Sensual Spring Garden!

It is a divine experience to be able to gratify all your special senses; and the spring season is a taste of precisely that divinity! The invigorating all pervading aroma of the spring blooms is a treat for the sense of smell; the soft heavenly touch of the petals makes one thank nature for this wonderful special sense; the colorful, bloom-full sight beholding is a feast for the eyes; and, if we close our eyes to focus on the sounds around us, the sounds of nature, produced by the abundance of life forms during spring, regales the hearing sense in so many ways. The vegetable garden completes the sensuous trip by gratifying the taste buds. And, the visual appeal is matching too! A garden full of flowers is a beautiful sight for anyone, but a healthy vegetable garden provides me with a satisfaction no bloom can. This part of the garden and its produce is meant for no one else but me and my people (that doesn’t mean that I loathe sharing them. Good neighbors – if that doesn’t sound like an oxymoron – are most welcome!). A matronly attitude towards the vegetables ensures that they respond to the affection by becoming hale, hearty and plump! The veggies sure have lots of substance, but they are not to be left behind in style too. They sure can shoot a bloom or two to prove a point. And, sometimes they throw a pretty picture showing between the flowers giving the latter a huge complex! Although, sitting on the cusp of seasons of salubrious spring and sordid scorching summers, there is a gradual dwindling of blooms, yet there is so much to look forward to in the vegetable garden. Thank God for the change of seasons that we can appreciate the variety in life, without which life would have been tasteless…literally.

Spring is in the air

What a lovely morning it was today! I woke up to a welcome draft of cool soft breeze bringing with it the mixed aroma of spring flowers. The Sun was already shining bright on the spring bloom. Rather queer and quaint was a cluster of dark clouds in the periphery producing a mix of shade and sunshineI could not resist outdoors to enjoy the heavenly spring, ephemeral, as shortly the scorching summer will parch my plants.Bruno too was enjoying himself taking an invigorating stroll in the lawn, constantly alert to any piece of ‘non-vegetarian’, dropped accidentally by a surveying eagle in my vegetable garden’, as he is denied that luxury in his usual meals. There in my kitchen garden I found that the rhizomes of colocasia I had sown around two months back had given out their first set of leaves. Colocasia or ‘Aravi,’ as it is known in local dialect, is valued for its tasty rhizomes. These are first boiled or fried to remove the slightly acrid taste. At some places the leaves too are fried with gram flour and eaten for their tingling after taste. All the plants seemed to be enjoying the sun and the spring but these fluorescent blue cineraria appealed to me the most. Their brilliant blue somehow enables me to rid myself of those ‘Morning Blues’ which strike me from time to time. A perfect contrast to the blue was being provided by the beautiful bottle brushes, swaying gently with the breeze. Finally with the morning survey complete I strutted to the house with a twinkle in my eyes and spring in my steps.