Beginning to get Greener

There is a lot of sprouting activity happening in the pots on my terrace and in the kitchen. Each day I see tomato sprouts, tendrils on the green pea shoots, chillies foilage, lovely red leaves on the red spinach, and many more eyes and buds on the stem cuttings. I literally love to see the buds and sprouts. It makes my heart jump with joy.

Yesterday hubby and me transplanted tomato and chilly seedlings into their originally intended pots.

What I hate and love both about gardening is my hands getting dirty. I am not using any gloves (I may have to start using though) and initially don't like messing up my fingers in the sand. But once I start the digging and raking and my hands are dirty, I end up playing in the sand like a kid only to realize how dry my hands become later.


I intend to transplant the red spinach seedlings next week. Taking pictures are really difficult these days. By the time I reach home, it almost starts getting dark and so am not able to click pictures that do full justice to the beauty of the leaves and shoots.

Dried to Green

My plants have been in a pity state for a quite some time now. There were many evenings when I was so busy to go up to the terrace and water them and many a days I completely forgot owing to the other jobs I had at hand. And to top all these, we had to travel for a couple of days on short notice without being able to make arrangements to water the plants. Result,



Yes, all my plants dried. One or two which were strong enough to survive, I gave them ample of time to wither.

Now my terrace has just a lot of pots with soil and no greens.

So what am I doing now? I am replanting. I started on with taking the soil out of the pots, aerating them properly, and filling it back. There are 26 pots - small, medium, and large. Till date, I have been able to refill only 9 pots. It takes a lot of time for this task as the soil has kind of got set in the pots. So before I start on the raking, I have to water the pots, wait for some time and then start off. Once half way through the pot is raked out, I can tilt out the rest of the soil. This is easier in the smaller and medium sized pots. But doing it alone for the big pots is very difficult owing to the weight. I left out those pots for a day when hubby is at home. Currently, each day, after office hours, I get around 30 minutes at home, before it gets dark. In this time, I am able to complete the refilling process for three pots.

So in the 9 pots I have refilled, I have started sowing seeds and putting cuttings. Indoors also I have started sowing seeds so that they sprout quickly and don't get dried up in the hot sun these days.



Well, lot of work is still left to be done to make my garden healthy, green, and lively again!

End and Beginning

Finally said goodbye to 2011 and started on with 2012. Everything seems normal and okay till now. I haven't taken any new year resolutions as I know resolutions never work out for me. Just taking life in the pace it is coming to me.

As usual there was the annual company shut down for a week. So got a few days off and went down to Kerala. As always, it was hectic - travelling. And the days went past so quickly that within no time it was time to board the bus back to Bangalore. For a few days, my co-sister and kid came and stayed with us. It was joyful when they were here. The kid is just a year old and now learning to speak and walk. It is hilarious when she tries to speak - alien words and phrases. But her expressions are cute. Walking is another nice part. I love to see the way she falters when she tries to walk without help. And even better is to watch her yawning when waking from a deep sleep. So cute!

On the day of New Year, they went back to Kerala. We were back to being the two souls in the big house, lonely! Going back to office seemed very painful after the vacation. Now we are falling back on track and hoping for the best in this new year!

Hope you all had a wonderful time!

A day at Home

Yesterday was a slow day for me. I did not go to work and got to spend the whole day at home relaxing. Hubby had been to work and there was food so that I didn't have to cook (and waste time ;-)). My time was spent in the following order till evening - reading, crochet, reading, crochet, sleeping, crochet, and reading. Whoa! I just loved it.

In the evening, an idea suddenly struck me - Swiss Roll. I love this thing and had been wanting to make it from a long time. And the day arrived yesterday. I was happy that all the required ingredients were there in the kitchen. I browsed through a couple of recipes and started on the process quickly. Within half an hour, the Swiss Roll was ready. The only improvement required, as I felt, was that I had to beat the eggs a little more to have made the cake softer. But that's fine; Next time! And I was really thrilled with the result. I didn't have the patience to even photograph it. Bro, hubby, and me finished it within no time!

Reading and Reading

This weekend, we spent it completely at home. The climate is changing and the days are usually very cold these days. So the whole of Saturday and Sunday we spent at home - under the blankets or in the sunlight available. Cooking took a very back seat. I made easy stuffs as I didn't want to stand in the cold kitchen. Even worse was while doing the dishes. The water was also cold. And on Sunday I did all the laundry and sweeping the rooms. The rest of the time I spent in reading.

Now that my Twilight collection has arrived, it is very difficult to close the book and do some other chore with a clear mind. Within a day and a half I completed reading the second book of the series - New Moon. And yesterday evening I started with the third - Eclipse. I like the descriptive nature of the books.

Additionally I did a little bit of crochet also. Though I am not progressing much, I would like to finish the Big Pink Blanket before the end of this year. Hopefully I'll be able complete it soon.

Experimenting!

Over the past few weeks I tried a bit on making buns and breads. But each time, it was a disaster. The problem was that the dough was not rising and the end result was a hard mass of dough. Last week I again thought of giving it one final try and yes, it was a success.

And now the pics.



I finally figured out the reason why I failed in the past attempts. My measurement of yeast was wrong. The recipes I referred always mentioned the quantity in ounces which when I calculated to grams came out wrong. Yesterday I got the correct proportion and Voila!

I don't have any specific site to mention as I referred a couple of random food blogs and other websites. Additionally I sprinkled some sesame seeds, and must say I loved it!