Geranium in a Pot

India · nature

A cluster of pink geranium flowers rises from a small pot of dark earth, the round scalloped leaves below, a strip of pale wall behind. The everyday balcony flower at its best.

Pelargonium — the geranium of every Indian balcony — is the most reliable flowering plant in the subcontinent's pot-garden tradition. It tolerates heat, accepts neglect, flowers for most of the year, and produces these umbel-shaped clusters of pink, red, or white that sit on top of the foliage like small bouquets. The scalloped leaves give off a faint pepperish smell when you brush them.

This pot was sitting at the edge of a terrace, with the wall of the terrace running pale and slightly streaked behind it. The flower head had four or five open blooms and as many tight buds, the whole cluster held above the foliage on a single thin stem. I shot close enough to crop most of the wall out, with just enough showing to anchor the pot in context. There is a particular dignity to the small flowering plants that someone has tended on a balcony for years. They are not glamorous. They are also not negotiable. They flower. They keep flowering. They are the gardener's slow ongoing argument with the climate.

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