Wind Travel

You learn so many new things when you do a photoblog. I found these things on the ground, on my way home and brought them home and clicked pictures.

 The next step was to find out what these things were called. Since I click a lot of insects,my mother thought these were some insects, at first. A Google image search didn't yield any useful information.

Till we posted it on Facebook, and got into an informative chat with our friend Sangeeta Khanna who is a veritable practicing plant encyclopedia herself. Turns out that this is the dispersing seed of the Calotropis plant, called Crown Flower in English, Madar in Hindi, as well as Rui, or Aak. (Another FB friend Anand Amembal also identified it for us , as the same plant ).   And the various parts of this Rui plant are of great medicinal value , in healing wounds, and migraines and many more things.

The seeds of this plant are dispersed by the wind. And basically, I interfered with the process. :-(

(Thank you Sangeeta Khanna and Anand Amembal)

 Clicked on my Canon EOS 1100D

Burning Away The Evil.

Holi, the spring harvest festival, has many origins and meanings.  It signifies, the advent of spring and the end of winter.  It welcomes the season of color. It is also associated with the burning away of evils, and has several stories associated with it, relating to the Demoness Holika, who had a boon that made her fireproof;  she grabbed her Godfearing nephew and sat with him on the pyre, only to get burned to a crisp herself, while he survived it all.   

We celebrate Holi by having a symbolic burning  in our building compound.  And we use only dried deadwood and branches already fallen to the ground. No trees are ravaged. Holi is also celebrated by playing with colors. (Rangapanchami).

 Holi is celebrated at the end of the winter season on the last full moon day of the Indian lunar month Phalguna .

Clicked on my Canon EOS 1100D

Burn !

Burn !

The full moon watches it all through the trees and flying cinders.

These are actually the emanating sparks in long exposure....

     At the end , a fire slowly dying down,  and the burnt wood in its skeletal glory .

Smooth as silk....

The trouble with buying things in supermarkets  versus  your friendly neighboring vegetable vendor, is that you end up buying all kinds of stuff packed well, but with no life, as such ... 

Saw some baby corn in the local daily market yesterday . Along with some broccoli. Bought some to do a stir fry with greens. 

When I peeled the baby corn covers, these tresses of corn silk spilled out.  Real golden silk. 

Clicked with my  Canon  EOS 1100D...