This isn't just any public park in yet another residential locality. The plants you see in the picture has each a story to tell. But their collective story began on Ugadi day last year. When two green entreprenuers in Mysore - Anil Kumar and Ashwin Upadhyaya - chose to launch their company -
Sapgreen - at this public park at Vijayanagara-II. The enterprising duo chose the venue, brought the saplings and requested the invitees to plant them. It was a unique way to
inaugurate their company.
This was how the park looked on the inagural day (April 7, 2008) The invitees included several neighbourhood school boys who use the park to play cricket. The ground was green, because of seasonal showers during those days. When we -
ERR and I - re-visited the place this morning the park looked drab and dry.
We were however pleased to see a touch of green on the tufts of the 10-month old plants, coming up in an orderly row. The tall one in the foreground, a
neem , was planted to celebrate the day my grandson Sidharth started going to play-school. Sidharth goes to school at San Ramon, California; and the
neem we planted to celebrate the occcasion is nicely coming up at a public park in Mysore.
Here, his grandma planting the sapling in Sidharth's name on Ugadi day. Maybe we made a big deal of his pre-schooling. But then any event in the family is a cause for celebration for us. Besides, it gives us a pretext to plant a sapling. If every other person in a neighbourhood were to mark every family event - be it your children's birthday, your wedding anniversary, your daughter's graduation day, your son's first job placement, or his first trip abroad, India visit of your children based abroad - by planting a sapling in their backyard or on pavement in front of your place, we could turn the neighbourhood green.
I persuaded tree-lover ERR to pose with his sapling, a mahagony. Among other notable Mysoreans who planted saplings on Ugadi last April were veteran journalist
Krishna Vattam and
Snake Shyam.
This isn't just any public park in yet another residential locality. The plants you see in the picture has each a story to tell. But their collective story began on Ugadi day last year. When two green entreprenuers in Mysore - Anil Kumar and Ashwin Upadhyaya - chose to launch their company - Sapgreen - at this public park at Vijayanagara-II. The enterprising duo chose the venue, brought the saplings and requested the invitees to plant them. It was a unique way to inaugurate their company.
We were however pleased to see a touch of green on the tufts of the 10-month old plants, coming up in an orderly row. The tall one in the foreground, a neem , was planted to celebrate the day my grandson Sidharth started going to play-school. Sidharth goes to school at San Ramon, California; and the neem we planted to celebrate the occcasion is nicely coming up at a public park in Mysore.
I persuaded tree-lover ERR to pose with his sapling, a mahagony. Among other notable Mysoreans who planted saplings on Ugadi last April were veteran journalist Krishna Vattam and Snake Shyam.
5 comments:
Sir
It is indeed an unique way to celebrate our family event.I would like to visit this park.
ashok Uchangi
http://mysoremallige01.blogspot.com/
Wish the trees and their care-givers happy years of growing! Living in a concrete jungle, all I try to practise is - to gift a potted sapling on occasions - to recipients who I know will not think it strange, or a bother.
Dear Sir, Its really nice to know that people in Mysore are trying to green their city - in Bangalore we only sit and watch them bring down more trees with each passing week. I had a few suggestions about planting:
1. It would be important to provide shade for the saplings and some sort of protection from grazing in the first year or two
2. It might be better to plant in the monsoon - June onwards, than in the dry season now. You will have better chances of your sapling surviving in the monsoon.
In fact, it might be a good idea to collect some seeds that are available on trees now - sow some in your garden or pots, and plant these seedlings in the coming monsoon seasons when they are about 2 ft tall.
Warm regards,
Soumya
Tress we planted with the help of Ashwin at Our Gokulam park are coming up really well.
The Blog crticle reminds me to take apicture of the trees at the park.
A young man who was also an avid golfer found himself with a few hours to spare one afternoon. He figured if he hurried and played very fast, he could get in 9 holes before he had to head home.
Just as he was about to tee off an old gentleman shuffled onto the tee and asked if he could accompany the young man as he was golfing alone. Not being able to say no, he allowed the old gent to join him.
To his surprise the old man played fairly quickly. He didn't hit the ball far, but plodded along consistently and didn't waste much time.
Finally, they reached the 9th fairway and the young man found himself with a tough shot. There was a large pine tree right in front of his ball, directly between the ball and the green.
After several minutes of debating how to hit the shot the old man finally said, "You know, when I was your age I'd hit the ball right over that tree."
With that challenge placed before him, the youngster swung hard, hit the ball up, right smack into the top of the tree trunk and it thudded back on the ground not a foot from where it had originally lay.
The old man offered one more comment, "Of course, when I was your age that pine tree was only 3 feet tall."
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Thought I'd share this little story here.
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