Pink sunrise

When I went out of my house this morning to go to work I felt that everything was bathed in pink from the sunrise.  It was as if everything had absorbed the pink and was then reflecting it back.  It only lasted a few minutes and was absolutely beautiful.

After several tries I eventually focused on trying to get the quality of the pink, which was of course infused with the other colours in the sky.  I don't think I have really achieved that but perhaps it is a step on the way.

And maybe a pointer for the next year????

Misty morning

The last few days have been grey but they haven't had the mysteriousness of the mist that we had this morning.  The mist makes everything look so different and then when the sun does finally break through everything is transformed.  I forget completely about the mist.

I don't think this picture does justice to the mysteriousness that the mist creates, as in some ways it looks like just another grey day.  Maybe this is something that would be better drawn or painted rather than photographed.....

Morning shower

I woke up this morning with my head buzzing with ideas for books that I want to write.  I haven't experienced anything like this for some time.

After breakfast I felt this great need for a shower. As I sloshed the water over me I had a very strong sense of washing away old stuff that I didn't need which soaked into the earth.  It is still raining steadily as I write this and it is as if the place is getting washed clean as well.

A very grey wet day

After two months or more of sunshine today has been a very grey wet day.  It feels as if the sky is sitting on my head and I am just a damp patch.  Its not the wet of the monsoon with heavy rain, but more like an English persistent drizzle.  I think the plants, especially those we planted this morning, will really enjoy it.

With so little sun we really have to watch how much electricity we are using. I cannot sit for hours in front of my computer - however much this feels like its the right sort of day to do this kind of thing.  As a consequence I feel at rather a loss as to what I should do.

Maybe this is the time to think of new projects for a new year......

Bathed in blue

Today I had another acupuncture session.  During that last session I felt a pain leave my heart and ever since have felt more of a space inside myself. The aim of this session was to build on the last one where a knot inside me seems to have relaxed.  

This is how I felt today - bathed in blue with lots of light energy coming out of my hands.  And afterwards very tired.....

Mother and newborn

What with Emma soon to give birth and Christmas being all about the birth of a baby it probably isn't surprising that I have been thinking about Emma's birth.  The birth of my first daughter Mary was so traumatic I couldn't imagine a birth that would be positive and empowering.  Yet this was how it turned out to be with Emma.  

This is what I have tried to express in this picture.  It was hard to express the glow I felt when I used to sit and breastfeed Emma in the days just after she was born.  At first I put too much of a halo around the woman which made her look too much like a renaissance picture of the virgin mother and the child.  What I wanted to show was a glow that came from a deep place within me and which expressed a very deep inner joy.  I am so grateful that Emma's birth enabled me to have this experience and of course I have also been having happy memories of her father who made it all possible.

I do hope that Emma experiences something similar although almost certainly it will be a different journey for her.  Maybe 29th/30th of this month?

Lets see.  Babies come in their own time.

Christmas day

Christmas day isn't particularly special here in India and we worked as usual in the garden although we did have some special chocolate balls at breakfast time.  Later in the day I spent some time on Amazon finding some books to buy with my gift tokens.

As the picture shows, I really enjoyed doing that.  Subsequently I have spent a lot of the day being hugely entertained by 'The Boy With the Topknot' by Sathnam Sanghera, a book suggested by a friend.

Interesting textures

Its been one of those days when I have been unrelentingly busy, starting with 20 volunteers to deal with this morning, the introductory course with ten people and then various writing and talking to people things to do and then... just on and on.  As I write this I realize how tired I am!

Fortunately I did a picture yesterday based on the tarpaulin which at present covers the wood store which we are going to turn into volunteer accommodation. I thought the tarpaulin had some interesting textures which looked even better while it was being blown around by the wind.  Unfortunately I have not been able to translate the moving aspect of it very successfully to a still picture, but I think some of the textures are apparent.

Now I really must go to bed!

Transformation of the wood store

Tomorrow we should start transforming what is now our wood store into a space for volunteers.  As we don't have any money we are recycling materials that we already have in Buddha Garden.  The roof will be made of the discarded glass fibre panels that we originally put on the nursery and the walls will probably be made of old wood.  The floor is already bricked over.

I thought it would be good to take some pictures that document the transformation.  I noticed several things about the wood store that were interesting, from the wood itself to the tarpaulin which was blowing in the wind.  

I love all the different shades of colour, the different shapes and the markings on the wood.

Solstice fire

Last night the volunteers invited me to their fire and this image arose out of that.

