowers, followed by the lovely fruits and hope that the ever-meddling humans would let some of them ripen and bear seeds for the next generation to sprout from.

Here's the Basil bearing its lovely white flowers - we'll now wait for the seeds, to pass onto some friends who have been waiting eagerly.











Our carrots, which we had replanted from our terrace bed into a deeper basket, seemed to show their gratitude - not only did we get 2 small carrots which we promptly munched away (even before a pic could be clicked), but now there's a pretty blossom on top of a long stalk that's come out of the plant.

Hey, we even googled some interesting uses of the carrot greens - one we have already tried is carrot-greens tea - nice and aromatic - almost like green tea, if no one told you it was from carrot leaves. Another recipe waiting to be tested is a carrot-greens soup - will report if it works.

While we were eagerly following the growth of this baby on the left and wondering when we could harvest it, this one on the right quietly made its appearance. Seems also to be a paler cousin - we wonder if it would grow as big...

This wild beauty on our balcony decided to show us its colours too...what a wispy way to propagate itself - that's probably how it landed up in one of our pots in the first place!



These corianders seem to know just the perfect weather to come out and face the world - we had planted them in March, but they just bid their time and with the first rains, they are showing their cheery faces and smiling away. If only humans knew such things instinctively like the plants and other animals seem to, life would be so much simpler. Do the right things at the right time and not worry about fighting odds, when to lie low and when to lift one's head with confidence etc...


The Basella or the Poi-saag is putting out arms in all directions, trying to reach out and hold on to something sturdy-enough to climb upon. They have already given us 3 meals of delicious creamy saag and hold out promise of atleast one veggie dish (if not more) per week and a lot of soft and crunchy leaves for our salads. We have now helped them get on to the parapet wall of the terrace by tying the loose ends to a thread anchored on the wall. Hope they like that and spread vigorously all over the wall.


A beautiful bumper bonanza from our composting heap - we had broadcast some sprouted lentils on this heap, and the plants had grown robustly - we just didn't know which plants they were - moong, tuvar, urad, chawli, rajma - options galore. A few days back we observed pods coming on and knew that the day was close when we would discover what had grown. And the other day our neighbour's mom came up to see our garden and she immediately told us that it was Moong aka green gram and that we could just open the pods and eat the soft green moongs which hadn't become hard yet. We were so delighted, that we decided to make a special fresh moong salad that night with some cucumbers chopped fine and mixed in and a dash of lime for that zest.



There's other stuff that has steadily come in in the last whole month - bhendi/ladies finger/ okra, broad beans/ sem/ papdi, cluster beans/ gawar - never in large quantities (except for moong - as in the pic here), but a few each time, which we simply incorporated in any vegetable dish we were making, upma/ khichdi or in our salad (esp. the okra).

Now our impatience was showing - we would both, each time we went upto the terrace, go and take a peek at the watermelon, tap it, thump it, lift and feel the weight, scratch the surface and in general, search for any tell-tale signs that the melon had ripened. The first sign was the nearest tendril drying up and so we got ready to harvest, but then our maid, Meera bai saw it and said it wasn't ready yet and that it would grow even larger. So now we were back to twiddling our thumbs and doing all those tests repeatedly without any clue of what we hoped to find out.

And then, one day Shirish went up and came back alarmed that the vine on which the fruit was, was beginning to wilt - was this a sign too - it sure seemed like. In any case, we figured, if the vine was going to die, it wouldn't help if the fruit was still on it - for one, the fruit wouldn't ripen more and secondly, most of the nutrients would continue to go to the fruit and so the vine wouldn't be able to recover. So we plucked it and also noticed that there was another tiny fruit growing bigger - wonder if it will have the chance.

In any case, it was the next evening, before we cut open the fruit. Some friends had come over, and it seemed like the perfect time. Wow, what a lovely sight - deep red, big black seeds, juice oozing out - oh! to sink our teeth and mouth into this beauty - wasn't long at all as you might have guessed - and what a rewarding satisfying feeling - i think it also tasted sweeter due to obvious reasons. :-)