going potty!!

my days are not filled with work of the office type.......despite the fact that i can choose to do what i want during the course of the day, there are times when i want to do nothing....

so i spent it doing what i love best, powered by the fact that i had been privy to a fabulous roof garden over the last weekend....i spent some time with my potted plants.... pruning, digging and loosening the earth..... each time i do this....the first thing that strikes me is guilt because i have to prune and then throw away the cuttings....i just have no more place to accomodate them anymore... and then i always wonder why i dont manage to remember to wear the pink latex gardening gloves i own.... they're as good as new.... but it doesnt feel the same to be playing in dirt and doing your bit when you're gloved up.... i anyways think of it only when i wash my hands and see the scratches on my fingernails....

i grew up in a house that was on a huge piece of land... in the middle of the city...and we had enough trees...yes trees and not plants.... to have koels and other birds waking us up with cacophony each day.... i would trade places anyday now...thou at that time, i thought it was embarrassing to speak over the phone when birds were having a row in the tree tops...to be asked by freinds on the other side of the phone line, what that noise was....now ask me....trying to shuffle about 80 odd pots of different sizes on my two balcnies....they're spilling out into the corridor and on the parapet wall of the service area too....

brings me to how i started off.... i started with 6 yogurt cups...the ones that hold 200 ml of yogurt.... and soil so hard that it killed off most of the plants!! on one trip, amma filled a plastic bag with some soil from the side of a dug up road...and brought it home...and then we filled the six empty yogurt cups with it and put in some plant cuttings....i was too embarassed to even look at them for days....they looked so silly.... so i went out and bought some plastic pots..... about 12 of the smallest.... no larger than a latte cup..... they looked better than the yogurt cups!! then some more and some more....till i now have about 70... in different sizes.... everytime i go somewhere, its hard not to come back with some plant life.... a bulb, a cutting, some seeds..... hell i even have asked friends to send me seeds.... of exotic herbs they grew....and tantalised me with the pictures....back from a holiday in the hills, i was so excited to come home only to repot and plant my booty of orchids and pepper and a kind of lemon so small but so sour!! they lived for a brief while.... frequent travel (mine and k's) killed them one by one.... 

then another trip, where i paid more for the porter to carry the carton than i did to the nursery i bought the plants from.... roses and crysanthemums and some other lovelies that promised to add colour to my collection....they all died too.... when i went on a holiday and a friend forgot to water them...i dont think she recovered from the guilt for weeks!!

after which i decided on much foliage and no fancy...stuff that would be ok with 3-4 days between watering if the need arose...and this works so well for me!! this is where i am now.... lots of green and colour .... but no more... i mean any more additions will mean i will be seriously jeopardising the state of my marriage!! and i might need another house.... i am waiting for the carpenter to arrive to put up the hanging pots i managed to smuggle into the house without k noticing!! 

i have them in old pickle bharanis, tooth brush holders, broken cups, bottles and some even growing in water.... 

i now have progressed to a few herbs for the kitchen....chillies, curry leaves....and now finally some cherry tomatoes and yellow peppers......and loads of basil sent to me by a blogger friend....

its a place i love to hang out .... its what makes me so happy.....its has always seen my bad moods lift into something better.... its funny, how something like this can make such a big difference....but it does...and its inexplicable (if you havent gotten it by now, that is...)

sure i would like a real garden someday....but for now...this will do....potted and planted and hanging around the house....