NOEL ELLIS' GOOGLE BLOG

  FAMILIARIZATION   LT COL NOEL ELLIS   30/VII/2021   As time goes by, Mynaaa is helping me recall handling babies. There was a time I used to be scared to pick up lap babies. When you got home on leave as a Lieutenant, I would first visit one Bhaiya and Bhabhi, who had just been blessed with a baby girl. Bhabhi told me to hold the little one, while she made a cup of tea. The earth under my feet moved as if there was an earthquake. This was totally unfamiliar territory. Guns yes, babies….? What if the baby did ‘susu’? What if I dropped her? This little girl gave me a smile as I took her in my arms. Clumsy, novice, untrained, call me anything but I held her very tight. I breathed a sigh of relief as I handed her back. Now there is another baby. She has to be carefully handled and familiarised with the house. This gal walks & flies behind you all the time. Drawing room is now well known to her. Most of the time when she is awake she spends time here. She has flown to every chair and

 

 

  REASON TO SMILE   The hummingbird vine has been an all-time favourite of mine. From one red vine we now have multiple vines. They have spread and spread so gracefully. This vine is the main stay to the ‘arch entrance’ to our lawn. They also adorn and entwined like a loosely knit charpoy of the olden days, on which our hanging pots are strung.   Once this vine got acclimatized  to our set up here, we have seen it grow inch by inch. At places we had to train the ends of this creeper. At places we had to tie them up with ‘sootli’. Some places we had to twist it around a bamboo support. Somewhere they had to be weaved through. This single vine now has become a thick mesh. One cannot make out which is the original vine because at most places the overhangs have been weaved back.   Tragedies do happen. There were times when their delicate tips ‘snap’ while weaving. My heart used to miss a beat. The clumsy hands didn’t know how to handle such dainty and fragile darlings. If lifted a wee bit

  From the ELLIS' GARDEN Dil Khush