I wanted to try and express the glow of the fire - there were flames but not big ones, and the fire glowed rather than burnt.  Although there were other people there, as I sat by the fire I felt alone, although not uncomfortably so.  

There was a wonderful feeling of mellow ease and of us all sitting together in that as well as the glow of the fire.

For me it is a very potent start to the new year.

As I created the image, for the first time I felt I was manipulating the software to get at the image I wanted.  It reminded me of the first time I started to paint and feel that what I was creating on the page was what I wanted to express.

dancing energy

Today is the winter solstice which for me is a turning point.  A signal for the end of the year and much more meaningful that the usual day of December 31st. Today is supposed to be particularly powerful one.

I have had the usual sort of busy day together with a meeting which had its ups and downs and, as the scribe for the group, has left me with a difficult letter to write on behalf of everyone else.  Since I got back I have felt too tired to even make a start on it, so it will have to happen tomorrow.

The picture feels totally at odds with the sort of day I have had.  I felt I wanted to create something about dancing energy and as I did this I felt incredibly happy. I think it also connects to the bonfire that the volunteers have been getting ready to have near the stone circle.  I think it also connects to the first Nia dance class of the season. Classes start tomorrow night and I feel very excited as I haven't danced for a long time.

Inner ease

I felt an inner relaxation today despite all the distractions and busyness of my outer world.

It felt like there was an openness within where energy could flow and there were no knots or things that needed to be untangled.

pain left my heart.....

I had a very intense acupuncture session with a volunteer today.  I am going to have three more sessions in the hope and expectation that it will help my borderline blood pressure.

She told me that I have issues with my heart and while I lay there with needles in various places with the energy swirling around in my body I gradually became aware of my heart.  In particular I became aware of where it had been mended after Shantam died.  Just after he died I felt as if the person who killed him had stabbed me in the heart and made a raw wound there. Then one day it felt as if a spider came and sewed it up - literally mending my broken heart. 

Then it felt as if a pain I had in my heart (which happened to be around the place where it had been mended) suddenly left me in a purple cloud.  It felt as if something had been released by my heart which then felt much softer and relaxed.  It was a wonderful feeling.

And all the time the spider shimmered green with yellow flecks and I was so happy that he was still with me and that we had become reaquainted. 

I did not like myself today....

As usual for this time of year I have had a very busy day.  As usual I have been dealing with a lot of people wanting things from me.  My last appointment was an intense interview with a student who wanted information for one of her papers.

I don't feel happy about my reactions in a meeting earlier today.  I just got cross - I think because I was exasperated with some of the limitations that I observed.  But of course getting cross wasn't a very positive way to deal with it.  In fact as I came away from the meeting I felt very drained, mainly I think because of my negative reactions.

Is it just that I am tired and don't have the energy to put myself in the other person's shoes?  Or am I turning into a nasty judgmental old shrew?  Whatever it was I didn't like what I saw of myself today in that meeting.

The picture above is just a doodle as that was all the energy I had to do last thing today.  I used some new techniques and enjoyed doing it.  A few moments of positive energy. 

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Monday is Pilates day

Three new people turned up today so I have been very busy with constant interruptions all day.  We are now extremely full with volunteers.

Going to Pilates was such a relief - away from Buddha Garden and no distractions - I could just focus on what I was doing. As was usual after a Pilates class I felt my body had been wonderfully stretched and in the process a lot of tension had been released.

I enjoyed playing around on my iPad to get this image which was one of those images that just seemed to make itself.  I had no vision of an image that I wanted to express, yet it does express what I felt.

A question

I have spent part of today writing about a difficult situation that the Farm group is facing and has been dealing with for several years now.  I was asked to write a discussion paper sumarising the situation to help the group make some decisions.

I think the picture says everything I want to say about the energies and I am dealing with and the way I feel.

I don't think I should have done this on a Sunday!

Sun and moon

Today started off with lots of things to do and the ongoing challenge of the intermittent internet.  Miraculously it started working after I sent a long email detailing all the problems to the Telephone Service.  About ten minutes after I sent the mail they phoned me up, which for a late Saturday afternoon was very unusual.  Then when I went to my house I was very surprised to find the internet was working really well.

Are those things all connected?  Or is it just a random set of circumstances that happens to look like a causal chain?  I have absolutely no idea although I am very happy to get my internet back.

