Terra farmer has moved to a new home:) The new
address is http://kanak7.wordpress.com/
Would love to have all my blogger friends visit my new page!
Trying to get a firmer grip on 'green' in India's north east!
Terra farmer has moved to a new home:) The new
address is http://kanak7.wordpress.com/
Would love to have all my blogger friends visit my new page!
What's a blogger to do if Blogger is bent on not letting her format her
posts? Should I write on the Comments section or post the text
separately? I chose the latter even if it makes me feel somewhat
foolish it's better post than wait for weeks (maybe) for the technical
snag to vanish!
With thirty tomato plants firmly in the ground (in my backyard) and
some eggplants in several pots, there's hardly anything that I need to
do in my ribbony strip of land. So I headed over to my sister's house
yesterday to photograph birds. She lives in a neighbourhood that's been
inhabited for a longer period than mine. One look at the trees and you
know how ancient that place is!
It helped that a house in the vicinity was uninhabited, derelict, and the
once flourishing garden was going to seed. But as I stood there with my
camera with the lizards, and myriad butterflies all flitting on the blooms
of the most invasive weeds of our region, the thought of leaving certain
areas wild in one's garden made much sense to me. Although the birds
weren't many yesterday,there were wings galore. I even saw a bee-like
insect with vivid colours, one that I had never seen before.
As for the lizards (I'm posting only one photo), many of them seemed
to be happy basking in the reluctant warmth of a wintry sun. And the
lizard with Attitude almost seemed to say..."Come on! This is where the
eagles dare and I need to go back before they fly over and hang out on
that tall tree there!" And a fine specimen it was! Others paled into
insignificance beside her:)
Here's a list of what I photographed. There are many more photos but
I'm keeping those for two reasons. The first is that I've posted the images
quite a few times so I don't want to bore you with the same species, the
Pansy varieties, for example. The second is for the lean season:) If that
comes at all!!! So here we go............
1. Parrot pecking at a guava in my sister's garden
2. Eagle on a tall tree in the neighbour's yard
3. The same eagle
4. A sparrow-like bird commonly seen in gardens
5.Lizard with Attitude
6. Common Gull butterfly
7.Crimson-tailed Marsh Hawk dragonfly
8.One of the Satyrs
9.Plain Tiger butterfly
10. Another satyr
11. Common Castor butterfly
12. An unidentified bee-like bug
13. The same
14. Common pierrot butterfly
I hope you liked seeing some of the wildlife of this neighbourhood. Please
check out the last post for the images.
A must-do on the Darjeeling visitor's list is to watch the sunrise over
the magnificent mountains. The best view is from Tiger Hill which is
at a height of 8,515 ft. My niece took these series of photos of the sun
rising over Mt. Kanchenjunga, the third highest peak in the world.
The local name of the mountain means "Five treasures in the snow"
referring to its five summits all above 8,000 mtrs. The last photo
shows Pumili at the Flower Exhibition Centre at Gangtok in the
mountainous state of Sikkim. The photo just above was taken at the
same location. I hope you enjoy going through these images.
Although tea is grown in many areas of India, Assam and Darjeeling are the
most well-known the world over. The flavour of Darjeeling tea is unique and
is called the Champagne of Teas! My niece, Pumili, was there recently and
this is a photo that she took of a tea garden in Darjeeling.
Tea is grown at an altitude ranging from 600 to 2000 mtrs. The cool and
moist climate, the soil, the rainfall, and the terrain, all combine to give
Darjeeling tea its special taste. More about the different kinds of
flavour can be found here.