A Winter in India

Winter is over. It is getting hotter by the day. The flowers are in full bloom. We went to a spectacular garden on Sunday, the Mughal Gardens next to the President's House. India's President is a physicist/poet named A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. He gets to live in what was the British Viceroy's House, pre-Independence, a huge place with a 163 hectare garden next to it. This garden is open to the public only one month per year, and just opened this week. Lavish beds of annuals and roses, along with waterways and fountains. The bad part is, no cameras are allowed. So just to give a hint of it: the top photo is Itimad-ud-Daulah, a "small" tomb in Agra across the river from the Taj Mahal. This photo was taken by Kate back in December, and you can see me, Rob and Dave, and flower beds with no flowers. The second photo was the same place when Lee and I were just there on February 13. In six weeks time the plants are now tall and covered in blooms and butterflies. Bottom left are huge dahlias at Purana Qila, a Fort here in Delhi, and bottom right is the early morning sun streaking through the trees at the Taj Mahal, with hibiscus bushes in the foreground. So, put all of those together, magnify it a hundred times and you have the Mughal Gardens. One part of the garden is the Circular Garden, that is concentric circles sunken into the ground and surrounded by a circular wall about ten feet high. Along that wall were dahlias at least eight feet high with stems an inch in diameter. The center circles were beds of astounding colors, one bed purple, the next bright pink, the next orange, each a different kind of flower. Another part of the garden is a walkway under a red sandstone pergola that is maybe 60 feet long. To each side were beds of roses, all in bloom. We were sharing the experience with several thousand Indians, Sunday being a major day for outings of extended families and this being the first Sunday the garden is open. The colors of a thousand saris against the colors of acres of flower beds was spectacular.