Garden Diaries – April ( Hope is in the Air)

                             

"O Day after day we can't help growing older.

Year after year spring can't help seeming younger.

Come let's enjoy our wine cup today,

Nor pity the flowers fallen."

                           -  Wang Wei, On Parting with Spring

Yes, it is April and the spring is very much over. In fact, it has left us in the end of March itself when the flowers started withering and the sunshine became sharper. Now, almost in the middle of April, I see all the portents of Indian summer around me. Neem trees are flowering, Amla tree is showing new leaves and most importantly, Mango blossoms have turned into small raw mangoes. In my part of the world, it is not easy for mangoes to ripe peacefully.  First you have pandemonium of parakeets who find them irresistible – though half the times they just peck the fruit and play with it rather than eating it - and then almost every second evening, there is a thunderstorm making little raw mangoes fall. Well, as of now I still have some kairi (raw mangoes as they are called in Rajasthan) on the tree and I do hope they will survive all this.

Brave little Amiya/ Kairi still surviving Birds and Thunderstorms

But before we go any further, a word (or two) about my garden diaries. The inspiration came from Katheleen N Murray’s My Garden in Wilderness. It was such a delightful read, suggested to me by my friend Rajneesh. The joy of growing a garden is something only a gardener can understand. You are so fascinated by the changing scene in the garden- the first flowers, the attacks by birds, the swarming of bees and the never-ending weeds that you end up talking about it all the time. In my case, I found almost all my google searches and social media shares were turning to be about my garden. Like Ms. Murray, I am sure, I would like to read about my Jaipur-garden-experience again in future and may be re-live the joys and anxiety of a gardener. So the diaries are primarily for my own future reading. I am putting them on my blog, because this is where I write about things dominating my thoughts including gardening. I have earlier also written about my love for gardening and even my Gardening genes , my childhood summer days with Khus scented siestas and waking up with Cuckoos song .
So here we go – I hope to come up with monthly editions of my garden diary. Suggestions (on gardening) and comments on my post are welcome, as always.

My waterlilies

 Back to April , it is not the prettiest month in the garden. In Jaipur where I live, it is getting hotter by every passing day and the beautiful days of seasonal winter flowers are long over. Luckily, I was prompt enough to grow seedlings for my sunflowers, Zinnias, Celosia and Cosmos in February end and that's why the flower beds are now full of neat rows of plants …and a hope of flowers very soon. In fact Zinnias are already showing early blooms. Of course, I had to pinch many buds so that the plant  grow better and thicker , but I do have some flowers here and there .

Buds on Bela plant

However, the flowers which make my heart dance with joy these days, are none of these seasonals. It is our good old Bela – also called as Mogra or Motiya in India and Arabian jasmine elsewhere. Interestingly the botanical name Jasminum sambac is supposedly derived from Sanskrit word Champak. The fragrant white flowers, are loved all over Asia. It is national flower of Philippines and also Indonesia. In China it is used in Jasmine tea and in India, it is used to make gajras- the flower ornament for hair. Just a handful of these in a room can fill the room with intoxicating fragrance. The variety I have in my garden in the creeper and it is full of flowers every night. I keep them in my flower bowls, on my office table and even next to my pillow.

Surprisingly, the heat is suiting my herbs. Carrom, Rosemary and thyme are all suddenly full of life. I am growing lemongrass for the first time and even that has responded pretty well to summer.

Amla tree showing new leaves 

 “And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.” 

                                                  -― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

A delightful scene change in April is bursting new leaves on all trees. There are new leaves all around. I saw the Amla growing new leaves for the first time and it is beautiful.  My lone Frangipani, the centerpiece of my lawn is full of new leaves. In the mornings it is full of chirping bulbuls, mynas, parrots, magpies, cuckoos and of course, squirrels. It attracts a lot of bird and squirrel activity around it partly because   it is in the center of the lawn and partly because I put bird feed and water in terracotta bowl under it. Most of the bird feed however is either taken by squirrels or a pair of Yellow-wattled lapwings ( Titehri in Hindi ) – who are always present in the garden.

Fragrant Desi Gulab

Few plants of  Desi Gulab  are thankfully giving some flowers. They add to the aroma of morning breeze full of mogra fragrance and also add some colour. The Indian desi Gulab or musk rose (Rosa moschata), a very fragrant rose variety, is closely related to the Damascus rose  that originated in Persia. It produces small flowers with pink petals. The petals retain their delicate fragrance long after drying. I dry some of these and use them in my recipes too.

Other than my seasonal Kochias and Portulacas , there is nothing much to plant in pots . Some Adeniums were flowering till now but nothing much to add colour. In the climbers, I have a Rangoon creeper (Madhumalti ) full of pink and white flowers and then there are couple of Bougainvilleas . Not much flowers in Bougainvilleas this season as the plants were recently planted.

Rangoon Creeper i.e. Madhumalti

While the other birds – pigeons, doves and bulbuls seem busy all the time either collecting food or collecting straws to build nests, the peacocks scream early mornings and evenings – perhaps hoping for a rain-shower. They even provide us with an occasional dance performance in the lawn after a heartful meal of bird feed and well,  insects from the waterlily pond.

Mukund during his morning performance

 The only bird who seem to be ill at ease with summer heat , like me,  is the family of owlets who live in a tree hole nearby. The heat seem to be bothering them so much that these days they make appearance even in day time. The one owlet (I have named him Peetaksh-the one with Yellow eyes) usually see me off when I get into car for office. On Sundays also, it often peeps out of its hole and occasionally in late evenings even daringly come to the water bowl for a sip or splash.

It is too hot to stay inside all day -Peetaksh

As I look at it, April is a month full of hope. Hope of ripe mangoes, hope of sunflowers and hope of surviving the green lush of the lawn in the heat. More than anything, hope that the May will be kinder to the garden and its beings. As someone said - April is a promise that May is bound to keep.

Flowers in April -Zinnias, Cosmos and an occasional Rose