My mom has a green thumb. She loves plants and plants love her. I remember the days we used to have dinner on the terrace of our old house and her picking out the leeches from the orchid plants with her bare fingers and dropping them into the coconut shell with rock salt in it. Did I mention with her bare fingers? Yeah, that’s how she rolls. While we never had a large edible garden in our balcony, she always had some herbs, okra, brinjal, curry leaves, and green chillies sown somewhere around.
Now we have very little space around our house in Kottayam but she still manages to squeeze in maximum stuff. The plot is only 8 cents (that’s how we measure in Kerala) including the area the house is on, half of which is tiled, so there’s very little soil area.
Yet, she has green chillies..
There’s nothing like the flavour of fresh green chillies. Nothing! Ok, except fresh coriander leaves. But that’s the only exception, really.
She has tomatoes. Whenever she makes sambar, she just steps out of the house and comes back with a fresh tomato in her hand to drop it in. Oh man! Check out her fenugreek leaves sambar in which she used freshly picked cherry tomatoes from her garden.
Any self-respecting malayali (aka mallu), even pseudo ones like us, has to have a coconut tree in their backyard. So we have one too. Just one, but it’s more than enough as you can see. Many of these coconuts will end up in mom’s popular thick coconut garlic chutney that goes really well with her adai dosa.
This papaya plant has a story behind it. Long (a bit longer than I’d like) back when I went on a college trip to Ooty, I brought back some seeds from a roadside seller. That’s right, papaya seeds. He claimed its for seedless, hybrid, short papayas that are red inside and I, of course, believed him. Although it turned out nothing like he described, Amma swears they taste “different”. She loves me, that mother of mine!
Bananas! But of course. This is njaali poovan. And I am too lazy to find out what its called in English.
Bougainvilla. I hear that these days, bougainvilla are no longer considered fancy. But I love them. Amma says if you give them some good dried cow dung, lots of sunlight and enough water, nothing is as low maintenance and they are so pretty. Sadly, she only has about 4-5 pots now and this orange is a rare colour.
Ah. Drumstick leaves. They are painful to prepare before cooking and smell horrible when raw (or is it just me) but you gotta love them drumstick leaves. Check out this drumstick leaves rasam recipe to see what I mean.
Betel leaves aka vetta. Although we don’t have any ‘chewers’ in the house and we are not very religious back home, amma loves having this around. That’s the base of the coconut tree, btw, next to which she also has curry leaves.
These are my doing, these basil shoots. Thanks Deeba! Amma is helping me take care of them because I knew for a fact that without sunlight, I’d kill all the ones I try to grow in Singapore.
Any self-respecting malayali (aka mallu), even pseudo ones like us, has to have a coconut tree in their backyard. So we have one too. Just one, but it’s more than enough as you can see. Many of these coconuts will end up in mom’s popular thick coconut garlic chutney that goes really well with her adai dosa. This papaya plant has a story behind it. Long (a bit longer than I’d like) back when I went on a college trip to Ooty, I brought back some seeds from a roadside seller. That’s right, papaya seeds. He claimed its for seedless, hybrid, short papayas that are red inside and I, of course, believed him. Although it turned out nothing like he described, Amma swears they taste “different”. She loves me, that mother of mine! Bananas! But of course. This is njaali poovan. And I am too lazy to find out what its called in English. Bougainvilla. I hear that these days, bougainvilla are no longer considered fancy. But I love them. Amma says if you give them some good dried cow dung, lots of sunlight and enough water, nothing is as low maintenance and they are so pretty. Sadly, she only has about 4-5 pots now and this orange is a rare colour.Ah. Drumstick leaves. They are painful to prepare before cooking and smell horrible when raw (or is it just me) but you gotta love them drumstick leaves. Check out this drumstick leaves rasam recipe to see what I mean.
Psstt.. this is our neighbour’s tree. But they share. In fact they insist we share. True story.
Betel leaves aka vetta. Although we don’t have any ‘chewers’ in the house and we are not very religious back home, amma loves having this around. That’s the base of the coconut tree, btw, next to which she also has curry leaves. These are my doing, these basil shoots. Thanks Deeba! Amma is helping me take care of them because I knew for a fact that without sunlight, I’d kill all the ones I try to grow in Singapore. 
Happy weekend y’all 😉
Hi Naga, lovely post..brought back so many memories for me:-) We lived in our 42 cent plot with the house in the centre, and had lots of backyard when I was in my 9th-10th std, and we had a big vegetable garden apart from the flowers and other stuff in the front yard. Mango trees, chikoo tree, gauva tree, papaya, the jambaka from sig's blog link u have given, curry leaves, green chillies, coriander, pudina, tomatoes, pumpkins, bitter gourd, ladies finger, payar-long yard beans, the drumsticks and drumstick leaves, jackfruit, of course coconut trees, etc etc..oh how I miss everything! Just today morning I asked Amma to bring tender jackfruit to make curry (she will reach Mum end of month) from our current home (which is also coincidentally an 8 cent plot incl the house in it). Do have a look at these pictures I took from home when you have time:
http://picasaweb.google.com/s.shrey3/Flowers#
We love our bougainvilla too:-)
Keep posting:-)
Shreya
Nice and lovely post…
Thamburati – your next post should be on how to make those coconut candies to suck while reading such posts! Not fair that only you get to eat them.
This is so lovely – I was never into plants and trees much before we bought our house last year. We have a huge guava tree in our back yard and had about 350-400 guavas this season – I distributed it to everyone I could think of! Got some more on my counter right now! We planted a few more trees and are taking care of those like my other kids now.
Good luck on your basil shoots! I hope they grow big and flavorful and you can make some basil pesto and I can drool at it!
🙁 🙁 🙁 Now you are making me all sad.
🙁 🙁 🙁 Now you are making me all sad.
Beautiful clicks.My mom also loves plants.Pass some coconut candies for me also
Those are some lovely pictures.We used to call Bougainvilla- paper flowers(not sure why) and it used to be in pink in my grandmom's garden.That is a lovely post..Enjoyed thoroughly!
I loved the tale and photos of your mom's garden! 🙂
superb post Nags….great to see that garden..even i dont like the smell of raw drumstick leaves.but its great when cooked with daal… beautiful post and wonderful mom.. 🙂