February Garden
“They say…happiness is a thing you can’t see, a thing you can’t touch. I disagree.” – OST Scrooge!
The birthday month is past. As always, this was a month of small treats – chocolate eclairs, ghee and gud parathas come to mind. And gifts!! Retail therapy comes in all shapes and sizes: kindle books (I added all the titles from a favorite guilty-secret author to my collection), some new music, a garden stand for my balcony and best of all, lots of new plants.
Some arrive as gifts, bursting with growth hormones fed to them at the nurseries. Others are cuttings from like-minded friends and my forager maali. Mohan bhai arrives with bags of plants and enough manure to feed them all. I spend a happy afternoon pottering about, getting in his way and giving unsolicited advice. Mohan bhai works efficiently, exchanging tips and notes in his quiet voice, discussing the type of pot we need for this plant or the sunny spot to be reserved for that one. He does the heavy duty work and the end of the afternoon sees all the newbies planted in their forever pots. This time, we are adding rich manure to all the pots, old and new. Mohan bhai assures me I’ll be seeing the wonderful benefits before long. The aroma is amazing, earthy and loamy and faintly bovine. The manure is a real boost for my plants, as the kitchen compost is long over and I haven’t gotten around to starting a fresh batch.
A lemongrass plant and a hardy local mint now stand side by side. There is also an apple mint in there somewhere, which gives my morning cuppa a lovely taste. Their fragrance fills the air, as does the bitter aroma of a neem plant. A sweet little touch-me-not is pure nostalgia – we used to walk to school down a lane bordered by wild touch-me-not bushes. Arms spread out, we’d brush the leaves shut and look back to see them shyly unfurling once the danger was past.
Mohan bhai and I are both very excited about the two desi rose plants he’s unearthed from his source in faraway Vasai. He says the flowers are full of fragrance – your balcony will smell like guldasta again…a few days later, he is proved right. A lilac rose, delicate and short-lived, blooms and fills the air with an old-fashioned rose aroma…the tea roses, not to be outdone by these new interlopers, burst forth with bunches of flowers. Another lilac rose blooms on the second plant, the red rose is budding too and all at once, mom’s rose garden is reincarnated on my balcony.
There is a sturdy cutting of a pink champa amongst the newcomers. Mohan bhai is partial to pink flowers. It stands, stubby, dry and desiccated for a while, ruminating on its changed circumstances, before tiny new leaves, heavily marked with veins, appear at the very tip. The neem plant had shed all its leaves in distress but is now showing signs of renewed life. It has taken heart from the madhumalati standing next to it.
Ah, the madhumalati! This one too lost all its lower leaves upon arrival, leaving a bramble of bare wood at eye level. And then a few days ago, a fuzz appeared along each stem which quickly transformed under a bright sun into tiny leaves. The madhumalati (Rangoon creeper) is my favourite creeper, with its gorgeous bunches of pink and white flowers and the intoxicating fragrance – it grows profusely all over my neighbourhood but it doesn’t like me or my balcony much. Past overtures at friendship have been met with a stoic samurai resignation to its fate – it commits ritual harakiri rather than withstand the shame of being my vassal. I live in hope – perhaps it will sense the calm in my mind after years of turbulence and respond in turn. Maybe this year, the madhumalati will achieve a Zen state of mind and deign to bloom under my shelter.
Mohan bhai has ordered a certain bougainvillea that shall remain unnamed to be starved of water. This plant has been slowly chipping away at my sanity over the last ten years. It is beautiful in its lush foliage of smaller than usual leaves. Its shape, completely natural, is worthy of any ancient bonsai. It is healthy and strong. So what’s the problem, readers might wonder? Sigh. Deep sigh. No flowers. Not one. Not a bud. For a decade now. On a Bombay bougainvillea, that is cruel. Cruel to the gardener, that is. I have been advised by my spouse and kids to cut my losses – in this case, cut the plant out by the root and throw it away, the ungrateful, overfed, entitled @?$%! But once again, hope is a gardener’s best friend – and the stern admonishment of one’s maali helps. Mohan bhai finally puts his foot down. I protest in vain – he insists I must stop watering the plant. Try karo, he says. So I steel myself to give the culprit only a dribble of water every week. Tough love works, I’m happy to report!! There are buds, a reluctant shade of pink red, admittedly, but THERE ARE BUDS!! Mohan bhai will smile quietly and not say I told you so. But he’ll know and I’ll know.
The peace lilies love this time of year – they also seem to like my new garden stand. A change of scene and sunshine brings the white flowers unfurling from green sheaths. The betel leaf plant is shiny and healthy, content to grow with no promise of ever blooming. The surprise bloom has been of the Alocasia. This is one of my favourites – from the time the leaves appear, tightly furled, aubergine and black, it is a spectacular sight. The fully opened heart shaped leaf is dark green, deeply veined in a lighter shade, and the leaf edges are wavy. This year, it reveals another avatar. It produces two anthurium like blooms, pale green and ethereal. Perhaps it has reached an age when it will bloom more often. I hope so.
A friend gifts me an ardenium with tight buds. It takes its own sweet time to bloom. Just this morning, one bud has unfurled enough to show off its white petals dipped in a deep pink…some things are worth the wait. I used to have three ardeniums on my balcony many years ago. I brought them home from a nursery, fully laden with buds. They bloomed, I feasted my eyes and then…nothing. No more buds, just leaves, leaves, boring leaves. I didn’t know Mohan bhai back then. Just saying. Finally, I gave them away to a friend. They didn’t even have the decency to wait a polite week or two. They bloomed on her balcony: immediately, profusely, and have never looked back. I enjoy them when I visit her but with a certain hidden heartburn. This birthday, it was the same friend who gifted me the ardenium. Will history repeat itself? It’s a wait and watch game with these slow growers. This time, I comfort myself, I’m older, more hard hearted, and armed with Mohan bhai’s admonition: no over watering.
My hibiscus, wild, local and hardy, have no such prima donna moments. They bloom generously and cheerfully, as do my bougainvilleas (with the exception of It-that-is-now-regretting-its-past-entitled-existence). These are my old companions, growing and prospering in spite of my ministrations.
The avocado has had a growth spurt. The pomelo and the litchi, the chickoo and the lime are all doing well, nary a flower in sight. They are content to grow and I take pleasure in their new leaves without worrying too much about the fruit I may never sample.
Two bougainvillea and one banyan are redefining themselves as bonsai. It’s early days yet but a project I’m looking forward to, after years of procrastination and preparation. Mohan bhai was politely enthusiastic but did not share his thoughts – he has resigned himself to this madcap madam who dreams of a flourishing garden on her inadequate balcony, and who attempts to grow the most unlikely plants, given the lack of full sunshine and other hindrances. She also has a distressing habit of shoving any seed she can lay her hands on into the mud, with no rational thought to climate or growing conditions.
If you’re passing my way, come up and visit my balcony – a little piece of potted earth that nurtures me and teaches me every day. It reveals its secrets, sometimes with a great fanfare, more often quietly and discreetly. It brings me joy and some teeth-gnashing moments but mostly…joy.