NOEL ELLIS' GOOGLE BLOG

💜DIL Khush 💙

                              MOVIE VS NURSERY   LT COL NOEL ELLIS 28/II/2024 A journey which started with five pots has now turned into a hobby very close to my heart. If anyone gives me an offer to go for a movie or visit a nursery, I will choose the latter. The economics of a movie versus a nursery is simple. A single person will spend at least 1000 bucks plus petrol and parking to watch a movie and the price triples if you are a family of three. In that amount the number and varieties of plants you can buy is self explanatory. The pleasure of a plant/flower may last for three days, three months, maybe three years or more. A movie, max three hours. In a nursery every flower and plant is a hero or heroine unlike a movie. Villains are common, like pests and weeds. There are just a few Actors and Actresses which you see over and over again in different roles in movies. Here, there could be one plant, in multiple colours, shapes and sizes. Their colours are far more than the emotions th

 KOEL on our terrace, DIL KHUSH💜

  OLD FRIENDSHIP NEVER DIES   LT COL NOEL ELLIS 26/II/2024   When I woke up this morning and scrolled my social media, a new friend request caught my eye. It was from a person called “Vinny Khinda”. His face was so familiar. It must have been forty years or more since we met but I recognised him straight away. His photo made me drift into nostalgia. It was in the City of Palaces, Kapurthala, Punjab, where we grew up together. Vinny was my younger brother's age, about eight years junior to me. They were neighbours of a classmate of mine who stayed right across the school main gate. Through my classmate, I met Simmy who was our age and was Vinny’s elder brother. Friendship was a bond we cherished. I had become a Captain in the Army and had just purchased my first 100cc motorcycle called TVS Suzuki. One day, I met Vinny on the ‘Thandi Sadak’, which the Mall Road was generally called. He challenged me to a race with his not so old ‘Bajaj Chetak’. I took the bait. The Post Office Buildi

  PANCHAYATI   LT COL NOEL ELLIS   19/II/2024   There is a typical Marwari word called ‘Panchayati’. It has nothing to do with any panchayat or its near abouts, but is the best source of information, catching up on the latest news, views, rumours, evidence, opinions, interpretations, assessments, understanding, insights or to get an idea of something the other person already knows but reconfirms. It is a harmless chat, a polite tête-à-tête, a conversation between individuals or a group of people. Topics could include canards being spread on WhatsApp, the maid, the government, and any topic on earth, if it helps kill some time. What is the outcome of Panchayati? No one knows but here in the Suncity, it is a way of life. One can get sucked into that discussion rather you get addicted without realising it. Let me give you a few examples of Panchayati. I was standing in line to withdraw cash from an ATM. The man ahead of me had put his card at least ten times. I was getti

Hollyhocks makes my DIL KHUSH💖

  LOVE IS IN THE AIR   17/II/2024 LT COL NOEL ELLIS   Love is in the air will not be an understatement in this month. Valentine's Day has just gone by and its after effects continue. Not only in the human world but in flora and fauna also. Koel’s are back in business with their magical, melodious, heart-warming calls. Doves are already busy gathering twigs for their nests. Bulbuls are carefree and enjoying life as usual. A black butterfly was hovering on our ‘dwarf orange’ and ‘lime plant’. The orange plant has only ripe fruits and the lime plant has fresh buds erupting. The flowers need pollination and her reason to visit is understandable. Why was it not landing on the flowers? I had a little idea of the purpose of her visit. She had come to lay her fruits of love called eggs. Caterpillars love to munch on citrus leaves. In a few days time, we should see some pupa developing. Last year, they almost chewed up all the leaves and destroyed the plant. This year I chan

  Hibiscus called SOUL CONNECTION DIL KHUSH 🤎

  BANDI   LT COL NOEL ELLIS 16/II/2024   There was a time when we went through ‘Note Bandi’. Inconvenience besides, they were tough times. The nation sailed through. The second time, we didn’t even realise it. Then came ‘Vote Bandi’, for a party which is walking up and down the country. The nation existed then, exists today and shall continue to exist. Maybe, many shades better and keep improving. Recently we witnessed a kind of ‘Coat Bandi’. There were changes in the Naval Mess dresses. Change, they say, is inevitable and is being incorporated in the forces. Let us welcome it. In between there was ‘Langot Bandi’, pun intended. Our ‘Langot Dhari’ ever winking Baba, who twisted his body and churned his stomach to make Yoga so popular, now sells health care products. Suddenly, he is no more in the limelight. His langot has been fastened too tight it seems. ‘Cash Bandi’ is already in vogue. I don’t like to carry my wallet anymore as you can pay with the mobile for a pin

  MY VALENTINES   LT COL NOEL ELLIS 14/II/2024   During our last visit to the Demoiselles Crane view point at Guda Lake, we befriended the caretaker of that forest rest house. He is a friendly person. However, the view from the rest house is shielded by trees surrounding it. He had given me an input of an unusual bird which I wanted to click. It is better to go to another complex about hundred meters away from this guest house for crane watching. Action takes place at the break of dawn, when the Pujari feeds about “char man dana” daily, (grains of Maize), the staple diet of our Khurjaa the Cranes.  It was bright and sunny and ideal for photography. The caretaker’s words about that bird echoed in my ears. To catch it this time, I mounted my Bullet and moved towards the lake. As I was driving down, I had a change of mind. There was another lake not far from there. Why not shoot at two places, if time permits. Last year, around the same time, I spotted a Mama Coot, sitting on its floating

  INDIAN JUJUBE   LT COL NOEL ELLIS 13/II/2024   As I attended to the garden in the morning our vegetable vendor gave a call. “Madam ji ber le lo, sev ke barabar”. Mam please buy some ber as big as an apple. He called it ‘Sev Ber’. My wife asked me if I would like to try them. It was an affirmative from me. All of us have got our hands on ‘Ber’ in our childhood. What fun it used to be collecting them from under the bushes. Small roundels, ranging from green, to yellow, to dark brown. The darker the shades the riper they would be. The ber bush could be as high as your knee. At places it would be as big as a tree. The only hitch used to be its thorns. It was an ideal place for birds to nest and frolic. For us kids, who were on a look out for anything to eat, there could be no better fruit to find. Most of the shrubs would be laden with fruit when in season. A stone, a faggot, even your own PT shoe was thrown at the bush. In case one could walk to its base without getting

  PINCHING   LT COL NOEL ELLIS 12/II/2024   Do not let the title mislead you. It is very much part of the hobby called Gardening. Maintaining a garden is a continuous process. You learn, unlearn, re-learn, try to learn, try out what you learnt, avoid trying and sometimes take a chance. Mostly, you learn without actually realising it. While some lucky people have ‘green fingers’. Gardening runs in our family. ‘Plant exchanges’ between relatives were so common, rather a ‘right’. Those days they used razor blades, knives, or even pinched shoots to take a cutting. I remember Dad used to explain to us the method for getting better quality and bigger flowers. For that I implicitly recall, he would keep one bud per stem, especially of Chrysanthemums and Dahlias. The results used to yield giant sized blooms. We never paid heed then. What I remembered was how we used to pinch bottoms of our classmates in kindergarten. Girls had an advantage with sharp nails, unlike the boys. One

  Pollination in progress on the Straw flowers Dil Khush 🧡