My Afghan garden

Contrary to some western misbeliefs, development workers like me are not living in tiny huts, attempting to go native in their free time. Instead, we live in normal houses. My house here in Afghanistan is from the 60ties or 70ties, painted green, with huge thin windows that let in a lot of sun in the summer and a lot of freezing air in the winter. The inside is covered entirely by carpet floor, and decorated with furniture from the seventies. Some time ago an expatriate, who lived in this house before, most likely in a sudden urge for beautification, decided to paint the living room in terracotta color. Its not quite terracotta, though. In sunshine, during the day, it's bright orange, and at night, when the room is filled with the dim city power light, it has the color of skin.
The house also has few amenities such as a micro wave that only works on generator, as public power is too weak, and a top-loader washing machine. I never quite figured out how to use that one, though, as they don’t seem to be that common anymore in present day Europe.

But what’s best about this house is its garden. It’s not big, but after my half square meter balcony that belonged to my flat in Vienna, it seems like pure luxury. Since spring time I had plans to work on this garden. It started with buying seeds for flowers and spices, at the beginning of the year back home in Italy, when Afghanistan was still covered in deep, grey snow. While it had twenty degree minus outside, the seed sachets got dusty in a shelf in my room. When sun came out again, and snow freed up tiny grass in the garden, and the first dandelion had already stuck their yellow heads into the sky, I remembered my seeds. I was just about to get ready for getting them into Afghan soil, these little messengers from back home, when I was surprised by a watchman who turned out to have a hung on gardening. In his fluent Dari and my broken understanding of Dari he expressed his love for flowers. With a broad smile he continued saying gul! gul!, meaning flower, and pointing towards the ground. Feeling pity that he couldn’t wander around garden shops and get all kinds of exotic seeds, I handed over the packages to him. Since then, while in the garden roses started blossoming, I have been looking out for the remaining of my few Italian seeds. Slowly but steadily they made their appearance, in between the roses and all the other green stuff that grows in the garden. Slowly but steadily, parts of the garden developed into a jungle.

But it was only today that I finally took charge of the garden, being inspired by the English garden of my friend. Though I knew that my garden isn’t quite an English garden, I was still taken by the wild mix of organisms in my garden that opened up in front of my close inspection: while the pepper was twisting itself up the roses, basil and geranium had become best friends; in the meantime, tomato bushes where creeping along the ground. Looking closer, I discovered purple eggplants behind the roses, and could smell rosemary from some distant corner of the garden. What should I say? I guess we should earn a certificate for truly mixed agriculture! Its too dark to take pictures of our little garden Eden tonight, but will post some as soon as it gets daylight again...