This beautiful rangoli made from dry coloured rangoli powders and flowers is from a Rangoli competition in a Chennai street.

This rangoli is made using jasmine, oleander, roses, marigolds, rice, grass and earthen lamps with wick and oil.

Daddy said: "to be happy, be like a flower which attracts butterflies, bees, lady birds and gentle people."

"A flower doesn't have to rush about in order to make friends. It remains quietly where it has grown and sweetens the air with its fragrance. "

"God gave this power to flowers and gentle people."

~ Ruskin Bond, To Live in Magic

This flower is blooming in my garden, though I don’t know the name. I’ve seen it in shades of yellow, rust, orange, maroon, white and pink.

I call it the paper flower because of the crisp, papery texture of its petals. These make lovely dry flower arrangements. There is no need to dry the flowers. They last forever in an arrangement, minus the water.

This ornamental garden tree/shrub is a common sight in India. Winter is the time the fruit show up and ripen. Around Christmas, a Kumquat or Chinese orange tree, as it is better known is the gardener’s pride.

For those who don’t have open gardens any more, this shrub does just as well as a bonsai.

The fruit makes great marmalade, and tastes great even when squeezed into a glass of water with sugar, rock salt and a pinch of roasted cumin powder :-) Ayurvedically it is a good digestive and cleanser for digestive system, much like neembu-pani (lemon juice replaces kumquat in the above recipe).

The fruit though hardly seen in a fruit market is appreciated by garden owners and their friends, who get them as gifts at times.

It is a no fuss tree. It grows with minimal care. Just water and a few handfuls of organic manure is all it asks.

A walk in Richmond Park this summer was more than refreshing. Flowers that we generally find blooming in winter in North India, were all too happily blooming here right now: dahlia, salvia, nasturtium, calendula… Bangalore weather and flora doesn’t stop surprising me!

"Every person is a God in embryo. Its only desire is to be born. "

~ Deepak Chopra