The garden as a life-saver in bleak times
The writer rediscovered gardening during the pandemic. It teaches you patience, he says, for there are ultimately no low-hanging fruits to be had
By Sandip Roy
Mint Lounge
March 11, 2022
Excerpt:
My grandmother’s rooftop garden was the stuff of legend in our neighbourhood. Early every morning, before the rest of the family stirred, she would be up on our terrace, pottering in the garden, pruning her plants, carefully adding used tea leaves as fertiliser. During the monsoon, gladioli leaves poked out of the soil like sword blades, and in winter there were rows of chrysanthemums. She coaxed juicy lemons out of a lemon tree in a pot. My father inherited her passion. He would come back from official trips with an assortment of bulbs—gladioli, lilies, amaryllis. One of his last outings was the annual trip to the Horticultural Society garden show in Kolkata.
I inherited their love for plants but not their green thumbs. When I first got a little house with a backyard while living in San Francisco, I created a herb garden worthy of a Simon & Garfunkel song: parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. I planted cucumbers and tomatoes and asparagus. I subscribed to Sunset, a home style, cooking and gardening magazine focusing on the American West. Some days it was enough to just stand at the kitchen window and look out at my garden glowing a golden green in the afternoon sun.
