office gardens

I guess I have a soft sweet side and like my forefathers I too would like to get back to the soil. Plant fruit bearing trees, live off the soil, grow crops, run a farm, ….screeech… bham, crash.. ok. Back to real life. The only bit of gardening I have ever done is watering my two bamboo shoots that I got as a gift.

There is a photo of my lovely office garden. Oh yes… it’s a garden with a fake freaking peacock and a giraffe. Pretty corny.

 

 

In Dubai we had a huge gallery. It connected all the rooms. We loved it. Dad used to do the gardening in there. We had plants and flowers, and like good Dubai citizens, we even grew cactus there. It seems we also had potted plants inside the house. Dad was asthmatic and once he had an attack someone suggested to keep the plants outside the house. I guess it helped. So we only had plants in the gallery and not in the house. I guess the fertilizer and the other stuff was good for him. I would like some life around my house as well. I keep asking Jasmine to have a few plants around the house. Sure she says. She would like them too. But Jasmine is the practical kind of person. She knows what it takes ot have plants. Her next one is always, who will take care of them. That’s one more thing to take care of. And then when we go out of town who will water them.

I like to invent things in my head and try to get practical inventions all figured out in my head to solve real life issues. I have dreamt of a water tap with real tiny holes that my neighbor has to simply connect to the tap once a day to water the plants. Of course my neighbor isn’t really around most of the time. ok…connect the pipe to the tap in my house and have only a trickle flowing all the time through the tiny holes watering the plants whole day? Whatever… but of course plants require much more than water. They need a bit of tender loving care, fertilizers, pruning, cutting, etc..

I was once gifted a bamboo shoot, about eight years ago. I ignored it thinking it doesn’t need too much water or care. Slowly it just died out. I never bothered again. Then this time I got two shoots in succession as some gift. So I decided this time to water them regularly. It is a part of my morning routine to water them. When I go on leave I give it to someone else to water. Now I feel pretty cool about them.

Over the last few weeks, I have been really busy, going directly for meetings, not coming into my office for a few days etc. I saw that the shoots were not taken care of. You can see the yellowing of the leaves. I then decided to cop out. When the guy in the office came into my cabin to give me my bottle of water I gave him the job of watering the plants every day. So there.. my tryst with gardening lasted a few months. It’s nice to have a garden and get someone to do the gardening.

Now I think the next thing I want is some lemon grass growing in the office. I have to figure a small enough pot than can stay on the window sill and yet grow grass. It would be pretty cool to have a visitor come over and offer some fresh lemon grass in their tea. That would be pretty cool. And of course, all I have to do is get someone to water it. I think they grow pretty fast and wild like that only. I will have to get someone to pot them. I don’t even know how to repot grass. There are things that urban life has ensured I don’t learn. Gardening and kite flying is something I wish I knew.

Hell – possibly some day…