A new life is always exciting!

And I'm talking about my garden of course :).. I honestly feel plants need more taking care of than babies.. as babies grow up and learn to do things like drinking water and milk themselves, but with plants you have to continue to do the watering and feeding for a long long time :P.

I had a lot of lows in the garden over the last few months, especially with leaf curl refusing to leave, and though I'm not completely sure if it has eased up yet, at least SOME things seem to be growing. Here are some snapshots which is always the easiest way to convey what's going on :)

Guava nearly ready to pluck, so what if I get only 4-5 every season I appreciate every one of them!

Sold to me as Israeli Oranges, finally deciphered to be Kumquats

No matter how many times you have seen beans germinate, it remains a fascinating sight!
The box contains Arka Suvidha, Pelandron and Winged beans - all seeds from Annadana

The photo might look like a repeat, but this is the number of chillies on the plant after I harvested the last lot!
Forcing me to add more "spice" to life ;)

Kale in the making

I thought I had killed this orchid off, but it decided to come back to life!

I do love my colours :).. though my need for brightness is mostly supplied by my veggie flowers I still love a few flowering plants and succulents on my terrace, here are some:

Here's to the monsoons and some "automatic" watering for my plants soon !!

Just like you!

It seems like it has been ages since I wrote anything, so I thought it was time to pull something out of my drafts :).

D was telling me about her ballet class, and suddenly the discussion shifted to how "thin" some of her teachers were. And she burst out with:
"But I don't want to be that thin when I grow up! I want to be like you!"
I jokingly said:
"Are you calling Amma fat?"
And she says:
"No no! You're juuust right!"
What a lovely phase this is when kids consider you to be perfect, I wonder how long it lasts ;)!

Blog-a-prompt Day 7 - Addiction

Wow it seems like we have reached the end of Blog-a-Prompt week already and it has been such fun!! It was good to get a lot of things out of the system, under the pretext of the prompt ;). And here's my last chance, until the next prompt at least!

The topic for Day 7 is Addiction, and though I feel pretty addicted to blogging thanks to the prompts, there are a couple of other addictions that give me pangs of guilt so I wanted to put those down.

First and worst of them all - Facebook!! I was at this stage when I used to keep clicking on every group even if I saw 1 new notification - yes it was bad :P. I have got past that now, thankfully and though I still spend a lot of time there, I make it a point to spend stretches of time offline completely or off from FB. It's an ongoing struggle and I have a long way to go to strike that balance, but I think the worst is definitely past :).

My next biggest time-stealer - TV shows. I have quite a set of them built up over the years, the one I've been seeing the longest being Grey's Anatomy which is in it's 9th season. This is not counting some of my reality shows that keep going from strength to strength and that I usually end up watching most seasons of. There are very few like the Amazing Race that I actually stopped watching as it was getting a wee bit repetitive to watch people racing across the world :P. Others like Masterchef Australia are my all time favourites and I keep waiting for the next season to start. I do know that I don't have time to watch zillions of shows every week, so sometimes I just download them and watch many episodes at one go. Other days, I end up sitting up late when I know that's going to backfire on me the next morning. You win some, you lose some I guess!

Blog-a-Prompt Day 6 - No!

Hmm.. I had a whole other blog post ready, about how I have to deal with "No!" on a daily basis, not only as something I say to my kids, but as something that has become S's all time favourite word. But well, I usually make an effort to not share too much negative stuff here (assuming the kids are going to read some of it at some point of time :)), so in that spirit and until I find a solution and can talk about it a bit more, here's a new take on the subject.

I had written an earlier post about how I used to find it difficult to say "No!" to someone, even if the end result was inconvenient to me. A few asked me to elaborate a bit more about it, so here goes:

In general I think this has to do with a deep discomfort with confrontation of any kind, not just a fear or hurting someone as I used to think. After a few years at work, I realized that being complacent and taking things as they come doesn't always turn out well. Those who ask for what they want are definitely treated with more respect. In a home situation, while I was protected from many such confrontations that are associated with a workspace, even dealing with maids and others working for you can be quite terrifying if you put up with everything you get, just because you don't want to cause unpleasantness. So somewhere along the way I made a decision that something had to change, and started working consciously toward it. I'm not saying I don't still get taken for a ride sometimes but at least I know I am not hesitant to walk into a shop and ask the salesperson something even if I feel the question might be "silly" :). Ok at least I don't hesitate about 80% of the time ;).