Writer's Block and Other Stories

A writer’s block has no cure, I just found out. The old brain was mightily overloaded past few weeks. Work sometimes has that effect on me. Sometimes. And then the news of a wedding in the immediate family. Awesome news, that. I am missing all the excitement and action and my mother-in-law is certainly missing my help more, I am sure. My head has been wrapped in which sarees to buy. Never mind the tiny fact that most of my sarees come out of their hibernation two times a year, at best.

And tending to the garden. And lessons learnt. About soap. The story goes like this. Or should have gone like this. BigGeek calls me to tell me that the pumpkin plant is infested with black insects. I look. I know what they are. I get appropriate weapon of bug destruction. Ka-boom. End of bugs. Hello, pumpkin. What happened was I looked at the insects, I did not know what they were. I tried my trusty vinegar. They did not die.

I got angry. Really angry. And when The Dot gets angry, beware. She gets soap. I squirted good amount of Palmolive dishwashing soap in the squirt bottle, added a little water and went on the sprayed every bug and its egg with it. Which was pretty much every leaf of the vine. And then, because In was so angry, sprayed the eggplant plant and the pole beans and the cukes and the tomatoes. You get the picture. Next day I survey the warzone expecting to pick up dead bugs. But. I see dead vines. Almost dead plants. 19 to-be eggplants on the plant and 2 weeks later, only 4 survived. The pumpkin vine BigGeek has tried to tell me gently has passed on.

But I learnt lessons. It’s better to use insecticides than soap. And BigGeek, the day I went beserk with my soap spray had bought two insecticides for me to choose from. Bless his heart. And I scoffed at him and told him we grow stuff without damaging pesticides. Sigh. But, I have harvested over 30 cukes, 2 lbs of beans, 1 lb okra. 10 squashes, a few tomatoes, a few strawberries. Tomatoes are still ripening. There are three pumpkins on the pumpkin vine, no idea how they will fare.

What also happened in the past few weeks was that BigGeek went on his annual gadget-buy. He bought a ton of gadgets and we have spent all this time trying them out. A new DLSR – Canon T1i, a new prime lens for me – Canon 50mm f/1.4, which I love, love love. Zooms confuse the hell out me, I realized. A new set of Celestron eyepieces for the telescope I gifted him earlier this year for his birthday. And coupler rings and adapters to turn the above mentioned telescope into a gigantic lens.

In all this excitement, I even forgot that this blog turned 2. And it would not have without you. Your comments are nothing but encouraging. So, to show you my gratitude, I am going to filch an image of the moon taken by the BigGeek from our backyard last week. Enjoy and thanks for all the fish.