Christmas Memories

Although I am not Christian, I love Christmas. I have many memories from Christmases past. I have always loved the pageantry associated with Christmas from when I was a small child. It is a season of joy and celebration. A time for cooking and enjoying good food, community and decorating. The Christmas season encompasses all these plus it has such a magical air to it! I love the beauty of Christmas trees and decorations, sending and receiving Christmas cards, singing Christmas carols, Santa Claus, dressing up, giftgiving and parties. Of course not forgetting the most important reason of all being the religious significance of Christmas.

Going back to my childhood once again, my earliest memory of Christmas is when I was around 3 years old when we used to live in Los Angeles, California. I remember visiting my neighbor Heather, she used to live a few apartments down at the UCLA student Housing complex. She was about the same age as me. I have a vivid memory of her mother baking ginger bread cookies in the kitchen. Heather gave me a candy cane filled with chocolates. She was wearing a pretty green tartan dress with a pretty brooch of a miniature christmas tree studded with colored stones. I immediately fell in love with her brooch.

Later, we went to Heather's house for their Chrismas party. In the living room there was a huge decorated Christmas tree which was all lit up. Alll the kids were given gifts of little wristwatches.I have pictures of me at the party, unfortunately they are in my childhood album back in Kandy. I have to wait to post them to the blog at a later date.

We returned to Sri Lanka in December 1970 just before Christmas. We flew Pan Am and the inside of the aircraft was decorated for Christmas. On our meal tray there was a little snowman made of wood which I kept for the longest time. Our plane stopped for refuelling in Anchorage, Alaska, it was snowing, just perfect for the season!

In 1971 while we were living in the Gal Bungalawa (Stone Bungalow), Mahakande, our neighbors celebrated Christmas. They were known to my parents from their undergraduate days at the University of Peradeniya. Our neighbors also had just returned to Sri Lanka from postgraduate studies in England and the husband was on the Faculty at University of Peradeniya. While he was Buddhist, his wife was a Christian lady from Moratuwa. She was very nice, friendly and was an excellent cook. She was wonderful at baking cakes and all the Sri Lankan short eats such as patties, cutlets and rolls. According to my Mother, she herself learnt a lot about making short eats and cooking meats such as liver curry from our neighbor. That Christmas, they had the most wonderful Christmas tree with beautiful decorations brought from England plus twinkling electric lights. I remember some of the decorations were little christmas lanterns with a candle inside which I thought were gorgeous.

The next Christmas I remember is after we had moved to a 'C' bungalow within the main Campus of University of Peradeniya. At that time I was around six years old and our household helper Meenam revived my interst in Chrismas once again. Meenam was a young Tamil girl from a Tea Estate in Maskeliya. She spoke Sinhala quite well since the previous family that she worked for were also Sinhalese.That family was Catholic and they had two little girls. Meenam used to tell me stories about how they had celebrated Christmas. The father of the family had dressed up as Father Christmas ( Nattal Seeya) and had brought the girls presents and they had had a beautiful Christmas tree. After hearing that I wanted to have my own Christmas tree! So my father got me a Cypress branch and I was able to decorate a Christmas tree with home made decorations. My mother helped me to make the decorations, she drew a star on cardboard for the tree top and we decorated it with gold colored foil. We also used gold tinsel garlands. I don't remember specifically what the other decorations were but they were all cardboard cutouts covered with colored foil from chocolate wrappers. My brother and I were at Kandy Convent in Montessori at the time. Meenam used to wait for us till we finished. Coincidentally, it happened that while he waited for us, she saw the two girls (at whose home she worked previously) also at Kandy Convent.

In 1974 when I went onto Grade One we really got into the Christmas season at school. I remember we sang many Christmas carols. 'Kalakata pera e Bethleheme' was a Sinhala carol that we sang in the same tune as 'Mary's boychild Jesus Christ'. We also sang all the popular carols and Christmas songs in English such as 'Silent Night', 'Away in a Manger' and 'Santa Claus is coming to town'. Our Grade class teacher also decorated a cypress Christmas tree in our classroom. I loved the smell of the cypress. The deorations were not very sophisticated but it was lovely nonetheless.

