My Sister, the Gardener

My sister is a gardener. She likes plants. Plants seem to like her too. They bloom under her eye. Take for example the record sized eggplant she grew last year. It actually resembled a bulbous freakish purple monstrosity. I wish I could just show you what a terror it was, but unfortunately, I deleted the pictures she sent me of this monstrosity as they gave me seizures.

This spring she managed to germinate many seeds and transfered them into 80 pots. She will soon get her husband to transfer the potted plants to the vegetable patch in the backyard and the flowerbed in the front lawn. She grows her own veggies - carrots, tomatoes, eggplant, okra, or whatever catches her fancy. She also grows flowering shrubs - tulips, poppies (no, not for pot), geraniums, violets, azaleas, blah blah blah. You get the drift? Quaint, innit?
Below is a picture of a few of her tulips she planted around a lamppost in their front lawn.

I dare say, I contributed to this passion of hers in the beginning. In the summer of 2004, I went berserk with a rake and a hoe at the bottom of her backyard. I went on a digging and weeding rampage - uprooting veronicas, crabgrass, dandelions, and other weeds. I dug and dug, ripped dastardly weeds, stamped touch-me-nots, chopped at this random tree root that appeared out of nowhere, cut worms in two (just kidding), threw tufts of grass at curious squirrels ... basically did a very noisy job of helping to clear the vegetable patch. Then I helped her put some foul smelling manure, rolled around in it for a bit (just kidding) and helped till the soil some more.

By next summer, when I visited them again, all my unpaid for, free of charge, slavish efforts paid off. The veggie patch was blossoming. It was a modest success, if only the damned rabbits were taken care of. A neighbourhood band of rogue rabbits chewed all her veggie plants in the patch and made a general nuisance of themselves everyday. Even before i came, she put a low fence around the patch. But thieving wabbits being wabbits, jumped over the joke of a fence and continued nibbling away her plants and generally filling their greedy tummies. So every time we opened the backdoor noisily, out popped 4-5 wabbits in the air and quickly scattered away into the field beyond their fence. If it wasnt so damn irritating it was quite a funny sight. At one time, i went at them like a screaming banshee which scared her neighbours more than the damned rabbits. She soon solved the problem by putting a fishnet over the veggie patch.

If you notice in the background of the below pic, the brownish low fence in front of the white fence is the vegetable patch. To the right, in the back ground, the wooden stand was built by my brother in law to hold all her pots. A sort of artsy backyard functional garden piece. I guess. In the foreground are just 0.1% of her plants this summer. They will soon be planted in the patch in the backyard.

Before you think she is a homely gardener, let me inform you that she kicks ass in driving large manly equipment. She is licensed to drive large hydraulic CAT excavators, like this -

and CAT Motor Grader (model 140M) like this

and CAT Backhoe Loader (Model 420E) like this -

which all, if you ask me, look even more monstrous than the formerly mentioned eggplant.

She is also into sports cars. She drives this yellow mustang (notice, it has a very macho license plat no. that goes 'DREAMZ') -

She is likeable. doesnt bite your head off if you pry, a little irritable and sulky, but by and large a sensible, generous soul who goes about pottering around her house and her garden before she pokes her nose in other people's affairs. (This is a very rare quality in women. So, dont write off the magnificence of that quality.) She seems to like me. She brought me one suitcase full of goodies from the glorious nation of the United States of America. For this reason, I also like her.