So whats been happening in the garden...

We had a major hiccup in our gardening prospects this year. We renovated our property and painted the house in Summer but in the process lost many of the container plants and few others in the ground garden. Our garden is an organic one and we have absolutely not used any chemicals in the past three years. We guess the odour from the new paint did not go well with the plants and also suspect the workers did throw some of the washed paint water nearby the plants,we know not for sure but there were a lot of casualty this year.

We had around 15-20 rose plants but only around four survived,that too, only after many valiant efforts. For the past few months we have been picking out the dried plants and trying to nourish the soil again and re-start everything. We have bought new rose plants,around ten I guess and they are slowly settling in. We lost all our mint (both in the ground and the containers) and just recently I have planted a few stalks in a grow bag.

October is a good month to start growing methi/fenugreek and we just harvested our first batch. We had plenty of methi in just one harvest actually.

The lone chilli plant that survived is giving few chillies then and now.

The flat runner beans are only now coming up.We normally do it on Aadi amavasai day that comes in late July/early August but the seeds that we sowed on that day were all lost in our renovation activities. These three plants are the result of our fifth attempt to grow them and fingers crossed they start flowering by Jan at the least.

The rose plants that were newly planted are thriving thanks to the recent bout of rains.The jasmines are still blooming even though the summer is long over.

The part of the ground garden where we grow our snakeguard plants are ruined given the fact not one of twenty seeds that were planted over there in these three months took life. My very last attempt did work and now there is a tiny single lone sapling of snakeguard climbing up and we have procured a marigold plant to help in curing the soil off the paint chemicals. It is like almost starting over all again but we are enjoying the process nevertheless.

Salt dough ornaments again!

A year back around this time we made our first salt dough Santa. I half expected for the ornament to loose its color and vigor after a month or get damaged soon..I am surprised to say that the Santa has stayed in the same color and shape even almost a year after. We struck a magnet behind the Santa and he is currently adorning the cupboard door. 

Making the salt dough ornament was such a fun and happy activity, we decided to do it again sometime and did a batch of ornaments over the Summer holidays when my niece had her cousins visiting her. We followed the same method and let our imagination take flight and made many different toys..

A cute duck..my nephews drawing

A constellation set

Fruits

All were colored,dried and then stuck with a magnet behind and went straight to the cupboard door. 

Its been six months and am happy to say they are staying very pristine still.I can't stress enough how much fun we had while making these ornaments and they sure make a wow statement as a display piece. We made a few more different items other than the magnets but this post is long enough already :) ..I will show them in another post soon. Till then ..ciao.

For the first time ever..

... the weather men said that the Northeast monsoon shower will start that day and it did.I can't believe it.Never has the local meteorological department been this right with their predictions. Surely there is a first for everything.

The showers started a couple of days ago and it has been a very pleasant climate since then. Mild rain and cloudy sky are my favourite things and from what I heard this is also the first time the northeast monsoon rain is on time. Looks like it will go on to put up a good show and am loving it.. :).

Picture from the archives.. Plants enjoying the rain back in August.

The weather Gods..

..always have different plans than mine. Tonight the Orionids meteor shower will peak and it is supposed to be a good year for them and I had a plan in mind to wake up after midnight and witness the shower. But right from afternoon it has been cloudy and just now it became completely dark (and it is only 4'O clock now) and started raining. 

I doubt the clouds will clear .. there are too many cumulonimbus clouds currently adorning the sky and a heavy rainfall is predicted in parts of the country. Too bad for my plans .. but good for the garden plants, so I'll compromise and wait for the Leonids meteor shower.

                                       *my first search result on Orionids shower in you tube and really liked it..

Celebrations

I couldn't do a detailed post at this point of time but I will say this.. we had a glorious deepavali celebrations at our sweet home this year. We had so much fun playing, dancing, firing crackers and feasting. I am very grateful for this wonderful festival and for all the fun we had this past week. If time permits I wish to do a detailed post but for now I will stop with a snap of this double sangu chakram that fired up in the terrace.

Lets talk about books - part 2

Has it been a month since I last blogged?

I never intended for this gap.. this blog keeps me sane and one of my goals is to keep it active as much as possible.

So without delay, let me jump to show you the treasure I found in the book fair that happened in my city. As I mentioned in part 1 of this post, this is the second book festival I had attended this year. I was disappointed when I learnt of the venue, the place could hardly hold 40 stalls and when I reached the venue there were 35+ stalls all crammed together with hardly any space to move. It was nothing compared to the book festival that happened last year here. And it looked even minuscule compared to what I saw in Chennai.

On the other hand, the quality of the books that were present were far superior this year. There were varied topics available in each of the stalls and the english book stalls had excellent bargains that I still can't imagine finding such bargains anywhere else.

The below books were bought for 20 rupees each. Some of the authors aren't in my reading list but for 20 rupees I am ready to give them a try and the Jack Reacher novel is brand new and came with the plastic wrapper on.

My favourite Wodehouse was as usual little pricey even for a second hand book but I couldn't let it go. Alexander McCall Smith's No.1 Ladies detective novels were something I had been hunting for a long time and I was surprised to see them being sold (almost brand new) for just 20 rupees. I was able to get hold of only 2 books, the shopkeeper told me there were atleast ten books earlier.

Monte Cristo and the Jeffrey Archer are from another shop for 50 rupees. Monte Cristo is the first english novel I ever read(back in fourth standard) and this latest edition will go as a gift for a my sister.

We also found great deals on children books. A shop in particular sold children books in a bundle deal - 10 books for Rs100. Most books were brand new and had some rare books that could not be hunted even in higginbothams. We were astounded. We bought many pop-up books, disney tales,a couple of 'Where is Wally', Noddy, Postman Pat and good number of Twinkle books.

My intention is not to show off but to highlight the great deals on books in a book fair that somehow felt like not publicized properly.I often read about book fairs happening in various cities but there was no talk at all about it when it happened here and even most of the local media ignored covering it. Avid readers did turn up to take the haul but with proper notice and a good venue it would have been a great success.

Okay enough rant, let me finish off with a cute find. I got this brand new book for my niece for 25 rupees(the original price was 299).. It is about a cute little dog Spot and his activities on a Snowy day. I really like how he pops up through each page and..

..finally after a fun day's work sits in a cozy sofa for a cup of coffee.An instant hit with the kid.

Instant Pizza

I have been making my own version of an instant pizza often in the recent months.I was skeptical when I first made it but since then I have fallen for this pizza for good. The main pluses are that it takes very little time to make them and tastes just awesome.

There is only the assembly effort that is required to make this instant pizza and the idea for it dawned on me one day when I was really craving for pizza and finding a way to bypass making the pizza base from scratch.

There are many alternatives available in the market for making the pizza base - ready made pizza base, instant pizza base dough and so on - but I dislike the taste of many of them.There are also other recipes available online that include the use of  a bread slice as the base (toast pizzas) or stuffing the toppings in between burger bun and baking the pizzas. I liked the burger bun version but disliked the stuffing part.

So instead I decided to buy a burger bun, cut it into two halves and use each one as a base.

Lightly toast the bun for a minute. Then add a generous helping of tomato sauce, followed by mozzarella cheese, topped with sweet corn kernels and a sprinkle of herb mix.
Bake in the oven for 10 minus at 200 deg C and pizza ready.

Once ready the pizza base ie the burger bun will be crispy on the outside and very soft and toasty on the inside and together with the toppings it is an absolute delight to eat and the taste is on par with any authentic pizza.

I have tried many other topping choices too (mushroom,paneer,bell peppers) and all of them go well with the base.Dare not I forget to say, very inexpensive too :) .. Do try them if possible..