As we prepared to close the term for the Christmas holidays, our class teacher who we called Bernie teacher told us we could send her a Christmas card if we liked. She wrote her address on the blackboard in English. We all copied it down, I wrote it at the back of my Maths book. Bernie teacher reviewed what I had written and made some minor corrections to the lettering. But she was quite impressed at how well I had copied the address in English, considering the fact that English was a second language at our school. If my memory serves me correctly, she took it to the front of the class and showed it to the other girls as an example of good writing. During the Christmas vacation I sent a Christmas card to Bernie Teacher. It was a wonderful surprise to receive a card back from her! It was a small handmade card made out of a beautiful textured cream colored card paper. She had pasted a picture of a pair of bells on the front and written inside the card in black stylised writing. I was so pleased to receive the card and thought it was so beautiful, it was very precious to me.

A few years after we had moved to Fiji, during Christmas 1978, I decided that my cupboard dollhouse deserved a proper Christmas celebration. Hence, I decorated a Christmas tree and fireplace with candles in the living room. All my dolls sat down to Christmas dinner replete with Christmas Cake in the ktchen. I was so excited about my mini Christmas scenery that I asked my father to take pictures of the scenes.

Below are the pictures :

Christmas in the dollhouse living room

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Christmas dinner in the dollhouse

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Around the same time, my mother was given a gift of a cookbook authored by Charmaine Solomon called 'The Asian Cookbook'. It was a huge book, a coffee table edition. It had beautiful full page photographs and she had devoted a whole chapter to her native Sri Lanka. In it was the receipe for 'Ceylon Christmas Cake'. For Christmas 1980 my mother tried out the receipe from her book. It was a knockout, that cake was the most delicious Christmas cake I had ever tasted! That began a tradition of baking Christmas cake in my family that lasted for over and beyond the next decade.

Around 1981 I visited my friend who lived in Fiji , their family was also from Sri Lanka. For Christmas she had a table top mini christmas tree decorated with colored baubels. Although the branches were made of plastic it looked wonderful. After seeing her tree I decided I had to get a plastic tree as well. So I went ahead and got the same kind of tree and decorated it with store bought decorations such as tinsel, colored bells and baubels.

In 1985 I moved onto Australia with my mother and brothers and I completed Year 12 of high school in Brisbane. As Christmas approached Christmas decorations were put out for sale. I spotted some reasonably priced packets of decorations at the Coles department store. They were made out of rigifoam and made in China. But they really looked nice. I bought some of those and also bought 'ribbony' Christmas baubles. Our father was working in Marshall Islands at the time. So for the long holidays in December we all joined him there. For Christmas I once again set up my mini platic tree and hung all the decorations I had bought. It was the most complete tree I had decorated to date. My mother made the Ceylon Christmas cake and my father decided it was excellent to distribute it to all his work associates. So my parents visited all of them and took them Christmas cake which they all loved.

My decorated Christmas Tree-December 1985

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Christmas Tree in front of City Hall, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia-December 1989

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At the end of 1989, I had finished university and I joined my parents and younger brother in the Marshall Islands. I bought another table top Christmas tree there. It was kind of pinus like and the branches looked like bottle brush.

After that I stopped decorating trees for a while. After I had come back to the US and lived there for a couple of years, one Winter I got the urge to decorate for Christmas once again. By then it was Christmas 2005. Every evening as I went home from work, I used to pass the '99 cent' store. There I saw these little Christmas trees which were real live pines. They had decorations on them as well and you could plant them after Christmas was over. So I decided to buy two of those. Then I searched the store for more decorations, I got tinsel, pointsettias, red bows and a red 'stocking'. I took them all home and decorated the fireplace with them. I also found a little Nativity Scene there which I placed on the mantle piece. I decided I needed more decorations so I went to 'Target' and got little glass baubels and a packet of assorted mini decorations to hang on the trees. My Christmas decorations were all up and finally I took pictures.

Below are the pictures I took. (Double click each picture for a closeup view)

Christmas 2005

Below are pictures of Christmas decorations at the 'Grove' shopping center in Los Angeles, California from Christmas 2008:

Notice Santa's Sleigh behind the giant Christmas tree.

(Double click each picture below for a closeup view)

Christmas tree closer view

Ginger bread house below

Christmas Tree at the '3rd St. Farmer's Market' next to 'The Grove ' shopping center.



This Christmas I won't be decorating , but I am planning to bake a scrumptious cake according to a Middle Eastern receipe. I will be using rulang (semolina) and cashews and orange juice in this cake. I'm actually supposed to use walnuts but I decided to make it Sri Lankan by adding cashews instead.

Halloween-updated with pics!

Okay, I ended up doing nothing this past Halloween, having dressed up for the past four years in a row.

