NCERT Solutions for Class 9th English Chapter 3 Canvas of Soil (poem) — Reflect and Respond

Book page 86–87 Updated on2026-09-08

Q1.

I. Work in pairs. Discuss what all you see in a garden. Think of the colours you see and where you see them. Share your responses with your teacher.

Answer

The question has two halves, and the second is the one that is usually missed: not only what colour, but where that colour sits. Organise your talk that way and it becomes a description instead of a list.

What a good answer needs: at least three levels of the garden (ground, middle, above), a named colour for each, and one or two things that are not plants at all — a garden is also light, sound, movement and the people in it.

Where you look	What you see	The colours there
Underfoot	soil, gravel path, fallen petals, roots, earthworms after rain	brown, near-black where it is watered, grey stone, rust
Low down	grass, creepers, marigold and portulaca beds, a row of bricks along the edge	many greens at once — pale, apple, olive, deep pine; orange and yellow of marigold; red brick
At eye level	rose bushes, hibiscus, tulsi and curry leaf in pots, a hedge	crimson, pink, white, the dusty green of tulsi
Above	neem or gulmohar branches, a creeper on a trellis, the sky through the leaves	dark green in shadow, gold where the sun strikes through, blue and white above
Moving	butterflies, dragonflies, bees, sparrows and a squirrel	yellow, orange, iridescent blue-green
Made by people	a bench, a tap and hose, a watering can, a nameplate on a plant, a compost pit	painted white and red, weathered wood, green plastic

Sample answer: “In our school garden the first thing I notice is that green is not one colour. The new leaves of the money plant are almost yellow-green, the tulsi is a dull grey-green, and the mango leaves are so dark they look black in the shade. The colours are arranged in layers: brown soil at the bottom, then a low band of orange and yellow marigolds along the border, then the red and pink of the roses at knee height, and above everything the deep green of the banyan. The brightest colours are always at the edges — where the light falls. And the garden changes colour twice a day: at eight in the morning everything is fresh and light, and by four in the afternoon the same beds look darker and heavier.”

Why the book asks this before the poem: the poem you are about to read does exactly this exercise in verse — it names “Shades of green, red, and blue” and places them: seeds in the earth, blossoms in “the morning light”, the whole plot as a spread canvas. Doing it yourself first means that when Maya Anthony calls the earth a “palette”, you already know what she means.

Q2.

II. Look at the picture of a garden and a painting given below. Speak about any similarities between the garden and the painting. [The illustration on page 86 shows, from left to right: two paintbrushes and a rectangular paint box holding twelve colour wells (pinks, reds, orange, yellow, greens, blues, purple, black); a watercolour landscape painting of a bare tree, green and purple hills, a waterfall and a rainbow; and a line drawing of a garden with a sun, a leafy tree, sunflowers, daisies, shrubs, birds, butterflies and a dragonfly.] Speak using the following: • Just as a garden ______________, similarly, a painting ______________ • A garden and a painting, both ________. • ______________ is common to both a garden and a painting. • Like a garden, a painting too __________.

Answer

Work through the four sentence-frames one by one; each demands a slightly different kind of sentence, and using all four gives you a complete short talk.

Frame	What it asks for	Sample sentences
Just as a garden ___, similarly, a painting ___	a parallel action	Just as a garden is planned before it is planted, similarly, a painting is composed before the first colour is laid down. Just as a garden grows out of bare soil, similarly, a painting grows out of a blank canvas.
A garden and a painting, both ___	one shared quality	A garden and a painting, both need patience, and neither is finished in a day. A garden and a painting, both are made by human hands out of natural materials.
___ is common to both a garden and a painting	a shared thing, a noun	Colour is common to both a garden and a painting. A frame or a boundary is common to both — the edge of the canvas, the border of bricks round the bed. Light is common to both: neither can be seen without it.
Like a garden, a painting too ___	a shared effect on the viewer	Like a garden, a painting too makes a person stop and look, and calms them. Like a garden, a painting too looks different depending on where you stand and how the light falls on it.

Sample answer (spoken as a short talk): “In the picture the paint box on the left holds twelve separate colours, and the garden on the right holds just as many — the yellow of the sunflower, the pink and purple of the daisies, four or five different greens, the blue of the small flowers at the front. Just as a garden is planned before it is planted, similarly, a painting is composed before the first brushstroke is made: somebody decided that the sunflower would go at the front and the tall tree at the left, exactly as the painter decided where to put the waterfall. A garden and a painting, both take time, and both can be spoiled by one careless hand. Colour is common to both, and so is light — the sun in the garden drawing does what the white of the paper does in the watercolour. Like a garden, a painting too changes with the seasons of a viewer’s mood: you notice something new in it every time you come back.”

The one difference worth naming at the end of your talk: a painting is finished; a garden is never finished. That difference is what the poem plays with in its last line — “Gardens become paintings still” — where a living, changing thing is held for a moment as a picture.

Q3.

III. Let us acquaint ourselves with the meanings of palette, hue, and canvas. 1. Palette: a thin oval or rectangular board or tablet that a painter holds and mixes colours on. 2. Hue: shade of a colour 3. Canvas: (here) painting Now, look at the painting given above and identify palette, canvas, and select a hue.

Answer

Term	Meaning	In the picture on page 86
Palette	a thin oval or rectangular board on which a painter holds and mixes colours	The rectangular paint box on the left, with its twelve separate colour wells — pink, blue, red, dark blue, orange, purple, yellow, black, and three greens — lying beside the two brushes.
Canvas	(here) the painting itself	The watercolour landscape in the middle — the bare dark tree in the foreground, the green and purple hills, the waterfall running down the slope and the rainbow arching over them. (The garden drawing on the right is the subject; the middle panel is the painting.)
Hue	a shade of a colour	Any one shade will do, provided you name the shade and not just the colour. For example: the pale violet of the distant hills, which is a cooler, greyer hue than the deep purple in the paint box; or the yellow-green of the sunlit slope beside the far darker green in the shadow of the tree.

Why the three words are taught before the poem and not after: they are the poem’s three load-bearing images, and they arrive in exactly this order — “Palette of earth” in line 1, “spring’s vibrant hue” in line 4, “Each plot, a canvas wide” in line 9. Without the definitions the metaphor collapses; with them, the first line already tells you what the whole poem is going to argue.

Tip on hue versus colour: a colour is a family — red, blue, green. A hue is one member of it — crimson, scarlet, rusty red. Look at the strip of shades on page 92 and you will see six hues of red, six of green and six of blue. When you “select a hue”, name the member, not the family.

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