Teeming

Post updated on Feb 27, 2015...certain corrections...

(Kindly look into the last para of the post)

A kind blogdost of who religiously promotes each and every post of mine just suggested the other day that i share with blog readers how i take my daily breaks to make my days interesting. i had just finished reading what he had to say and since i was in complete agreement to what he just shared i also felt like adding my bit into the comment box of his and thus the suggestion. i thought my blogs were evidence enough but if the motive behind all my blogs centering around the same topic was lacking then yes i take a break everyday from my mundane chores by turning towards that which gives me the most happiness and priceless self satisfaction. Call it farming / gardening whatever but i love working with the soil, seeds, plants... . It is hard work all that farming i do with the weather being muggy and hot but believe me i don't feel tired after having done what i had set myself in for the day. When i return indoors i am happier and energized for all that routine that comes later. 

Working with my vegetables/ plants is one of the so many ways i take my breaks.

 Listening to the music of my choice while sipping tea going through my favorite column in the newspaper is another, later after all my chores are done i love to watch a good movie. And by good movie i mean anything which makes me think and feel good about it later even after the movie is over. It could be an animated fairy tale or a fictional sci fi.  Some true stories like '' The Intouchables'' and not true stories also leave an indelible imprint like the movie called, '' The Words" starring Bradley Cooper, Dennis Quaid, Jeremy Irons and Zoe Saldana. Definitely movies based on true stories, documentaries and if nothing is available then of late these Pakistani soap operas that are being aired on this currently free Channel called Zindagi. i love the language happening in the serials. The Urdu interspersed with the Hindi in the dialogues and like to see manners so appropriately used in the language besides the stories feel fresh and nice too. Moreover i am a Gulzaar, the great poet fan so how can i miss seeing Kitni Girhain Baaki Hain. Translated i think it should mean , ' How many knots more to be untied '.

Point is i don't wait for my breaks to happen if and when they will in the form of a holiday of a choice destination kind . i take my breaks everyday. 

i do more for my daily breaks which i shall share later but first i must assert that the enzyme, the catalyst for all that basically comes from my first break ie my plants. i manage to finish all my chores and do all that plus more because i have already got my daily dose of vitamin green and mineral brown.

So the other day i walk into that part of my garden where i have my veggies...my kitchen garden. Tell you the truth we still have to get our daily vegetables from the market for what i grow either is not available in sufficient quantity or the daily supply is lacking. Heck i am a grower of another kind. i grow vegetables just for the thrill of it. To see the seed sprout into a sapling, become a baby plant then grow into a slightly bigger plant. Get super excited to see the flower the promise of the vegetable that soon it will turn into and finally to touch and feel that vegetable in my hand. When the size of the vegetable suits me delicately dislodge it from it's mother plant to happily fill it in my basket and gloat with the feeling that here is my vegetable that i have grown. Sometimes i let the vegetable just overgrow. Maybe out of sheer 'no use' factor and have it there hanging growing large and filling up with it's seeds. The seeds which make their presence felt through the skin of that vegetable. Okra for instance. You know what i mean. A large okra looking pimply all over. Or a gourd growing pale and rough...later perhaps the black seeds to be taken out and used as a body scrub...perhaps...

But in doing all this and growing just for the thrill of it i have come face to face with a lot of beautiful life which i never could have known existed. 

Who says only a jungle is teeming with life. Grow vegetables...especially gourd of all types and you shall know just your gourd patch alone will be an area which has species which might put an aquarium with all different colorful varieties of Pisces to shame. i tell you trust me had i not grown this bottle gourd and ridge gourd i wouldn't have known. Some i have been fortunate enough to take shots of. They are all here. And barring the grasshopper and that yellow wasp i don't know the names of any of these beautiful creatures. Perhaps one of it is a fly but i would not be sure. All i am sure of is that they are pollinators. In doing what they should do to survive they are helping my flowers which shall soon turn into those vegetable i can touch and feel then delicately dislodge and fill my basket one fine day.  

Some beautiful, metallic and shining like jewels on those green leaves or flowers of the vegetables detected the heat in my breath and just flew away leaving me in the lurch. No not in the lurch but the image of a wet and clear image of the beautiful yellow flower of the ridge gourd and that black something that was resting in it's underside.

 Just the other day i had seen a bumble bee the size of a black olive making quite a buzzing sound landing on this yellow flower of my ridge gourd. i saw it settle there and by the time i had released the shutter it had already buzzed off leaving me with the flower and some dark something whom i thought it better not to disturb. 

Another day the bumble bee that olive sized one returned but only to become a happy meal of a large Brown Headed Barbet. Too bad i was just too aghast with the whole scenario. And never did i anticipate that the Barbet would gobble the menacing sounding big black bumble bee. 

The camera just hung in my hand as a silent cry of shock Haaaaaaaa escaped my panting breath. God alone knows why i started panting. The Barbet then flew away to some other tree and i could hear it's satisfied stomach full Kruk...kuk...Kruk...kuk coming from some nearby tree.

Thank Lord Almighty for the squall which made a mess of my creeping, twining, wool zy greenery that i had to go that side to fix it and then get to see these tiny and colorful creatures for once in my life. Would i have ever noticed otherwise... that favorite Netherlandy orange fly past me and then settle down on the large leaf. Coral i call it my coral bug...what else can i call it. The body has a gloss and richness to it also. Looks harmless and so cute and when they fly past you they look like orange feathers drifting in the wind...

i saw then sitting snug inside the flowers too. Peacefully still, without a sound or movement. i could only take a clear look at it when it flew outside the flower and sat on the edge of the leaf. Wanted to take a pic from the front but every time i moved it would turn into a drifting orange feather. Finally i had to make do with what i could but i loved this beautiful living Coral.

i wish i had known this when my boy was a baby. Would have loved to teach him this poem too along with the rest that i taught him when his eyes would open wide with curiosity and amazement. But of course then i myself was sort of not that too liberal and kind with myself either. Maybe could not find that time to notice or feel what apart from my child gave me happiness. But it's never too late is it?  i picked up a beautiful one at http://littlestarslearning.blogspot.in/2012/06/who-lives-in-your-garden-poetry.html and for the time being i shall call it the quits beause the poem is just too beautiful. Maybe how else i take my daily breaks i shall continue with that in my next blog.

dated  27.05.2015:  i have had this great opportunity thanks to technology and Facebook in having a personal tete a tete with a Guru i had been seeking. The author of a wonderful book which has helped me identify many great wonderful beauties in nature i was blissfully ignorant of until now. His book i am sure must be helping so many others just like me. The book ' Common Indian Wild Flowers' by Issac Kehimkar.

So my Guru tells me the Barbet would not have eaten the Bumble bee or the Blister bee which also i had seen the other day ...because Barbets are fruit eating birds. In my this blog i have mentioned and i think in retrospect that i did not see the true picture. A vegetarian cannot become non vegetarian just like that. It could just be my imagination. Apologies for such wild imagination for hearing the crunching sound and imagining the brown headed Barbet to have gobbled the big black bumble bee. All it could've actually done would be to chase...and the bee would've vanished and i thought the crunch i heard was of the bee being made a meal of. Thought that just like Sarus and the so many cranes maybe Barbets are omnivores too. So much for ignorance.   

And for this enlightenment once again i am very grateful to my Guru...Mr Issac Kehimkar on whom i now latch my hope for some timely help. To guide an ignoramus like me from making such blunders in future... i humbly beg and hope...