Leela's Garden & Kitchen

  Hi everyone - I have taken a long time to post and I am sorry for that. These purple flowers are aster and we are enjoying them. There are many varieties of aster and this is the single petal variety, which means that it doesn't have as many petals as the double petal variety. But it is still pretty.  Shilpa went to Lowe's and got tempted by the fall vegetable plants. She bought and planted cabbage, kale, collard greens, and broccoli. She is like me that way. It is hard to resist buying plants!  This is the bell pepper that we had to harvest before it turned orange because it looked like it was starting to go bad.  The persimmons are finally ripening but Suresh has been complaining that we have not gotten as many this year as previous years.  This is sorakaya, or bottle gourd. This plant was growing since the springtime but did not produce fruit until the fall. Shilpa wanted to pull it out but I am glad she did not because we got three bottle gourds. We made a...

 We are enjoying lots of pears and figs from the garden now. Our pears aren't what you typically find in the grocery store and have a thicker skin. Some would say they are hard and fibrous. But, I like them peeled as a snack. Sometimes if it has rained, we eat the figs right off the tree. Summer in Alabama means it rains almost every day!        We are also enjoying watching hummingbirds - Shilpa bought some new feeders that stick on the window and now we see several hummingbirds almost every day! We didn't see many hummingbirds at first but now they seemed to have learned this new spot where they can find nector. We also put some bird feeders on the window, but we haven't seen any birds come eat yet.      

We went to blueberry picking on a Sunday morning around 7. There were plenty of blueberries even though it is getting late in the season. We forgot to take a photo while we were picking so we took these photos after we finished picking. Sushma made vegan blueberry muffins and they were good.      One of our projects over the past few months has been growing an avocado tree from the seed. Once the plant got 4 or 5 leaves, we planted it in a pot. It is growing well.   We finally got an eggplant. The first flowers fell off and did not turn into eggplants. I am excited to see eggplant growing in our garden. We are also getting some beans and our cucumbers are continuing to produce 1 or 2 cucumbers per day. Unfortunately our squash plants got killed by the squash vine borer and Shilpa had to pull out almost all the plants and kill the bugs. We are starting to plan our fall garden now. We went to Botanical Gardens yesterday morning. We ha...

Shilpa grew some yellow squash and cucumbers and we are enjoying eating them.  The dahlia are blooming so big. A lot of sunflowers came. We have all sizes of sunflowers.  This is a photo of me with a cute small one that we got.  My friend Meena gave me malabar spinach from her garden. In Telugu it is called bachali aaku .  The white flower is hibiscus in our garden and Meena also gave me the seeds for that. We went to see Meena and Narayana's garden and they have so many varieties of flowers and vegetables. I was happy that I had given them some plants a while ago like the Lone Star Hibiscus and  gongora  (a type of green leafy sorrel used in Indian cooking). Seeing their beautiful garden motivated us to grow more things. My husband thinks we are already growing too much. But that does not stop us.  I feel sad that I cannot do very much in the garden any more because of PSP. I can only pick leaves like gongora or fr...

We love that our garden is bursting with flowers right now! Sushma planted a bunch of bulbs at the mailbox a few months ago, and they've finally bloomed.    Gladiolus   Lily We've also been enjoying our squash plants. They've had lots of flowers and we're starting to get some good squash veggies! Shilpa has been very vigilant in squashing all the cucumber beetles to make sure our crop is good.   Our first squash   We are so proud! Shilpa even made some a yummy snack of fried squash blossoms stuffed with cheese and herbs, yum!   Squash blossoms   Final product We're looking forward getting some cucumbers, beets, and tomatoes next.  With lots of love,  Leela

We have been gardening a lot, especially Shilpa! It's getting hotter so we have to wear hats and go into the garden early in the morning. Sushma came and stayed with us for two weeks and we loved having her at home.  For mother's day the kids surprised me with a hammock. I have been laying down every day in the hammock. Sushma made me sign a contract before giving it to me to make me promise that I would not try to get in or out of it without help. I fell down once from a hammock in Cancun, Mexico when we were there for a wedding. I never thought they would buy me a hammock because it was really scary when I fell that time. It hurt so much I thought was going to die. The magnolia buds finally bloomed and the flowers smell really nice. We brought a flower inside and it smelled good but it turned brown quickly so I think we will enjoy the flowers on the tree instead. We had our first harvest of radishes that Shilpa planted. We enjoyed radish chips and pickle...

This amaryllis flower is one my favorite things in the garden. We were carefully watching it and waiting for it to bloom. It smells so good.   It was my birthday on April 20th and Suresh got me these tulips. I was very happy because they reminded me of when we were in Holland in 2017 for the tulip festival.   We have a rose bush with lots of pink roses and this is one of them.  Yellow and white iris came too. 

Even though I have a hard getting around now since being diagnosed with PSP, I'm happy to say that I have re-started my garden with the help of my oldest daughter, Shilpa, and my sister-in-law, Padma, both of whom have been quarantined here due to the COVID pandemic. I'm excited to show you all the new developments! Shilpa and Padma bought tons of seeds from the dollar store, including marigolds, spinach, cucumbers, and tomatoes. The marigolds have been planted in the corners of our raised beds to help keeps pests away. And, it looks like we'll have lots of tomatoes this summer! Check out these seedlings. We'll transplant these seedlings soon into one of our raised beds.  One of our French sorrel plants has bloomed and now has lots of seeds for us to plant. We absolutely love French sorrel in our house, and often cook it with spinach and dahl in the tastiest Indian curry. Here are some pictures of the seeds - aren't they pretty?  We had a lot of work done ...