Tag: #gardening (page 1 of 2)

Experience the magic

What do you do when you know of something that can bring joy, contentment and better health in a sustained way? You share it with your friends, right? Well, here’s to sharing and caring in my own way with this series of posts on gardening and sustainability for CauseAChatter. 

I am not sure if I can call myself a gardener (or even a niched down urban gardener) but I can definitely be called a plant enthusiast and garden experimentalist. My preference lies in letting the plants grow wild instead of having a carefully manicured garden bed. 

I love experimenting, be it growing plants in compost only or letting the weeds grow wild and see how the plants thrive. Experimenting in the garden has always been exciting, in success and failure alike. 

All these days, I have been sharing only pics of the platters of the yields from my garden, on my WhatsApp status that got few in my circle developed a green thumb. But now, I take this opportunity with Blogchatter, to share a few of my experiments, the letdowns, hopes and successes in my gardening journey. 

Also, it’s with the intention to get my daughter, Miss.M,  and other kids too to get more involved in gardening, observing nature and taking sustainable steps toward climate action, that I record my journey here. 

This series of posts will see honest efforts that will record wins and failures in all their glory and scale. All that matters is that we try and learn. 

In this first post I wish to let you know the joy of gardening for only then shall you take the steps in your journey with the flora friends.

Gardening is ever giving

By the end of last year, we had to shift our house and travel too, which meant our garden got less to no attention. Adding to that, the winter season meant plants going dormant. 

While I was planning for repotting and some care for the plants in the month of January, I was down with Covid and my access to plants was curbed because of isolation. In the mid of January when I went to check out my plants, all I could see was a dull and dried-up garden with not even a single leaf of hope. 

With a broken heart and a pang of guilt as I got into repotting, the garden surprised me in its own way that made me realise that a garden is ever giving. All the while I was looking for new shoots and blooms, the garden decided to surprise me with some yellow gold in its roots.

Gardening is more than what meets your eye

The turmeric plant that was almost invisible with its dried skeletal leaves had fresh bulbs of yellow gold that would mesmerise me with its divine smell. Getting my hands dirty to get the yellow gold brought back the lost hope in me and all that followed was days together of repotting, adding compost and sowing seeds.

Again, by the mid of February, there came a medical exigency where I had to travel to Chennai and be away from the garden for almost a month. In all the conversations that I had with my husband who was back in Bangalore, there had consistently been a single question from my side, did you water the plants? Though the answer was always affirmative, my mind was always clouded with doubt. All it wanted to do was to witness for itself.

A harbinger of hope

By the end of March, as I returned, the view of a dangling drumstick, fresh leaves of the money plant like a bouquet in green, new pups of spider plants hanging down to greet, fine growing tendrils of the adamant creeper, the sight of the sprawling spinach, the freshness of pudina wafting in the air, all swelled up my heart with love, joy and hope. 

Gardening is meditative

Gardening is meditative in the sense that it lets us understand the cycle of life up close and helps us develop a nurturing sense even while staying detached. You will get the full essence of it only when you sow a seed today and wait patiently to see the magic of its growth. 

The calming effect of being surrounded by plants, the wafts of earthy smell of the soil and compost in a perfect blend, the myriad colours of blooms, the bees and butterflies and earthworms, everything makes one feel alive. 

Infact, gardening can teach you life lessons and at times get you more obsessed as it does to me, making me pen poetry, like this one:

“This post is part of Blogchatter’s CauseAChatter.”