Take a look at the jewel coloured hibiscus in the picture. As a kid we could only see them in the 'hot house' in Lalbagh! Dad took us there and we oozled over the different coloured blooms. You could not get the plants easily and they were really rare in peoples homes. One just had the ordinary red hibiscus or shoe flower as we called them.
Now one can buy the saplings from nurseries across Bangalore and even from the little nurseries which have sprung up on highways like Old Madras Road etc. I bought this one for just Rs 50 - a tiny plant which was probably 10 inches tall with a huge flower in a black plastic bag!
I wanted so much to have it in Castle Street -- bloom and lift my spirits there as I put out the wash on the balcony once in a while. But it looked unhappy inspite of putting it down in a really large pot and filling the pot with only 'leaf mould' like Dad called it or compost which is the real name!
So one day I put the pot into the car and took it off to Hoskote and planted it there. Pow! in a month the plant looks so grand and in two you can see the flowers it is full of.
The red soil in Hoskote has definitely made a great difference and the plant is blooming and growing splendidly as you can see.
Now I am training it to grow upwards rather than spread flat along the ground as it is doing now!
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