A trail among the trees โžฐ๐ŸŒณ๐Ÿšถ๐Ÿปโ€โ™€๏ธat the Kasavanahalli lake, Bangalore (March series Part ๐Ÿš of ๐Ÿ›)

Trees are easily identified by their flowers and March is blessed to be a flowering season for many plant species. And now, crossing the culvert and walking across to the opposite bank of the Kasavanahalli lake, you first see the striking Yellow Bells (Tecoma stans), also called the Yellow Elder. They are shrubs planted along…

Making Tidying Up an Event ๐Ÿงบ

The popular choice of the first Japanese author for many people would be Haruki Murakami; but for me, I first picked up the small book by the Zen Buddhist monk Shoukei Matsumoto “A Monk’s Guide to a Clean House and Mind” ๐Ÿ‘‰Adding meaning to daily chores (Buddhist approach) ๐Ÿงน as a window of motivation for…

Tabebuia time in Bangalore ๐ŸŒธ๐ŸŒธ

Itโ€™s Tulip time in Netherlands, Cherry Blossom in Japan and Tabebuia in Bangalore ๐Ÿ’ฎ๐Ÿ’ฎ “From the first weeks of January when the silk cottons and the tecomas and jacarandas start putting out their flowers, Bangalore can count on eight to nine months of spectacular flowers as each species does its bit, until the season ends with a…

Bangalore’s Jacaranda ๐Ÿช

This beautiful flowering tree is quintessential to Bangalore’s nostalgic spring and summer months. The delicate bell shaped flower blooming in clusters and framed against the blue sky is an enchanting sight. Last year ๐Ÿ‘‰ POTD: Jacaranda ๐Ÿ’œ Learning a little about it’s history, the tree was introduced in India during the British Raj from Brazil;…

A speck of blue in the Morpankhi ๐Ÿชด

It is a planted presence in almost every garden; we have rows of them in our apartment complex. They are eye-catching for their peculiar foliage; the pine like leaves grow in a single plane outwards giving it a fan like appearance. But it’s spring and they too are in bloom, tiny yellow flowers; the fruits…

Revisiting favourites ๐Ÿ

It’s the weekend before Valentine’s Day; some shop windows display red balloons and heart shaped cut outs to mark the occasion; for him and her ๐ŸŽˆ. We ventured to Church Street to see if we can sell some old books at the second hand bookshop. Their quoted price was very low and no cash offered;…

City Hues ๐Ÿ’–

The changing seasons bring about a kaleidoscope of colours in the sky; in Feb, the cloudy grey early mornings give way to a cover of myriad shades of blue with fluffy white cumulus clouds orchestrated to hijack our thoughts (for a moment at least), by forming vaguely familiar but mostly mysterious patterns; floating to elsewhere but…

POTD: Spider Lily ๐Ÿ•ธ

Second month into the year; the days are getting hotter while the nights are still cool in Bangalore. The cyclical changes that happen year round have become familiar and hence we can look forward to the days with happy expectations. And when we look out for the familiar we begin to notice the new things…

Colour for the season ๐ŸŒผ

5 Feb is Basant Panchmi, the festival to mark the transition from winter into the spring season ๐ŸŒผ which culminates with the Holi celebrations exactly 40 days from this day ie on 17 March (a holiday! ๐Ÿ˜Œ). The traditional colour for Basant Panchmi is yellow and the flower for the festivities has to be the…

Perspectives ๐ŸŒ…

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” Anais Nin, writer 31 Jan 2022, my maternal grandmother passed away; she was ninety six. She is safe with God. Among the many fond memories and qualities of my grandparents that I admire and cherish, their unpretentious and simple lifestyle stands out….

Framing a new scene ๐ŸชŸ

My apartment has sliding aluminium frames for the windows; and here I wake up to wooden window frames that open to the outside and are latched in place so that the wind doesn’t bang them shut. The scenery outside is different and so is the frame ๐ŸชŸ; I am at my parents home in Kerala…

Home is where the heart is…๐Ÿ’–

“What is a Porpoise ?” asks my seven year old nephew. “Maybe it’s something like the tortoise; lives on land and in water !?” I make a guess and reply (I was so wrong ๐Ÿ˜ฌ; I should have googled it!). The kid too soon realised that my answer was wrong ๐Ÿ˜… “If they lived on…

Under the tamarind tree ๐ŸŒณ

A story in Ruskin Bond’s book the Kashmiri Storyteller goes like this… A man sees a walnut tree and a creeping gourd plant and exclaims ๐Ÿค” “Oh, Allah!” he said. “How strange are Your ways. You have given such small nuts to such a large tree, while the creeping gourd plant bears a fruit out…

Tree-spotting ๐ŸŒด

We were inside the Brookfield Ecoworld complex on the Outer Ring Road in Sarjapur, Bangalore; the palm fringed roads looked spectacular ! The tall stately looking palms were standing in perfect attention, their green canopy swaying in the wind, greeting the commuters. The trunk of this particular palm variety looked perfectly smooth and grey like…

January: Reset and relish ๐Ÿง

It’s almost all dried fruits and nuts and less cake; it’s sweet, rich and the last of our plum cake from Anns Bakery, Kottayam, Kerala for this year ๐Ÿฐ. Their Christmas cakes comes in a pretty round tin box with five layers of wrapping – the outermost is a coloured (blue/green) cellophane cover you unwrap,…

To new Beginnings ๐Ÿฅ‚

“Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.” Carl Sandburg, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and author  My planner has a quote for each day; they are cliches but still…

Hedge hunting ๐Ÿ’ฎ

Our apartment complex in Bangalore is composed of a single tower with eight flats on each floor. And like all planned apartment gardens, we too have hedges circumambulating the outside perimeter of this fourteen storey tower. These hedges are composed of a variety of flowering plants and a few variegated shrubs but always manicured to…

Almond canopy๐Ÿƒ๐Ÿ‚

There’s always something that catches the eye and sparks a curiosity; for this tree, it was it’s big broad shapely red leaves. On sunny days, the tree drew attention as it filtered the sunlight through its crimson and green canopy, while on the cold windy days, the burnt orange and brown hues exuded an autumn…

Yellow splendour ๐ŸŒณ๐Ÿ’›

No one told this tree that it was winter in Bangalore; it’s yellow flowers are in full bloom and together with the green canopy, it stands dressed in green and gold ๐ŸŒณ๐Ÿ’›, ready for the wedding season ! It’s called Gaudichaudi or the Chestnutleaf trumpet bush; the flowers shaped like golden yellow trumpets and clustered…