Gardening and Bollywood

Saturday, Evelin and I finally got the garden started. We cleaned dead leaves and other remnants of winter from the beds, added some good Canadian soil to last year's carrot bed, and planted edible-pod snap peas in three of the beds and spinach in the fourth. (The fifth bed is home to our garlic until at least July, I think.)

We also filled up the seed tray with our tomatoes and peppers. I also bought two aquarium/plant lights for the fixture I lowered in the basement. The seeds have a warming pad below and a good-spectrum light above, so hopefully they'll turn into a bunch of solid seedlings.

In ameliorating the soil in the spinach (née carrot) bed, we discovered that the fig had been sending little tap roots up into the bed.

After pulling up a bunch of little hairy roots from the soil with the rake, I sawed though the earth about half a meter outside the box to cut through any bits of the fig that wanted to get into the good garden soil.

Elsewhere in the garden, there are signs of life on the raspberry canes and the strawberries are coming back out front. The garlic looks like it made it through the winter without any trouble, as did the rosemary and lavender.

Other signs of life are evident: crocuses are everywhere; tulips, daylilies, irises, alliums, and other bulbs/tubers are poking up new shoots; the primroses and pansies have signs of life again; and the trees are budding. Soon, spring will literally flower ... and then well be swimming in pollen and cicadas.

That evening, we rented Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (कुछ कुछ होता है, Something Happens) [ IMDB | Official Site ], which I've been wanting to see for a while, but it hadn't piqued Evelin's interest. This time, she picked The Awful Truth (which costars Cary Grant, Irene Dunne, and Asta, the dog from The Thin Man series) and then made the mistake of saying that she didn't care what movie I picked ...

Kuch Kuch Hota Hai ran a bit long in some segments (particularly the flashback to college that ran for most of the first hour of the film), but overall it was great and we both enjoyed it. I can see why it swept the Filmfare Awards in 1998 (best film, director, actor, actress, supporting actor, supporting actress, screenplay and art direction).

Now if I can just convince Evelin that she'd enjoy Aśoka ...