We also make steel

...or in this case, tungsten tips.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the category is Before and After...

We moved from UPK to Goler a month ago, kind of feeling sad about having to relinquish our 3x30. So we decided to ask Whipple Park if we could have a flower bed in the community gardening space. And guess what? They had a shaded unwanted plot under a tree that they were only too happy to give us.



Vasu adds:
And thus it was that, ten days before they were to move, when all their apartment was yet to be boxed, a handsome young man with his beautiful young wife were forever to be found digging in the dirt and transporting away huge armloads of weeds and other undergrowth, tired, aching, but determined to have a garden irrespective of whether their move was well-packed and stress-free or not.

Mostly about S, S, and S

...or the Stargazer Lily, the black-eyed susan (which we lovingly call "lazy susan"....), and the sunflower, all of which are in full bloom this weekend. It appears that I've come back to Rochester just in time to catch all of these (or at least the lily) at their best -- and boy, am I glad to be back! I can't wait to get started on doing my own work again, and am really that I can do so when it's so nice here at home. The Stargazers are really really fragrant, especially when the sun goes down. The window fan blows wonderfully scented air in the evenings....it's a real joy! The only con is that the lilies are top-heavy and tend to fall over even though we stake them. But.....straightening them back up constantly is a small price to pay for breathing in such heavenly fragrance every evening.



Yup, you can tell I kind of like these flowers, can't you?



Oh, and the susans and the sunflowers are really nice too, bright and yellow and cheerful. By a happy coincidence, they're right next to each other, just like how the yellow cosmos and the helenium are together, giving this impression of being all part of a plan! :) Of course, we're thrilled with how smart we sometimes are without even trying :)).



The larkspurs are also turning out much nicer than we thought they would be just a few weeks ago, and the phlox is charming, especially since we weren't expecting so many subtle variations in colour.

July 18 Update

I am returning to Rochester much more often than Palash or I anticipated initially -- Palash misses me, and I miss both him and home. It's pretty depressing to be in a town that you can cover all ends of on foot, alone. Ithaca would have been much more fun if Palash and I had been there together -- on my own there, even the nice things about it are a reminder that he's not there and of how much fun it might have been with him. Most of the time, if I like something, I make a note to myself "Show Palash x," or "Take Palash to y." Like the spring roll quesadilla at Viva Cantina which was so delicious: the delight was only complete when Palash had also eaten it and loved it (as of course I knew he would).

The 3x30 in Rochester is thriving. Here are pictures from the last two weekends I visited, with the names of the flowers:

(1) Cosmos and convolvulus, with some helenium at the side; (2) Larkspurs (Doesn't Palash take really good pictures with perspective?); (3) Z-scape poppies, which are rather disappointing because there aren't many, and they don't last long. The other varieties of poppy we sowed never grew at all though -- I'm really disappointed with Burpee seeds. (4) Canary climber -- the flower is all of 1 centimeter.


(5) Purple morning glory; (6) pink morning glories: Both kinds are from Burpee's Early Call Mix. Again, Burpee disappointed me because their celestial mix and their moonflowers seem to have not taken off at all. But to be fair, nor have Ferry Norse's Heavenly Blue or Crimson Rambler. (7) mainly Glads, which we bought at Wegman's. Good stuff -- glads are very regal. Even one or two are really impressive and stately.


(8) Convolvulus again, mainly because I like this picture. I must mention here that Burpee also has light and dark flowers on their packet, which led us to expect them, but apparently they're pretty loose about their representation of their package contents. Not one single sign of pink, light or dark. (9) Petunias, dewy and luscious. Again, the photo is just so good it's obvious Palash took it. (10) Sweet peas of different sorts that we harvested and put in a jam jar. Very fragrant. Needing to take this picture made me clean the dining table really well. I like the look of this picture with the window fan in the background.


My favourite gardener of all time :).

Battles with Beetles, and Other Updates

So while I've been in Ithaca this week, Palash has been battling the Rochester heat and Japanese beetles. The latter fight began even as I was there last weekend: we spent a lot of Sunday evening locating and stamping out the bugs that were punching holes in our precious plants. The garlic-infused water strategy did not do much except make the whole flower bed reek, so finally on Sunday night, after a frustrating and never-ending search for the horrible things, Palash to get creative. He sprayed Lysol on the zinnias and some of the sweet peas and morning glories.



By the time I was about to leave Monday morning, the plants looked a little worse for wear, though it wasn't clear how the JBs were doing. Palash researched online though and found that neem oil was an effective way to get rid of them (we did not want to use insecticides because we kind of like our bees and butterflies); Namaste had it, so he got to work with it. He reports that he may have got a little overenthusiastic with applying it... but hey, if it works, I don't think we'll be complaining!

And the progress: well... so far, he's removed the Thumbelina zinnias that the monsters had perforated, and probably some sweetpeas that didn't like either the Lyzol or the neem. We have to wait to check out the long term effects.

As for flowers: many more blooms appeared in the garden and my inbox this week.

The cosmos(es?) and convolvulus(es? i?) are really picking up momentum, and the far end of the flower-bed is now a riot of colour. The sweetpeas proved our dread that our harvesting them would upset them and make them stop blooming wrong.



We did not plant any cornflowers this year, but apparently they self-seed and are quite happy left well alone. This little one showed up among all the creepers in the middle of the bed. The nasturtiums that we planted finally bloomed: this orange guy is "Alaska," which is supposed to be good for keeping something away, I forget what (squirrels?). The smaller dark green leaves of the "Empress of India" variety (a name like that, how could we not plant it?!) are yet to bloom. All their leaves look a little worn though, either because of the Lysol or the neem, who knows which!


