Edible Shoots

Could you name a garden plant with flowers all year? My science teacher asked us when I was in 6th grade in our village school. He had to answer the question himself as we all guessed it wildly wrong. Though I have never looked it up to verify the correctness of that answer, I just believed it to be true for, ever since, I’ve seen bougainvillea in bloom on and off all year.  Bougainvillea looks gorgeous and seems to be present almost everywhere, one of the most widely distributed and versatile ornamental plants. It is found everywhere in warm climates worldwide, inviting our attention, especially where they are well exposed to sunlight. Evergreen in tropical and subtropical climes but deciduous in colder climates especially during winter. We mistake its paper-thin bracts of various colors for its flowers. In fact, its real flowers are tiny white ones, often unnoticeable from a distance as they are overshadowed by bracts of vibrant colors of pink, white, orange, purple, yel...

        In our backyard, we meticulously manage a variety of fruit plants nursing them into fruition. Many of them escape our attention and reach on time when they are all set to make us happy. Though late at times, we do go for harvest at reasonable intervals and enjoy ourselves. The extra harvest would usually go for distribution in the neighborhood and to friends and families. One very heartening sight is to see the much-awaited fruit already claimed by its natural stakeholders. Squirrels, bats, parrots, bulbuls, crows and so goes the long list of mainly arboreal but rodents like rats too join the gang.  We don’t care much if the plant is grown on its own from the seeds sown by the same gangsters. Of course, there are some very good ones of that sort around. The ones we do a to z to grow and look forward to fruiting but end up seeing a good portion already shared up is very frustrating. We the young generation make haste to destroy the remaining portion in ve...

Whenever I open my mouth to appreciate someone in my neighborhood, especially for the food they make and share with us, my partner would say, “neighbor’s wife is always beauty”. This is her way of saying that her own version of the same often goes underappreciated. However, there are a few dishes we get offered that she too can’t help admitting her admiration for. The one in this shot is just one among those few. The food diplomacy among neighbors living closely together has a lasting impact.  “Please add a little water into the curry you made for yourself and offer a share to your neighbor”. It was a famous saying of the Prophet on those days of less prosperity. Now most of us don’t have to dilute in order to have enough to share but can cook as much for both households. Thank God, we are living in one of the best times in history, though many may  disagree. Food has always attracted people, kept the folks together, and helped people to show they  care. We  know tha...

     My colleague from Egypt told me once about those times when he was growing up, a child in his village. The men from the cities mounting their donkeys carrying household utensils would go from door to door in the villages to trade their offerings for backyard chicken eggs. They had their designated days for barter, and they knew their potential business partners very well. A win-win situation for both womenfolk in the countryside and door-to-door vendors from afar.   Back in the South Indian highlands, while I was a trainee teacher, I saw women making a difference with the eggs they got from raising chickens at their homestead and selling them to greengrocers in their hometown. Home-produced eggs always enjoyed better prices than the commercially mass-produced ones. The women didn't have a farmers’ market so they sold the eggs to their favorite greengrocers, who would resell them for a small profit. A sincere word of thanks goes to Teena Jewel Kuriakose, living...

We grow happier as we start spotting the first of its blooms showing up. And for a special reason, which we pin on jacarandas in full bloom in the neighborhood: we know that our summer vacation is not far - the one we all have been looking forward to.  All this is thanks to our city gardeners, who made a U-alley by planting the jacarandas in line on either side of a paved walkway alongside a long dried-up river. How did I then know that it used to be a river without there being any trace of water? There is still an arch bridge built during the time of the Ottoman Empire connecting people on both sides. For quite long, we didn’t have a name to call the tree with the purple-blue flowers by. Nor did we feel any need for one. Dr. Paul, the crazy man with a scientific temperament among us, first called it “Jacaranda mimosifolia”; this didn’t take long to become a household name but the “mimosifolia” part was conveniently dropped. No one refuted Dr. Paul as our knowledge of botany didn’t...

  I got up a bit earlier today. Not yet sure if Muradabadi biryani could help to be an early bird or not. For reasons I don't know, something inside me kept saying, “Jabir, get up n go out...” Abha is the most beautiful on Friday morning if you can meet her when she rubs her eyes to the sun. Silent, tranquil,     visible, and almost no traffic to bother about.          It was dark even at 6:30 am. That is quite usual during winter. The temperature was 9 C. Darkness coupled with chill would serve as a good excuse for not venturing out. But my mind justified that it was usual during winter and we would stay warm up while on the move on foot. I let my weekend unfold on its own. Quite spontaneously with no plans...and a walk along ring road done solo. Off script. Walking has always been a meditative affair for me. If my lungs or calf muscles got something, that was only a bonus.

     My mom never made cheese. She never knew what it was like. But she did make a lot of butter and ghee from the milk leftover after we had supplied the neighborhood. Free home delivery was our responsibility. We kids did it well without causing any concern for customer care or ultimately our bossy mom.   We raised chickens, goats, rabbits, and cattle. We also grew a fair share of our own food, like edible leaves, veggies, and tubers, mostly annuals but also perennials. Everybody contributed towards the labor, therefore we hardly ever needed to hire a farmhand. There was no such thing as waste on our homestead. In fact, there is no such thing as organic waste on this planet we call home.   Mom boiled the unsold milk and let it cool off. She then added a little buttermilk as culture  and kept it overnight for turning the earthen milk pot into a pot of buttermilk.  Once she was free from farm chores, she would sit back to churn the curds into little sc...

My granddad on my mother’s side had his own paddy fields. He sold them piecemeal to marry off his eight daughters. However, he continued to farm on fields he took on lease. Nothing could stop a man from doing what he had done all his life. He had his own pair of plowing bulls, two pairs at the most. Like each of his ten children, these bulls too had their own names, no different from those of men.        After every harvest, my grandfather would send a share to each daughter’s house. Having been brought up by a veteran rice farmer, each of his daughters knew very well how to put the paddy to the best possible use. My mom was no exception. She boiled some of her share, at times with bulbils of yam as a treat for us kids. She spread some of it under the sun on a bamboo mat to dry, before gathering it up into a sack and sending us to the miller to make flour out of it. The carriable portion to a teenager, having packed up in a repurposed plastic bag and sealed wit...

63 “Plant Once & Forget” Fruiting Plants for Your Backyard in Kerala I love plants, especially fruiting ones. But I can’t nurture them like I do my own kids. For example, I may, or may not, care to water them in summer. What to do? Well, I’ve stumbled upon the perfect solution drawing on veteran planters and personal experiences. Here I am to share it with you happily ever. If we are away or too busy to give time to our green friends, the six-months-long dry spell in Kerala can be a trying time for many fruit trees we wish to come to fruition in our backyards. Many may wither and die back depending on the water retention capacity of the soil they are in. However, thanks to the six months of Monsoon, we can still grow a lot of fruit plants depending solely on the rain in this, God’s own country. What matters most is the choices we make and a little bit of homework before we line the plants up on the ground. Here is a range of drought-resistant fruit plants for your next...