Garden Adventures!

There's this thing about urban balcony gardeners like yours truly - our lot feels anything and everything that works in real gardens that grow on mother earth can work in our flamboyant potted gardens, which may well mean a collection of three 2-inch pots of money plant.

One of the things that excites our kind is... hold your breath, I mean it literally... manure! So when a local FB forum featured a post about Dehydrated Cow Poo Pellets a friend and I immediately decided to make a trip to the flower market to acquire them. Armed with the new hygiene arsenal of masks and sanitizers we braved the crowds and heat and humidity to buy a full kilogram of these nutritious pellets for our prized potted gardens. Mind you, these poo pellets came not from ordinary cows; these were cows from Holland!

There's something odd about us "urban raised but spent vacations in rural areas" kinds, or so say the completely rural chaps. The latter cringe when we call cow poo fragrant. The funny human brain associates smells with incidents, people and circumstances, and often smells are not outright good or bad. Why would a smell that reminds one of zero homework, unlimited mangoes and a carefree month ever appear to be bad?

Well so, the fragrant pellets tumbled out on the floor of our tiny balcony from the relatively flimsy plastic packet once I opened it. They looked tidy enough so my hands reached out to gather them like I would gather beads when I remembered that I did have gardening gloves that I ought to make use of. I realised they had to go into some kind of container so they wouldn't keep tumbling down, or transform into their more natural form in this humidity. What better than a cola pet bottle, I thought, it would make applying them to the potted plants pretty easy. So out came a cola bottle and a makeshift paper funnel. Few pellets went in pretty easily. I felt proud about my ingenuity.

Then started my misadventures of the decade. The pellets stuck inside the folds of the paper funnel. I tried freeing them. In the process a few tumbled out from the packet on to the floor and some particularly adventurous ones rolled over into a few drops of water and immediately rehydrated themselves into their real form. As I stared at that gooey mess in horror a big lot tumbled out of the packet. I decided to breathe deep (that was oddly difficult with so much fragrance around), focus hard, and get the job on hand done. After 20 minutes of hard labour most of the pellets were safely inside the bottle - except that the powdery remains in the packet had managed to take a free flight and coat the walls and flooring well. It took me a good hour to tidy the mess and get things under control.

As the place got tidy and I heaved a sigh of relief two truths of life dawned on me. Firstly, smells cannot be tidied, not with the best of chemical cleaners. They linger on for days reminding one of one's misdeeds. Secondly, cow poo isn't fragrant... not in the least!

It was time for the husband to be back from a hard day at work. I closed the balcony door tight and turned on the AC, and sniffed to ensure nothing stank.

"Switch off the AC, I want some fresh air!" he said. "No... it's too hot" I mumbled. "My nose is stuffy, I can't even breathe, please switch the AC off!" came the reply. "Oh, so you can't smell anything?" I couldn't hide my relief!

I managed to keep the misadventures hidden from him till the next morning. When I told him, he didn't seem pleased. This is not something anyone would wish to hear on a weekday morning just before leaving for work. It did seem an effort for him when he faked a cool and composed walk towards the balcony. I didn't know what to expect. What if he asked me to throw away the precious bottle? I held my breath, pun not intended, and then came the most unexpected!

"Wow! It smells just like vacation!"