Today has been a day of bright sun and last night I saw the new moon for the first time.  I wanted to bring them together into a picture for today and this is the first time for ages that I have felt an image coming that wants to be expressed.  I used a photo that I took yesterday where I tried to capture something of the bright light of early morning at this time of year which I think is very beautiful.  I combined this with the colour of night and the new moon.

Another difficult day

Another difficult day which has been mostly spent trying to get my computer to connect properly to the internet.  Satish spent hours trying to get the wireless connection to work but it will still only work with a wire.  I had a lot of updates the day before yesterday and it hasn't worked since then - according to Satish because the updates interfered with a driver.

While he was working on my computer I tried to do what I could on my iPad, but one thing I couldn't do was upload to this blog.  Oh dear!  What is going to happen when I travel?  I don't want to have to save it all up for when I get back.....

I really like this picture as it looks like Satish and what was on the screen might as well have been the random scribbles that I have drawn.  

Like swimming through mud yet......

It has been a very exasperating day where little things have kept going wrong. I feel like every job I have done has required an effort out of all proportion to the importance of the job.

Yet, despite all this, things have got done.  Maybe not quite how I wanted them to be, maybe not quite as easily as I would have liked, but the jobs that needed to get done are completed.

Perhaps life is trying to tell me that what I 'do' isn't as important as I think!  That maybe I need to trust more in the process and don't feel that everything is up to me.

A more flowing day

Today has been more flowing than yesterday with some unexpected quirks in some of the flows.

The picture is a doodle of that.  It looks to me that it has a life of its own!

Angry and depressed

Today has been ghastly.

I went to a Farm group meeting where I got very angry when I felt that someone was trying to manipulate the group.

Since then I have been depressed.  

Partly because I got angry when I think I should have been able to keep my cool.  And partly because so many meetings feel so meaningless to me now.  They don't seem to move anything forward on any level.

The meeting in the afternoon was better, but I felt tired having to do the notes.  On the way back I was thinking that maybe I should just stop going to meetings.

As I write this I feel cross eyed with tiredness.

Colours trying to merge

Fortunately the dentist wasn't too bad.  I don't have an abscess and the pain is probably caused by the temporary cap on one of my teeth irritating the gum.  I have got some medicine but things will probably improve greatly when I get the proper cap on Thursday.  

Coming back from the dentist the sky was the most beautiful colour, very light turquoise shading down into the orange just on the horizon. Despite a lot of trying I have not been able to create that effect on my iPad. I cannot get that smooth transition from the turquoise to the orange.

The picture I'm posting today shows the colours but not the way they merged seamlessly.  I am going to write to Zam and see if he can help me.

Oh my teeth!

I have been having a lot of dental work in the last weeks and last night and today I have had a very hard time with one of my teeth which has been hurting a lot.  I barely got any sleep last night and when I woke up the tooth was so sensitive I could hardly touch it.  I think it might be an abscess.

But I have found a solution which is clove oil.  It gets rid of the pain, apparently by numbing the nerve.  So hopefully I will get a bit more sleep tonight.

I don't think this is a long term solution, however, especially as that tooth has to be capped in the not too distant future.  Tomorrow I will have to go and see the dentist and see what she suggests in the way of treatment.  Oh yuk!

A dream of wandering

Last night I slept and dreamed very heavily, waking up feeling as if I had been drugged.  The dream was very vivid and in it I went to different places - a festival, a garden, a raging river - and saw a lot of different things.  

In the dream I feel I was being presented with lots of possibilities and I kept going, not looking for a specific thing, but waiting for the thing that would resonate deeply within me.  This is what I was trying to express in the picture.  The feeling of listening and alertness necessary to become aware of whatever it is that will vibrate deeply with within me.

Today I have become aware of a lot of possibilities for creative things that I could and would like to do.  I must resist the feeling to immediately rush off and do the first thing that is presented to me.  It might take some time to decide which possibility is the right one for me to go with.

Scorpion bit me!

This morning there was much drama after a scorpion bit me while I was moving some bricks around.  It bit me on the second finger of my left hand and was VERY painful.  It provoked quite a reaction from all the volunteers, from those who said I should go to the hospital immediately to those who said, no need for that and all I needed to do was go and lie down until the pain went away.

I phoned up the doctor who said I should go and get checked out as apparently it could disturb my heart rhythms and blood pressure.  While I was waiting for the taxi to take me to the Health Centre Morgane gave me some acupuncture and Pierre gave me some Reiki.