Since I might cause a stampede if I posted pics of me dressed up as an adult. I thought the next best alternative would be to post some pics of me dressed up as a clown when I was a young lady of almost four in Los Angeles, circa 1970!

Be sure to double click the pictures for a better view!

During October I had been getting emails about Halloween parties in Colombo from the "Sri Lankan Nightlife Group" on Facebook. Just curious are any of you members of that group?

I've never been to a Halloween party in Sri Lanka seems like now its becoming part of the Holidays in Sri Lanka. Have any of you had the experience of dressing up for Halloween in Sri Lanka? I looked at the participants on the "Sri Lankan Nightlife Group" on Facebook for the Halloween event, looks like there are a lot of people from International schools. Does this mean that most of the Halloween dressing up crowd is younger i.e. teenagers or twenties?

When I moved to the States I was fascinated by the dressing up aspect of Halloween. So for a couple of years I dressed up as another persona.It was pretty fun to become someone else for a night.Here in the US most of the costumes seem to emphasize sexiness for women.I was wondering if costumes are available in Sri Lanka or do people have to make them themselves?

Ok- I have reposted- My Garden- a Story told in Flowers

Please take a look ! I have edited and reposted 'My Garden- a Story told in Flowers'.

It looks a lot better than when I originally posted it!

My sincere apologies-regarding My Garden posting

I'm sorry for the state of my latest blog posting entitled 'My Garden- a story told in Flowers'.

I hit the publish key by mistake and it was published in an unedited state.

I am working on correcting it right now and hope to get the final version downloaded asap.

My garden- a story told in flowers

Why I love Gardening
It is exciting to plant a rose cutting or sow some seeds in the ground and wait for them to take root and sprout leaves. It is even more exciting to see them bloom for the first time. Most locales in Sri Lanka are blessed with abundant rain which allows gardens to flourish in no time.

I have enjoyed taking a walk in the garden each morning or evening looking at the flowers, deheading the dead roses and flowering shrubs allowing them to grow new shoots and flower buds. It has given me so much satisfaction to enjoy the fruits of my labor.

A garden can be truly like an artist's canvas, where you are free to exercise your creativity.

Gardens promote peace and can be a great source of solace and stress relief. In my times of mental stress or turmoil, my garden has been something I have thrown myself heart and soul into and been rewarded in a positive way.

Note:

I have many pictures throughout this blog posting. Please double click on each picture to enlarge the picture for a better view.

Some views of my Garden after thinning and replanting - September 2009

My first experience with Gardening

My first experience with gardening that I can remember is when I planted a purple raja pohottu plant (globe amaranth) at our home at the University of Peradeniya, I was about six years old. The seeds I had obtained when we visited Sigiriya with a group of university students. My parents had been asked to chaperone a bus load of students from one of the girls' halls. It was magic to see how the seeds took root and emerged into a plant with blooms of its own.

Cottage style Gardening
I like to grow my garden in a cottage garden style. This means that my garden consists of a mixture of plants such as flowering vines, perennial flowering shrubs and roses, green leafy plants and flowering annuals. It creates an attractive but fuss free landscape of various shapes and colors.

My favorite plants tend to be those that have been part of the story of my life. Some of these flowers are what was in our garden when I was a child growing up in Kandy (University of Peradeniya), Sri Lanka. Other flowers are what I encountered at my grandparents house in Udubadana (close to Welimada).

When I visited my grandparents home as a child the flowers I recall were: roses, marigolds, jasmine, yesterday today tomorrow, dahlias and chrysanthemums. The climate at Udubadana was cooler than that of Kandy being at a higher elevation, and therefore was conducive to growing flowers such as roses.

Since we lived at the University quarters in Peradeniya our own home in Kandy had been rented out. It was not till 1996 that I finally had the chance to live there myself. My Mom had lived there before marriage and that was the house I was born in but we left when I was nine months old. During the time my Mother lived there, she had established a small garden. As a child I remember visiting the house on ocassion. On those visits I noticed that my Mom had grown lavender colored mini daisys and barbetons. However, with renovations of the original house in latter years the whole garden was destroyed.

On my most recent visit to Kandy in June 2009, I replanted the same lavender mini daisys and barbetons that my Mom had planted many years ago.

lavender mini daisys

Red barbeton flower

Red barbeton Barbeton plants in flower bed (bottom of picture)

Retablishing the garden in 1996

When we moved back to the house in 1996 I was eager to start a flower garden again. I began the garden with plant cuttings and seeds acquired from friends and relatives. The rest of my plants I acquired as small plants from nurseries. I made it a point then to bring back cuttings from my cousin's house at Udubadana of around five different varieties of roses.When we returned home I planted them straight in the ground (with another cousin's help) and they took root and grew into the bushes that they now are.

