Essays

Last Sunday woke up late in the morning as usual and to my surprise I found a lot of activity in the park Next door.

Ours is a silent colony and the presence of trucks and vans next to the park seemed a rare sight indeed. At First I assumed that the hustle and bustle could be due to some cleaning operation by the .municipal department.

On colorful observation I discovered that these vehicles were .carrying hundreds of pots filled with plants. These were no ordinary plants too. They were pots with vegetables growing in them.

The kitchen garden association had organized a competition and entries had come from various parts of the country. For the first time I witnessed plants that were grown in nurseries where gardening enthusiasts had been conducting a research on how to improvethe quality of the vegetables.

As a result the exhibition had vegetables with labels showing when they were planted and also how to plant them Tomatoes, cauliflowers, spinach, chilies, potatoes, cabbage etc were exhibited.

Most of them looked much more fresh and larger insize than the vegetables available in the market. The proud owners of the plants were setting up their stallsat the exhibition.

Soon the whole park looked like a vegetable and fruit bazaar. The only difference was that the vegetable were not plucked.

One could, however, buy the seeds of these vegetableand also learn how to plant them. There was free advice being given by the vegetable growers.

Fruits like apples, cherries, guavas, papaya etc.could be grown too. This I learnt from the organizers but I In only hitch was that the weather in Delhi is not real conclusive to the growing of all these fruits.

I asked the entire family to come and-see the exhibition as for myself; I was extremely excited with the idea of buying all those seeds and planting these vegetables in my own garden.

Today when I walked in my garden I checked on these and to my delight I found that the tomato and papaya

Plants had reached well above the ground.