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Gardening diary

11 April

Potted Coleus cuttings

Potted Carnations cuttings

Hard trimmed the new hydrangeas

Moved cyclamen from pots to bedding

Potted new Chrysanthemums

Bought new Chrysanthemums, couple of moss Phlox, a Huchera, lots of peat-free compost, weed fabric for the side gutter, and a bracket for the new garden basket.

Still haven’t mowed the back lawn. It’s about an inch growth away from being declared a forest.

Non gardening update: finally put up new lights in the upstairs bathroom, with help from P. It took some effort, but it’s now the best lit bathroom in the house 🙂

Gardening diary

18 March

Planted long overdue primroses.

Trimmed Sedum and Hydrangeas.

Potted carnations cuttings

19 March

Watered all indoor plants.

Fed liquid feed to most outdoor plants – roses, clematis, Acer, chrysanthemums, campanulas, etc.

Did top dressing with solid feed for all Hydrangeas.

Topped up wood chip mulch.

20 March

Planted saxifrage on leaf much. Trying to create a carpet.

Planted a few other ground cover plants to preempt the weeds

De-weeded the front flower bed (weed = ever spreading Japanese anemone)

The newly planted primroses and a white campanula that I hope spreads a bit.
The newly planted primroses and a white campanula that I hope spreads a bit.

Garden update

Today…

Two new leaves in one of the hardy geranium cuttings. It’s made it! 🙂

First flowers bloomed in the new viola. Violet and yellow beauties 🙂

Moved the last three yellow begonias and the Dianthus from flower bed to tubs. The snails have been busy butchering them 🙁

The white mustard has flowered beautifully. It was nearly dead in January; now it’s dense and getting whiter all the time 🙂

A rose I’ve been trying to revive/keep-alive for at least 3 years, produced its first bud in many years. It’s a beautiful light pink bud. Rewarding me for the effort, clearly 🙂

Earlier…

Moved all the orange and one yellow begonia from flower bed to one big pot. Two of them were near death, all were suffering. One still might not survive. Damned slugs, snails and earwigs!

The petunias and bidens in the window basket produced their first flowers. Bidens are pretty yellow, petunias surprised with a Burgundy red/pink with veins 🙂

The geraniums are blooming big time! All of them—7 surviving from last year and 8 from this. Loads of beautiful red flowers everywhere 🙂

The three campanulas are all nicely settled in, blooming and growing. Hardy, self-seeding, and beautiful blue and violet flowers. They’re amongst my favourite plants this year.

The lobelias in the other window basket are like one huge (South Indian politician sized) garland of blue and violet.

After mowing the lawn every two weeks, I haven’t mowed it in 4 weeks now. It’s still now growing. We really need some good rain 🙁

Momos!

Watching The half of it on Netflix. Ellie Chu’s dad is making delicious looking momos in his kitchen. Reminds me of a family in Auli who used to make momos at their (tiny) home, sell to us visitors for income, and have the rest for their meals.

Those momos were delicious—little, warm morsels of heaven on the freezing mountain. I was jealous of them, and of Ellie’s dad—they can just make delicious momos at home any time they want!!

That brought a delayed realisation. This is why my white British acquaintances have that look on their face (and that tone) when they talk about us having ‘Indian food’. For them, it’s a special treat they order in/out. But we can/do have it at home any time we want!

Good momos make me happy. The thought of having them anytime at home makes my heart flutter.

The smell of dosa-sambhar or chicken curry or rajmah or mutter paneer from our kitchen into the alley must trigger similar feelings in others.

Continue reading Momos!

Things I learnt recently

From AD: How to efficiently & quickly dice onions. There’s no magic trick to it, but just knowing the correct technique has made a big difference.
AD studied hotel management at under graduate level, and knows his stuff.

From SD: How to solve a Rubik cube. He lent me his old unused cube and shared a video with the step by step instructions. I’ve gone from taking over an hour to just under 20 mins.
SD solves his cube in under 3 minutes, with a PB of about 1’30”. He knows his stuff.

IMG_20200322_192008.jpg
The first solve. Took me over an hour!

From Sis: How to hang woollens in shallow British closets without the arms hanging out and pushing the door open. Invert the arms so they hang inside the sweater/jacket/hoodie. This reduces the width of the garment, helping it fit comfortably in the shallow closets.

 

From ‘the web’: JavaScript promises and async/await. Learnt, enjoyed, implemented, fell in love with. Promises in Javascript feel as delicious as coroutines in Kotlin.

They live!

We have a lot of lovely rose plants in our backyard. The flower beds in the front are largely empty. In early November, Paul and I planted a few rose cuttings from the back yard roses in the front yard flower beds. He advised me there was very low likelihood that any of them will survive or take root.

I read somewhere that roses like acidic soil; mixing coffee grounds in the soil around them is good for them. So I’ve been doing that occasionally.

Today when I went to distribute some coffee grounds around the roses, I noticed a few fresh leaves sprouting out of a few of those cuttings.

They’re alive! They may even take root! We may have successfully added new plants (without buying them) to the yard!

I’m happy :)

In other news…

Dawn over Abu Dhabi, on the way back
Dawn over Abu Dhabi, on the way back

I returned from India

It was an unplanned trip, to attend to a family matter. Most of it was very boring. The smog kept me indoors, so couldn’t go for long walks. I’m off TV, so no time to waste there either, and I have no friends left in Karnal to go visit.

Reading was my only escape. I read Anita & Me, and Sapiens, and re-read a bit of Thinking fast and slow. Also read 3 issues of The Economist. Separately, read a 100+ articles in Instapaper.

I even had time to update the AcceleReader for Instapaper Chrome extension with a new feature, despite working on a really slow internet connection.

I met old friends

The visit did end on an exciting note though. On the evening before the flight, I met up with my friends from undergrad for dinner.

I had no clue what to expect. These were the people with whom I spent most, if not all, of my first 3 years of college. And yet I hadn’t seen, or spoken, to most of them in last 5-7 years.

I’ve long believed that friendship is just a bunch of shared experiences. Friendships are kept alive by creating these experiences, or reliving them. What sort of friendship would it be when we haven’t even met or spoken for better part of a decade, and not created shared experiences for even longer?

I’ll just say, I’ll need to revisit (refine?) my understanding of friendship a bit. Continue reading In other news…