Morgane came with me to the doctor who wanted to give me one heart pill - even although my blood pressure was the same as usual and my heart rate wasn't any faster than usual.  That seemed ridiculous to me - one  pill! - and I felt he was probably just covering his behind.  We had the usual discussion about my borderline blood pressure and he told me that it was all due to age and there was nothing I could do about it and it could only get higher.  Great!!!!!  I was really glad that Morgane was there with me.

I have decided to ask Morgane to give me some regular acupuncture sessions to bring my blood pressure down.  She thought it was ridiculous to say that my blood pressure couldn't change without medication.  He obviously wants to increase the profits of the drug companies.

My finger is still extremely sore and its quite hard to type.  According to Rajan it will take twenty four hours before the pain goes away.  Lets see.

Colours of my day

It has been a busy day and I am tired.  To tired to do anything more than doodle around on my iPad and see if I could find anything that expressed my day.  Eventually I came up with the above.

I feel its a pretty good representation of what the colours were of my day today.

Rain

So far we have had very little rain this monsoon.  We are now into the last two weeks and quite often when we have had very little rain these two weeks are very wet.  This hasn't happened this year although for the last two nights we have had short showers and this afternoon we actually had a heavy shower although again it didn't last very long.

I went outside soon after the rain finished and was struck by how sparkly all the water seemed.  After the rain the sky lightened up a lot and there was even a hint of sun which was what made the water sparkle.

I couldn't make a picture of the water sparkling but I saw this reflection on the water that had collected on my grey table outside.  The table itself is made of cement and doesn't look very pretty, but the water and reflection transformed it completely.

Another kind of beauty

Today I spent a lot of time - again - on drawing plans for the new Buddha Garden house.  This was during a sunny afternoon when it looked as if we might have a spectacular sunset to finish the day.

I made sure that I left myself enough time to go and look at it, but when I saw it I found that it didn't look very spectacular at all.  There were no deep red skies that tinged the trees as I have seen sometimes over the last few weeks.  

Yet there was a different beauty about the sky which had subtle colours and lovely formations in the clouds.  It reminded me a bit of the image that I did yesterday.

Crazy day

It has been a really crazy day having to deal with myriad people and things that have to be done.  One of those days when I feel I have been on a treadmill all day.

This evening I felt too tired to do a picture and I certainly didn't want to do a picture that expressed all the craziness as I feel I have had enough of that for one day.  Instead I tried to create the sort of picture I would like to help me feel more calm and quite by accident came to create the above.  

It could be a sea creature of some sort and yet it also looks a bit cold and possibly even frozen.   But I don't want my mind to go into over drive trying to think about what it might be! I just want to absorb it without any thought.

new house?

I have spent a lot of today doing these preliminary sketches for a house we hope to build soon in Buddha Garden. 

Like all the houses we want it to be as simple as possible, not only from the cost point of view, but also from the point of view of use.  None of the houses belong to an individual so we move around between houses according to our need.  This is a 'house for an Aurovilian' which is going to be built by the kitchen garden.  We thought Pierre would be the first person to live there.

Unfortunately it looks like the house is going to cost more than we can afford and so Vivek and I are quite keen on having one of Eric's demountable houses which are not only cheaper but which are much easier to put up.  It only takes about a week whereas if we have builders doing the work it will take several months.

Pierre is not at all keen on Eric's house because of the materials of which it is made - cement and other prefabricated stuff.  He wants natural materials like keet, which is all very fine and nice but which means we are letting ourselves in for a huge amount of upkeep over the years.  There are various other more lasting materials which we could use for roofing but Pierre is not at all keen on them and the longer lasting ones which he might find acceptable - like tiles - are probably too expensive.

I offered to go and live in the new house if we get the Eric model, but Pierre feels he has a special relationship with the land there and so wants to live on that particular place.

We shall have to see what transpires.......... hopefully we can eventually come to a solution to which we can all say 'yes'.

Cycling

Today I spent the morning cycling around Auroville.  My main job was to put up posters everywhere about our Monday workshop, but I also went to Financial Services to get money and to Anandi to arrange for her to teach Sivakala and Bharati about raw food.

I cycled a long way, especially as at one point I found myself on a road that I thought would take me to the Town Hall.  In fact it went on and on and on and on and it was definitely a road less traveled as I saw hardly anyone.  Eventually I came to a place that I knew and of course that was when I realised that I had gone in entirely the wrong direction.  The opposite way in which I had planned to go in fact.  I didn't mind as it enabled me to put all the posters up that end of Auroville which I thought I wouldn't be able to do until tomorrow.

