Gulmohar

Gulmohar (Delonix regia)




I'm very lucky to live in a house surrounded by trees, and luckier that majority of them happen to be Gulmohar, my favorite flowering tree. In the flowering season, we get awesome views from almost every window in the house, including the bathroom windows. My favorite is the kitchen window where I have spent many moments enjoying cups of chai admiring the flowers with the squirrels and parrots to keep me company.

the flowers make for gorgeous bokeh too

the view from our balcony looking at our street

the squirrels like snacking on the silky petals

my baby likes it too

The cheery flowers never fail to put a smile on my face. My hard disk is groaning with the number of photos I have taken of these flowers last summer. The photos here are all taken from inside my house.

the individual flowers are stunning too

Gulmohar is from the Fabaceae family and flowers from April to July. It is grown as a street tree mainly for its ornamental properties. An Indian summer is incomplete without the flamboyant flowers.

This is my entry for orange at flower fest.

Purplicious

I'm so excited now that flower fest is back. Apart from inspiring me to go look for wildflowers, this blog gets a new lease on life.

In this round of FF, like the last time, I'm going to try as much as possible to send in entries of wildflowers. First up is purple and here are my two entries.

The first one is Wild Brinjal or Purple Fruited Pea Eggplant



Brinjal is a plant from the family Solanaceae, native to India and Sri Lanka. The wild plant has large prickly leaves and star shaped flowers that are white or purple. The Wild Brinjal has berry like fruit with tiny numerous seeds. This particular plant did not have any, else I would have scavenged some, as we like to eat it cooked with onion, tomato, tamarind and other Indian spices. I think the berries are used in Thai cooking well.


My second entry is the Crown Flower or Giant Milkweed from the family Asclepiadaceae.

Commonly found growing in fields and ditches, the plant has flowers growing in clusters with each flower containing five petals with a crown in the center.


The plant attracts small birds, a number of insects and butterflies. The flowers bloom throughout the year, but are abundant in the summer months. This type of Milkweed is native to India. I took these pictures on my morning walk.

I'm sending these to this month's FF.











PS I'm going to pretend like I've never been away!

Flower Fest - W for Wisteria

In May this year, I got to spend a delightful afternoon in the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. Despite the bustling tourist activity, I had a good time. While walking around the well maintained garden, with its manicured bushes, trees and stone sculptures, I spied these beautiful hanging Wisteria.

Wisteria is a climbing vine with purple-blue flowers that hangs down like a bunch of grapes. It flowers in the beginning of spring. We had plenty growing in our neighbourhood too, but it did not occur to me to take pictures. I was busy looking for spring wildflowers then!


Google tells me that this plant is not very popular as it is invasive and suffocates other native plants, which in turn affects wildlife who depend on these native plants for food.

This is my entry for the letter W at Flower Fest

Flower Fest - V for Vicia sativa (Common Vetch)

Another flower that I found growing, un-welcomed, on the sidewalk outside my house, is my entry for V. Common vetch, as Vicia sativa is commonly called, is a weed that grows on roadsides and fields. It is a small plant with attractive purple-pink flowers from the pea family.

I find the delicate plant beautiful to look at and love the tiny flowers. The leaves are a lovely shade of green growing on stems that taper off into tendrils. The flowers bloom from April to August and are very attractive to bees and butterflies.

This is my entry for the letter V at Flower Fest

Somethings Blue

Pacific Ocean near Big Sur

A Western Scrub Jay, in California

Pal Payasam -followed the step by step guide from Manisha!

Sunset on Lake Calhoun

I recently had the opportunity to go sailing in an old sailboat on Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis. I got a brief sailing lesson and did pretty well i.e. the sailboat stayed afloat and went in the general direction of land. That's enough achievement for a day, for me!


It was magical to watch the sun. It painted the sky in vivid colours as it slowly disappeared out of sight. My pictures don't do justice at all to the wonderful sunset I witnessed.
It was a glorious end to a beautiful day. Sigh!

Rhyming Road Signs in Sikkim

As it has happened with me before, my previous post triggered memories of a different set of pictures. I was reminded of a motor-bike trip I went on a couple of years ago. So, I went trawling through my folders and found some pictures taken from the back of a motorcycle while riding to Gangtok from Kalimpong. This was with a simple point and shoot camera before I owned a digital camera and a tripod. A few of them give a sneak peak of me in the bike's rear view mirror!

These pictures of road signs bring back a flood of memories. The wet roads, parts of it washed into the roaring Teesta River; the two of us on a motorcycle in the pouring rain; the vibrant green of the hills. I remember I was both anxious and excited. I was terrified that we would be caught in a landslide, fall into the roaring river and nobody would know what happened to us. Excited at the same time about the grand adventure I was having in the beautiful hills. I was thankful and amazed at how hard BRO (Border Roads Organisation) was working to maintain these roads.

This was a common sight with warning signs posted everywhere. The side of the road sliding into the river is know as sinking road. (part of Teesta River visible in the photo)

The road signs we came across kept us entertained on that treacherous ride.

Oh we tested the roads alright!