These two are among our first-time blooms: California z-scape poppy and morning glory (Celestial mix?). The poppies were a surprise, since we had given up on them and were treating them as green ground cover. Apparently more of these pink morning glories have bloomed. (I'm really really eager to see the Heavenly Blue and the Crimson Rambler, because of their rich, glowing colours!)


And these are our gladioli, planted in a container. We thought they wouldn't have enough room for their roots and therefore won't bloom, but apparently they don't ask for much. How we love low-maintanance plants! (Ok, so they did need generous applications of fertilizer...)

By the way, I loved Palash's subject line for the photo on the right :)) : "pinky-pinky, what colour?" And a wet surface does look much better than a dry one on camera....

A Note About the Name... Kya Khilega, Kya Dekhenge?

It comes from the title of a novel by Vinod Kumar Shukla. Rahul was sipping tea at our place, listening to me whine about the lack of a good name for the blog, when he suggested 'khilega to dekhenge'. The line from the novel is : फूल का एक पौधा रोपकर घर के सब लोग सारे काम छोड़कर उसके सामने बैठते नहीं थे कि फूल खिलेगा तो देखेंगे. यह तो महीने-दो-महीने के भविष्य में पता चलता... Roughly this translates, "Having planted a plant that promised flowers everybody in the home abandoned their daily chores and sat in front of it not, that it will bloom, we shall see. It would only become known in the future of a month or so."  I like how the word "तो" covers the meanings of "if" and "when" (अगर/जब) while being decidedly non-committal about it, as if there were a continuously variable knob on the level of attachment or interest you have in the matter. PhD hogi to kamayenge. Bhookh lagegi to khayenge.

Vinod Kumar Shukla's style takes a little while to get used but I would highly recommend "दीवार में एक खिड़की रहती थी" (A Window Lived in a Wall, Tr. Satti Khanna) for those who want to explore further.

Long Distance Garden Updates

So I have been away from Rochester the last three weeks, and will be away for another three....BUT...Every time a new flower bloomed these last 3 weeks, Palash took a picture with his phone and emailed it to me :). That way, I knew how the garden was coming along, and did not feel as out of things as I might have. Such good ideas Palash has, no :)?

About 10 days after I moved to Ithaca, he took these pictures and sent... our first successful convolvulus, livingston daisies, and the very first sweet pea. We were (he was!) working with all these for the first time, so seeing them was a HUGE thrill!!



A week later, the flowers really got blooming, as you can see.





Still, the live garden is even more stunning, and more colourful. The hours that Palash is putting in are showing in every single section.

A not so neat border

These are flowers from our 30' long border to the flower bed. We went back to flowers instead of red bricks this year because I was tired of the neat look. There is a size mismatch though -- about 3/4ths of the border is 8"-12" tall alyssum, while the rest is 18" thumbelina zinnias. They all look beautiful though. The first picture is a lone sweet pea growing in midst of alyssum.

Trellis

After adding bamboos on the trellis every other week to keep up with cypress vine last year, I decided this year we wanted something bigger right from the start. I thought we'd do something very basic and rectangular using bamboos as before for the frame, with something like soccer net for the trellis. Our local garden center had 4" nylon netting, for $5 or so, perfect for us, we got two.

The frame kept Vasudha and me busy one hot Sunday afternoon, very basic 2 long bamboo sticks going up, 3 running horizontal, and 2 down, about 10'x15' in all. Put them in a good foot and a half in the ground for a solid foundation. Strings tied here and there to ground anchors to provide some tension and take away some of the flexure from the vertical beams... we had a working trelllis ready to take the first seedlings!

Spring 2008: Experiments with Bulbs, and Other Flowers

We planted all our bulbs in Fall 2007, and weren't sure how they would turn out. We only knew that they would liven up spring, which is always a nice period because things are warming up after all the snow (see the picture :p), but can be just wet and slushy if you do not have pretty things to look at.

This, on the left, was the world in January / February 2008:

And then the pictures of the world it had transformed into by April..... do you ever wonder why we wait for summer here?!?

Anyway... the pictures are as follows: on the right, on top, Daffodils, tulips, Delft Blue and Gypsy Queen Hyacinth; and below it, Blue and Gypsy Queen Hyacinths. The tulips we bought at Wegmans, and the hyacinths and daffodils at a nursery on Clover and Jefferson Rd.

The grape hyacinths -- muscari -- are really nice as a beautiful blue ground cover. They also attract a lot of bees, as you can see. There are four different varieties here, all ordered from John Scheepers.

Finally, some pictures from the neighbourhood and campus.... the snowdrops - outside the neighbours' window - were hardly taller than the grass. This was the first time I ever saw snowdrops, which were always much taller in my imagination.

The red berries grow on an extremely thorny bush that Palash and I absolutely hate and are dying to dig up and throw away. Unfortunately, University Park rules do not allow us to do this... even though Joyce at the rental office does seem sympathetic. As long as that is the case, it is a wonderful thing that the bush has such beautiful red berries (even though they're maroon here). Somewhat compensates for having to live with it, and gives us something other than thorns to look forward to.

The forsythia (sp.?) grows all over the complex; I never realized before this spring that we actually have this bush around, and that it gets flowers. I think I always saw the yellow in the spring, but it never realized that they were flowers. Somehow, they seemed like leaves -- because the whole bush is yellow I guess.

Finally, the River Campus has lovely cherry blossoms in the spring. These pictures were taken within a few weeks of each other, at bud stage and then in bloom.

Updated to add :

Tulips, Irises and Glads are favourites of the squirrel. Alliums, Narcissus, Hyacinths, Daffs are not. So, if you want tulips or irises to survive, either cover it with chicken mesh or surround them with something that the squirrel cannot stand! We went with the former with our glads in a container, and the latter for everything else. Like a chakravyooh of sorts. -- Palash