Mom's garden- A memoir

The garden is still there, though it has lost its old glory. Sitting on the seal of the backyard door in my parents’ house where I grew up, I had been thinking about the garden which used to see as a child. Many memories started flooding my mind. When we shifted to that very house, the place was still developing, and we sisters were little. The soil was very fertile.

The house where I grew up

 Whatever vegetables mom used to plant we harvest in abundance. The only plant mom never succeeded is pumpkin. I can remember that, only once mom got one small pumpkin.

Orange jasmine in the front yard

 

Small garden in the box window

Arabian Jasmine

Once a guava plant grew in our garden out of no where. Our gardener told my mom to keep that very plant. According to him, the seed came from bird’s dropping. The birds always eat the best fruits . So, the quality of the guavas would be excellent. And, he was absolutely right. We tasted many guavas from the market, but none of the guava tasted not even a little bit of the guavas from our trees. The tree used to produce so many guavas, that the whole neighborhood used to feast with our guavas. There were two children in our neighborhood, they loved those guavas so much , they always took guavas in buckets. However, after many years the tree became sick, and the quality of the fruits deteriorated. After much thought, mom decided to cut down the tree, and that made me sad.

We also had many papaya trees in the backyard. All the papaya trees used to give so many fruits, we again used to distribute among our neighbors. Being in a tropical country, we got so many tropical fruits from our back yard. Even my mom had banana plants also. Sadly I don’t have any pictures of those plant. That was the era before smart phones. 

Jatropha

Jungle geranium

Night Jasmine

In the front yard mom used to plant flowers. Every season we had different colors of annuals in our front yard. During the rainy season mom always planted Impatiens balsamic (local name Dopati), and those plants bloomed to their fullest. Still mom is known as the green thumb in the neighborhood. We had as many as six or seven hibiscus plant of different colors in our garden. The neighborhood people used to exchange plants. The funniest past was that, all the plants always thrived in our garden rather than in others’ garden. Mom’s garden was truly neighbor’s envy, owner’s pride. Once up on a time mom planted many annuals in pots and kept them on the wall of the roof. From the street our home used to looks different and colorful. 

Now as she is aging , she has no stamina or energy to work in the garden, though she does a little bit till now. However, that memories of mom’s garden still vivid in my mind.