Yesterday afternoon I was reading Slice of Life posts and in the background, I was hearing the steady noise of something breaking. For some time, I did not notice it, then I wondered what was happening. There are three flowering plants in front of our house. The yellow Allamanda is a beautiful flower. We call it Lambana in Kannada. It reminds me of the gramophone . On either side are the yellow Karavira plant and the Mandara plant. These are Kannada names 😊. The sounds I heard was the breaking of their pods due to the heat. All the plants around us are in a sorry state. A building is coming up behind our house. Concrete mixers and other vehicles keep going up and down the road and there is so much of dust flying about! Green leaves are now brown leaves. They have to wait till the rains start to get a good bath 😊.
Many years ago, my father planted a dwarf variety of the areca tree in our garden. The leaves are very thick. Last month, on the 3rd , I noticed that it would flower soon because there was a slight swelling on one side. On the 5th, a cover could be seen above the swelling. On the 11th I was delighted to see a bunch of small flowers. But it will be two or three months before we get the fruits. We give them to whoever needs them. Areca is grown widely in many parts of Karnataka and for many agriculturists it is one of the staple crops. My husband’s family has been growing areca for generations. So, we thought it would be nice have some in our garden.
After reading the newspaper about all that is happening in Ukraine, I sought solace in the plants and birds around me. It is good to hear the birds chirping and twittering. The tone and the level of the sound is different for different birds. I wonder what they are saying 😊.
T M Krishna in his book, A Southern Music says, Music in nature is not Nature’s music. We say music of the birds, but for the birds it may not be music. Music is a human activity, a conscious expression of life defined within the human sphere.
Mukhamani 
Comments are welcome :)