Roses from cousin
Below are roses that I grew from the cuttings from my cousin.

Magenta rose with an 'eye'



Magenta rose with an 'eye' -closeup view

Orange baby roses

Salmon pink baby roses. This rose has subsequently disappeared from my garden, having being overpowered by larger plants.

White baby rose with multi petals.

Why roses are my favorite flower

I would have to say that my most favorite type of flower is the rose. As a child living in Peradeniya in our garden there were roses which were of the 'common' variety. I for the most part prefer those common roses to the various bud roses that people grow. These common roses are quite hardy and only appear in a few basic colors like white, pink, maroon and magenta. I find that the smaller blooms of common roses have a beauty of their own. I do not like using pesticides or hormones which are essential for bud roses. If the insects come to eat my flowers I tolerate them or if I really need to I use soap water or spray them with water to stop them from attacking my blooms. I try my best to allow insects such as butterflies and bugs to enjoy the garden as much I do.

Below are the common roses I encountered during my childhood and which I now grow in my own garden.

Pink common rose

Pink multi petal common baby rose.

I was able to find this rose and plant it in my garden. However sadly it has since disappeared from my garden, a casualty of letting bigger plants grow unchecked. During my visit this year to Kandy I tried to find a plant or cutting of the same variety without success. I would love to have this rose back in my garden, it holds so much nostalgia for me.

Pink multi petal common baby rose

(close up view).

This is a Pink Common baby rose.

It was not around in Sri Lankan gardens when I was a kid. However, when I returned to Sri Lanka in 1996 I found it to be a commonly grown garden rose. It was so pretty that I made sure to incorporate it into my own garden.

As you might have noted from my earlier pictures in this blog posting, this variety of baby rose comes in dark orange and salmon pink as well. I got those colors from my cousin ( as you can see in the pictures above). However the pink is the most commonly found variety.

At the university house we lived in in the 1970’s there was an arch of climbing white roses that framed our doorway. In 1996 I obtained a cuttings of the same variety when I visited my cousins who lived at my Dad’s ancestral village of Udubadana and replanted the cuttings in our garden at Kandy.

climbing white roses

These magenta roses are multi petaled, and ramblers like the white roses above. I grew them from cuttings. I remember the roses that grew in my grandparents garden in Udubadana were similar except that the color was maroon.

Other common roses that I have planted in my garden are pictured below:

Light pink common rose

I obtained this planted from a nursery although it's commonly found in many Sri Lankan gardens.

Very light pink common rose- fades to a white color and has rectangular petals. I grew this from a cutting.

This is the same rose variety as it begins to fade to white.

Marigolds

I love marigolds as well, there are so many varieties. My favorites now are the bicolor dwarf varieties. I love the pungent smell of marigolds in addition to the variety of shapes and colors. As a child in Fiji I grew a big marigold plant in our back yard from which I would offer flowers before school each morning at the Buddha Shrine in our home.

These are regular size orange marigolds in my garden, they grow quite tall.

Yellow marigold

Dwarf bicolor marigold (click on pic for bigger view)

Fragrant Flowers

Other flowers I like and grow in my garden are fragrant flowers such as: jasmine (gata pichcha and saman pichcha), araliya, Hendrikka (4 o'clocks), dianthus(carnation) and ginger flower. Gata pichcha which is a jasmine that propagates as a runner was part of the hedge of the house we lived in at the Peradeniya University during the seventies. It had also been planted by my Mom's Grandma at our house in Kandy and continues to grow over forty years later. At the second home we lived in Fiji there were white ginger flowers that had the most beautiful smell. I had been looking all over to grow such a plant in Kandy and I finally found it in my Mom's Aunt's garden in June this year.

I'm sorry the picture below is very small. Click it to make it a bit bigger. This pic shows myself and my brother sitting next to the Gata pichcha (Jasmine) hedge that grew in the front garden of the Peradeniya University bungalow where we lived 1973-1975.

White Hendrikka (4 o'clocks)


This White Hendrikka plant was initially found at the bottom of the garden next to the well. It prompted me to go on a hunt for the other colors as well.

