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The Jacaranda tree is in full bloom with blue -violet flowers





Spring is here in Gurgaon with cool mornings and evenings. What we call, beautiful weather. When spring comes with a tinge of cold, rather than an abrupt change from cold to hot, the colours are vivid and rare beauties bloom.




The above flower is called bachelor button and it is mostly blue in colour.




More bachelor buttons among pink flocks

The iris lily forgot to bloom last year as the summer came swift and strong. But this year one eagerly awaited the blooms hiding inside wrinkled leaves of the lily.




Young Iris bloom



Full bloom Iris Lily

But the highlight of the early spring is always the appearance of Common jay butterfly, that streak of blue in flight, but whose underside blends well with the surroundings, with hardly a hint of blue.



Common Jay resting on the kitchen garden hedge.



Common Jay in flight

The Blue pansy also appears sucking in wet mud and taking a break on the Ashoka leaves



The crowning glory of the season this year, was of course our own blue cricket team who lifted the world cup after 28 years!

My camera is not good for taking photos in the night. But I was determined to freeze my experience of watching the "super moon " rise over the apartment buildings near by house.



Super Moon, 2011

But what I am sharing with you, is not this bad picture but the thoughts that raced through my mind as I focused on the super moon, which was at its closest point to earth on 19th March 2011-"14% bigger, 30% brighter".



The Cosmic Dance

The above Ikebana arrangement is taken from an exhibition held in Gurgaon on 29th January, 2011. The theme was "symbolism" in Japanese Ikebana. This evocative piece by Gayatri Dayanand was titled "The Cosmic Dance". Nice mixture of Japanese symbolism and Indian thought, I said to myself. But it looked like a 'wreath' you present at funerals and so I had no intention of publishing it anywhere. How wrong I was! As I watched the super moon rise, I felt like asking the moon to place a wreath on Japan.

I also remembered the beautiful "Bonsai" garden of Renu Vaish in Kapashera(near Gurgaon) which the members of our Kitchen Garden Association visited on the fateful day of 11th March, 2011.





Images of the Japanese Bonsai garden, clicked just one hour before the earthquake struck Japan on 11th March, 1.04 PM, IST.

I am ending this blog with a photo from the ShantiStup in New Delhi.



Nichirin Buddhism, Shanti Stupa, New Delhi

Writing this blog has been cathartic for me. So, thank you, all of you who have had the patience to go through it.