HAIRCUT TIME

LT COL NOEL ELLIS

19/X/2024

I like to keep my hair short. If you can hold the hair on your head in a fist, it is definitely time for a haircut.

The ‘Olive Green’ blood in the system is one of the factors to keep your hair ‘comb free’. No offences to ‘baldies’ please. A slide of your hand on the head and hair should be done. Period.

‘Subhash’ was our barber when I was a kindergarten kid. A middle-aged man, who used to come home to do the honours on his bicycle. I used to ‘detest’ haircuts. The ticklish feeling and getting goosebumps when he would use his silverish ‘Khach-Khach’ machine to trim your hair on the neck was the only enjoyable feeling.

Moment, he used to take out his ‘Ustra’, all hell used to break loose. Many times, I would jump off the chair and run away with half a haircut done. What scared me the most was when he would hang a leather attachment nailed to the mango tree under which we sat for the cut and sharpen his razor on it. As if he would be culling us thereafter.

Those days, we did not have disposable blades. Dad would pin me to the chair. I would go stiff as a stone and Subhash would finish his job. He was paid five rupees and a cup of tea and bear with my tantrums.

Be that as it may, I am going to talk of a different sort of haircut.

The garden too sometimes needs one. When and how much to cut is the biggest question? Should the branches be snipped, trimmed, pruned or hard pruned? One learns with experience. However, to maintain some sort of ‘discipline’, one needs to size the plants at regular intervals.

A few plants after a trim go into shock too. Sometimes, one does it in the wrong season ‘ignorantly’. Sometimes, the overgrowth has to be trimmed as it overshadows other plants which get starved for sunlight. At times, to get additional branching and more blooms this ‘chop-chop’ drill is necessary. Rest is your luck & skill to keep the plants well groomed.

Most of us have a fear or are superstitious that a flowering branch should not be trimmed. Well, that is not the case. If a plant has to be trimmed, it should be, without thinking too much about an emerging bud on it. Most of the time after a trim, many new branches emerge. There would be many more flowers to enjoy. ‘Dil thora kadak karna parta hai yaar’.

Having pruned them, the air flow within the plant and fall of sunlight increases. This improves the overall health and beauty of the plant. Yes, if they have been recently manured, then pruning should be avoided. Its cycle of absorbing nutrients from its roots and requirement of chlorophyll from its leaves have a mismatch, thus harming the plant.

This year we had a bumper flowering season of ‘Portulaca’, ‘Purslane’ and ‘Cinderella’ plants generally called ‘office flowers’ or ‘10’o’clock flowers’. They were grown from cuttings and within days they were flowering. Home made leaf compost did its job well and soon enough they had multiple shoots with flowers jutting out beyond our expectations.

Since May, they have been flowering continuously and now have reached a stage where their tips do not show any buds. Their stems have grown quite thick and hang haphazardly giving the pots a little shabby and unkempt look. The whole pot arrangement looked a little unwieldy and undisciplined. They definitely needed a ‘haircut’.

There were umpteen buds about to flower. Snipping selectively wouldn’t have helped. At their base, fresh shoots were already emerging, which was a hint that it was time to give them a clip. The new shoots looked weak, as the bigger shoots were dominating. For new ones to grow and flower well before the winters set in, it was time to give them a crew cut from as close to their base as possible.

All the trimmings have gone into the compost bin and will return as food for them by December.

The awkward looking and overgrown pots now look ‘titch’. The freshly snipped stems were washed with water and sprinkled with dry mud. This will take care of the liquids oozing out from the cuts and act as an antiseptic for the abrased parts. Soon, they will heal and just below the cuts there should be new shoots emerging to flower.

To find a job in the garden is like a homemaker finding things to do at home.

By the way, I could just hold the hair on my head in my fist. Does it mean that I too need a ‘snip-snip’? I wonder!!!!!!

JAI HIND