Precious water

This year I learnt up close and personal how important it is to have a plentiful supply of water.We happily planted a 1/4 acre in Hoskote with tomatoes -- our very first commercial crop. Bonny gave money to Narsimappa to pay the farmers on either side to supply us water as our bore was running dry. The farmers on both sides said they needed the water for themselves and Narsimappa swallowed the money. What happened after that? Well we watched our crop of tomatoes wither infront of our eyes. The rains have come bringing with them water abundance. I have got Narsimappa to dig around our borewell and make a big p-it to collect the rain and replenish the water table. it might not help our bore, but it will help the general table. From the photos you can see the pond dug by the farmers has filled to the brim and the government has built a check dam and water has backed up and percolated down instead of just running off. The rains bring respite and the trees grow in leaps and bounds. I love the rains!

Foot-ball lily

From the internet I have noticed, these flowers are called Foot-ball Lilies and not Thunder lilies which my Dad called them! As soon as the first rain fell and the parched earth was throughly soaked in the Hayes Road garden, one patch which was quite dry for most of the year aprang up to life! They were the bright red Ball lilies. We loved them and the boys too enjoyed looking at them as they grew up running around that garden! Its that time of year now in Bangalore, but unfortunately our garden in Hayes Road has gone and with it the ball lilies. However I did salvage a few and took them to Hoskote where I think they are starting to wake up and hopefully by this weekend we will have a few full blown flowers!

Red Whiskered Bulbul

Today as I reversed the car really early to get to the visa office I was pretty tense wondering if I had taken all the documents needed to apply for the visa.Ticking them off in my head I thought, photos, bank docs, property details, copies of college appointment letters and my PhD registration. And then, I heard the liquidy notes of a Red Whiskered Bulbul, singing in the Camel Foot tree we had planted 15 years ago on the road.What a wonderful feeling to have the notes wash over my mind and almost immediately I relaxed and waited, listening till the end of his song. If you ever get a chance to hear one, just stop and let his serenade thrill you. There is nothing like the perky tones of the bird which can wipe away all that build up of stress which we really do not need at all in our lives.

Love Watermelon

I love watermelon and so when a friend sent me these wonderfully creative artworks made with melons I had to load some on my blog.

Have seen them here in Bangalore at fancy salad bars laid out in 5 stars. But where I saw some as gorgeous as these were in Bali and Bangkok.

Every fruit and salad bar was adorned with them and many as beautiful as these.

Enjoy!

The largest flower in the world- Amorphophallus titanum (Araceae)

THE LARGEST FLOWER IN THE WORLD


The largest flower in the world is blossoming in Blanco , Veracruz , Mexico .It is
2 meters high and weighing 75 kilos, it has the peculiarity of blooming only
during three days every 40 years. You'd only see it once or twice in a lifetime!


Amorphophallus titanum (Araceae), also called "cadaverous flower" has the peculiarity of blooming only for three days every 40 years,
a privilege that Mother Nature bestowed on this town in Veracruz .

The Litchie's have bloomed in Hoskote!

With Climate Change making Bangalore crazily hot, I wondered if our Litchies would ever fruit. Planted around 8 years ago, they are full of flowers and tiny baby cylindrical fruit. Take a look at the trees in the pics.

I have seen trees in Malleswaram loaded with fruit and have written about them around 10 years ago, but now I wondered as the Hayes Road one is definitely around 20 years old and has never fruited.

Now I will have to keep an eagle eye on the fruit with Narsimappa and sons ready to greedily eat all that comes up there. So fed up of the Rose Apples flowering and fruiting and us getting nothing from there ever even to taste.

Anyway this has been exciting and will watch to see if any of the hundreds of little fruit mature!

Bright orange brush like flowers!

Today I walked down to take pictures of a creeper in Richmond Town, on Rhenius Street which is covered with flowers. The flowers are breath takingly beautiful and the buds too look really strange. I have loaded both pictures of the flower in full bloom and the buds as well.

It is a creeper with dark green large leaves and it throws a regular vine out like any other creeper that needs to be trained.

Please look at it and enjoy, and if anyone has any idea what its name is, I would be very grateful if you shared it with me.