This is the place where I love spending my free time at. If I am home and not glued to the TV or not trapped in the kitchen or when Amit is not around; you will find me doing just anything here. One of our balconies, yes that is where 40 odd plants of ours have been placed these days. I love them, as they are my babies. Almost each plant has a story behind. Some are bought from the nurseries I saw on our way during the trips, some picked up randomly from our housing area. I even have one or two stolen plants, for it has believed that money plant grows well that way.
As I mention a few of these instances, let me also tell u that I am enjoying the lovely post shower weather otherwise hot n humid Delhi, sitting in my balcony with Amit's brand new hp laptop [too much of show off I know :) but couldn’t contain the joy of it all within] while Amit is busy watching some eng movie he must be watching for 101st time. Anyways, let me tell you what happened when we were coming back from somewhere. A beautiful hill station called 'Bhowali' comes on the way and I asked Amit to stop near a small shop selling plants. Too hurried to chk them out, I didn’t carry anything with me and Amit came along. We saw the diff plants, inquired abt their chances of survival in Delhi's climate and finally decided to take a thorny cactus and two small cute soft cacti. We bargained the prices and asked the fellow to keep them in the car. Amit opened the dicky and helped us put the plants in a way they would reach Delhi safely. Now comes the fun part. After we were done and the dicky was bang closed, we both realized at once that the car keys were there in front of us but inside the dicky on the shelf above the plants :) WTF!! We had locked the car before we came out, all windows rolled up neatly and both of us don’t have anything with us that could lead us into the car (the second set of keys were in my bag, which also was in the car?? That means we were locked outside the car in the mid of nowhere. How we then managed to get help from the local people there to break into the car and reach our next destination was another adventure in itself but we got to know one thing- that our santro's locking system is not that easy for the thieves to crack.. The cactus today is guarding our home [some feng shui I read recently suggest that it is good to have a cactus placed near ur house's entrance but it should not be too close to the door] and the other soft ones are expanding horizontally.
Incidentally, the house we are staying in for last 4 months was one of the few ones I liked particularly because of the Rangoon creeper (Madhumalti/ Cocuisa) loaded with flowers emanating nice fragrance right in front of this balcony of a bedroom. But today that climber isn’t there anymore, after a heavy rain, when it got into a bad shape, our neighbors got it cut n cleared and it doesn’t grow again now :(
I never shy away from planting some new small testers in the emptied curd containers or the takeaway bowls we get when we order food from outside. Once they grow well, they are carefully transplanted into a pot. That reminds me to ask you which pots do you think are good for the plants? The plastic ones or the earthen? Last time when I found 'buy two get one free' offer on plastic pots, I got home three of them and Amit hates them to the core. He likes them natural with mud pots with green algae on them.
I like them in the rooms but not all plants enjoy being in shade all the time so I keep changing the positioning of these plants... other story abt things that happened almost at the beginning of my plant collection season. There is ample of money plant (MP) in our area, every time I would see those overgrown plants, I would tell myself to get up early next morning & pick up few stems for our home. Somehow, I couldn't do that, due to the fear of being caught I guess.. So one evening, while coming back frm work, I saw that aunty outside & gathered courage to talk to her.. Hello aunty, how are you? yes we are new here. I work in so n so company & my husband works at blah n blah! After those necessary exchanges, I told her abt my secret wish of steeling MP from her garden & she started smiling. Beta u shouldn’t have asked me..Just take it without my knowledge :) now how do I do that.. I hv already told her so it won’t be called steeling anymore.. But now I was granted permission to steel :) funny that was. Then next few days, I would go down and get 5-10 stems every morning. I put them in water initially because that is easier to maintain. At that time we had money all over.. I mean money plant dear!.. In the kitchen, on the dining table, on the fridge and even in the bathroom. Now I have put all of it into two parts. One is planted in soil & is growing taller and the other set is nicely placed on the dining table. I hate when their leaves turn yellow though. I also bought one MP but that isn’t doing too good so if u want money, pls go steel it.
And how can I forget that day when I came back with few stolen MP stems and was busy in the balcony, the bell rang, Amit went to chk & came back with a long stem of a different species of MP(darker leaves) surprisingly telling me that it was lying at our doorstep. I also didn’t think much and got busy into what I was doing... suddenly we hear someone saying, "I kept it there." Actually, a gentleman staying across our house had noticed my inclination towards plants and as a token of appreciation, he gave me that stem.. A nice feeling! he keeps praising our plants while going up n down the stairs but last Monday when I found one pot missing from there, I transferred all my plants to the balcony thinking that someone took my plant; only to find out later that this gentleman had shifted that Morpankhi pot to a position where it could get more sunlight as its leaves had started dying. How stupid of me to think like that.
There are more stories and I can go on and on.. Perhaps I will continue this series..Presently I am little bit worried abt these plants.. Tomorrow, if I am not there to care for them, I hope they still keep smiling :) U don’t be heartless to laugh at me on reading this.. Ok?? [:)]
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