Today’s post is a homage to the humble sweet potato and the sometimes snarky bitter gourd, growing on my terrace farm. Here they are…

Sweet potato harvest – always a happy day for carb loving me!

My five karela plants and their weekly harvest of bitters!

After harvest, I usually waste no time! And as I ate my sweet potatoes (the way I like them, sliced in roundels and fried in butter!) and karela (cooked in spices in all their palate challenging glory!), I felt immense gratitude. Nature, like life, gives us the bitter and the sweet – and yes, everything in between too! It takes a fair amount of living on this blessed planet to acquaint oneself with the sweetest of experiences, and then brace oneself through the most bitter of them all. And it takes not just living, but a fair amount of self-reflexive, spiritual insight to understand how interrelated the two are, learn to take them in stride and, after a while, really value all that life, and Nature, throws our way 🙂

For the record, there is much more growing (and coming my way!) than just the bitter and the sweet! There’s a bunch of radish from winter’s crop – tomatoes, chillies and beans. Some pix…

Radish, Tomatoes, Chillies & Beans – the in betweens!

And for all of this, any farmer would be grateful 🙂

My marigolds say “Thank-You”!

(Photos Courtesy: Chetan)

Until the next post, possibly about the long-awaited figs from my fledgling fig tree, I wish you happy growing and gratitude for all that comes your way!