Yellow Hendrikka (4 o'clocks)

Bicolor-Yellow and Magenta Hendrikka (4 o'clocks)




Magenta Hendrikka (4 o'clocks)- has now disappeared from the garden but can be easily reestablished either using the tubers or black seeds.

dianthus(carnation) -Magenta/ White bicolor

Begonias and other Foliage plants

In addition to flowering plants, I also like plants with beautiful leaves such as begonias. I have finally realized that plants grow best in the ground rather than in pots, during my absence from our home in Sri Lanka , my cousins had taken many of my potted foliage plants and planted them in the ground where they had grown into hardy bushes. This time I was in Sri Lanka long enough to revamp the front garden and remove some of these bushes and basically to thin out the plants in the front garden where it looked somewhat neater.

This picture shows the garden initially in June 2009 in a ' jungle state'.

This second photo reflects the garden after I thinned out the plants, removing the leafy plants and leaving the flowering plants.

Grouping plants of same variety together

Finally, I grow any plant that catches my attention due to its beauty in shape and form. I like to grow different colors of the same variety of plants and group them together. I have done this with Pentas carnea which comes in various shades (white, lavender, red and pink) . I did the same type of grouping with Hendrikka (yellow, white, magenta, magenta/white bicolor and yellow/magenta bicolor) which is reflected in the pictures above.

Pentas carnea (white, lavender and red)
















Pentas carnea - pink (click on pic to enlarge)

Pentas carnea-white














Grouping plants according to Sun, Shade and Moisture needs

Through experience and some times trial and error I have learnt what kind of sun exposure and moisture each plant needs and I have tried to position each plant in the best suited enviroment. For instance, I have planted and grouped foliage plants and certain flowering plants that prefer shade or partial shade in shady areas and annuals in sunny areas. I have found that roses do well either in full sun or partial shade. Ground orchids, impatiens, today tomorrow yesterday and a kind of bell shaped purple flower and another trumpet shaped red flower with both have fleshy leaves all are flowering plants that prefer shade or partial shade.

On the left are the foliage plants and begonias that I originally grew in pots. In my absence my cousins had planted them in the ground. Some of them survived and grew into hardy bushes and even completely taking over parts of the garden. So much so that I had to thin them out and replant them in other shady spots in the garden.

Below are foliage plants (e.g. begonias) that I replanted in the ground in shady areas:

This is Episcia cupreata it is a trailing plant that has a beautiful red or pink flower, it can also be grown in hanging pots. It has several different varieties, in the picture you can see that some have dark brownish green leaves and others have light green leaves. (click on the pic for a better view)

Impatiens flowers of various colors growing in a shady area. (click on picture for better view)












Yesterday today tomorrow grows better in partial shade.














Light purple ground orchids in partial shade. This is the most commonly found ground orchid color in Sri Lankan gardens. Also comes in white but is less common. The white variety and light purple grown side by side look perfect together.

Dark purple ground orchids in partial shade. This orchid was obtained from a nursery but is no longer in my garden.

This is the bell shaped light purple flower with large fleshy leaves that grows in shade. I don't know what its called.

These are bell shaped red flowers growing best in partial shade. I would be interested in knowing the name of these plants if any one knows.

They make perfect companions to 'Poondalu' (impatiens balsamina ) the purple color of which you can also catch a glimpse of in this picture.

Flowering Vines

I have included flowering vines in my garden as they add a romantic touch to the whole setting, especially if they are trained to climb an arch. At one time I had several arches in my garden with different vines growing on them. However, in my absence they had been removed as the birds built nests in the vines and the nests in turn attracted snakes.

This is the pink antignon vine in my garden. I also had the white variety, the contrast of the two varieties together is beautiful. Unfortunately, the white antignon has since died out being less hardy than the pink variety.

This vine is called bleeding heart (clerodendron thomsoniae).

Below are pictures of the arches that I had in my garden at one time along with various flowering vines which had been removed in my absence since they said they attracted snakes.

This light purple flowered vine is called thunbergia grandiflora. It also has a white flowered variety which is less robust. (click on picture to enlarge)

This vine with white flowers is one that I obtained from one of the flower fairs at the Vihara Maha Devi Park in Colombo.

These vines are katarolu -here you see the light purple variety. In the background you can see the buds of the bright blue katarolu (clitoria ternatea). There is also a white variety. They spread from seed so if you are not careful they will take over your whole garden.

The following three pictures show the arches that I had built in my garden to run my floral vines on. The arches have subsequently been removed.

Purple flowers

In keeping with the cottage garden style I have included flowers that are purple in color in my garden as shown below: