Vanishing gardens and my winter Oriental lilies 

Most home gardeners like me have been in despair the last couple of years. Well tended and deeply loved gardens have been going astray not due to any fault of theirs’ or of the poor flora and fauna! It is as if the doom’s day of climate change has arrived in such an alarming fashion that most are left guessing as to what will hit them next! Severe heat, incessant rains or freezing winters! Gardens are in shock! The stable weather that the gardeners and their gardens knew and trusted has been missing to be replaced by erratic and unimaginable degrees of weather that have frozen or burnt away their plants with the unusual patterns of heat, rain and cold!

There was a time when all of us worked to a calendar of dates and months when we planted seeds and saplings, with very little variance. And Mother Nature would reward us with blooms and bounties of vegetables and fruits without fail. It seems that those comforting times when one was sure of the produce are gone forever!

Take the last two years for instance. The rains came as late as August when it is usually the time for them to recede. So intense heat that preceded the monsoon, burnt most plants. It was pathetic to see heathy plants with singed leaves and flowers.  No matter how hard one tried by sheltering them the temperatures and the humidity destroyed most prized plants. The worst hit were the hybrids who in any case are more complex to cultivate.

The other face of gardening is to take losses of plants one has grown to tenderly care and love in one’s stride and carry on valiantly. But this year’s summer was worse. Leave alone the poor plants, even human beings were finding it hard to carry on. The intensity of the heat , close to 50 degrees Celsius became a nightmare! It is in those low periods that I gaze at my collection of pictures of my garden in happier times!

I am sharing some snaps of my Oriental lilies here from a couple of winters ago! They do well in early and receding winter. Exotic and pretty they command pride of place in any garden or vase. They delight the senses with their fragrance and beautiful resplendent petals. Surely a thing of joy that lasts forever, even in memory. For one is now hesitant to get ambitious and aspire to having them in the garden. With unpredictable weather, they are fit to only be flown in to places like Delhi from cooler, more stable climates to decorate vases, not to be grown. Till we meet again, my beauties! 

This blog is part of #BlogchatterHalfMarathon challenge 2024

@blogchatter