The back roads of Auroville were so quiet and beautiful if rather bumpy, but the traffic on the black top roads was horrible.  Everyone rushing around with lots of blaring horns.  Quite mad.

Generally though I enjoyed my ride so much and that is what I tried to convey in the picture.  I wanted to add more colour - the blue of the sky and the green of the plants, even some butterflies - but it didn't look right.  And although I cycled a long way I didn't feel tired.  I seemed to get into a rhythm that kept me going with very little effort.

crazy chickens

I am so tired after a three and a half hour meeting this afternoon that I think if I hadn't committed to doing this blog every day, today would be one of the days when I wouldn't do it.

This morning one of the volunteers let all the chickens out of their pen.  For a while it was absolutely crazy with the dogs chasing after the birds and the people chasing after the dogs.  There were squawks and shouts and while everyone ran hither and thither.

I felt really, really upset especially when I realised that the dogs had killed one of the chicks and savaged another chicken so badly it had to be killed.  I have told the volunteers so often to be careful not to let the chickens out.  But one volunteer misunderstood what I said this morning and actually shooed them out of their pen into the garden!

We had to get rid of the dogs by putting them in the store room - quite a job in itself - and eventually the chickens came back to the gate of their pen and we could let them back in.  I could have done without all that kerfuffle.

I tried to draw the chickens but I just don't have the energy for the necessary focus to draw.  I tried to capture the energy I felt with colour and drawing but I don't think I was very successful.

Still, I did manage to do a picture.  Sometimes I just have to accept what I am able to do even if it isn't very good.  Maybe it will open the way for something better tomorrow.

No inspiration

Today, very unexpectedly, I had some time to myself when I was determined to do some art work.  Unfortunately it was a case of having the time but not the inspiration.  I couldn't think of any image that I wanted to create and here I was with all the time in the world to create it.

Infuriating!

Determined to do something I wrote 'No inspiration' and played around with it until I got the above.  I found it very satisfying to do and loved creating the paint splatter effect despite the fact that I did the image without paint on my iPad.

I think this shows me something about my creative cycles.  That I have to take the moment when it comes and not try to get all my jobs done before I feel I can sit down and create something.  On the other hand I find that unless I set aside some regular time - however short - to do some creative work I lose touch with my creative cycles completely.  Unless something comes along which is very insistent to be created.

Doing this blog has been quite a revelation as not only is it helping me keep in touch with my visual self, but it is also showing me how much visual work I am actually doing.  I assume I do mostly writing but I do a lot of things with images as well.  I have been very surprised by how much of my time is spent working with images.

Of course I have the usual problem of focusing more on the images that I am working with for 'work' than for 'expressing'.  It seems some things never change whatever medium I choose to work in.

Wrong weather

Today I have felt very out of kilter.  I have had to travel around Auroville and it has felt like it was the wrong time of the year.  The sky is very blue and the sun is very bright and there is a breeze.

It should be the cool season and yet it isn't because we have two more weeks of the monsoon to go - officially it ends on December 15th.  Looking around I find it very hard to imagine there could be rain, and yet last year's cyclone came right at the end of December when we had already had some weeks of good weather.

So we could get more rain but it doesn't feel as if it is going to happen.  Maybe it was this that was making me feel so uncomfortable as much as it being the 'wrong' weather for the time of year.

The picture is one that a volunteer gave me last year.  It encapsulates very well the blue of the sky and the green of the trees and the sun shining.

Light in unexpected places

Today is Shantam's death day - it must be fifteen years since he died and yet as the anniversary rolls round each year it never loses its intensity for me.

Today has been no exception.  I had a volunteer come in this morning who was 22 weeks pregnant and I felt very connected with her.  We had a long talk and she and her Indian husband are going to start managing an organic farm near Mumbai very soon.  She let me feel her baby and I felt such a connection - with all the unborn babies in the world and of course especially with Emma.

Later on I went into Pondicherry and there were oil lamps everywhere as today is Deepanam when everyone puts oil lamps in front of their houses.  It was beautiful. And then I walked back feeling the intensity of the full moon.

Three points of light on a day when I least expected it.

Nesan

Today it is exactly one year since my friend Nesan from Malaysia died very unexpectedly in a freak car accident.  All day my thoughts have been with him.

This is a picture of when he came to visit me in Buddha Garden.  I think it captures the quiet and thoughtful way in which he worked.  I love his woolly hat!  He came during the cool season and found several of the nights 'very cold' as only a Malaysian from a tropical climate could.

I do miss him.

plans for a new house

Sunday November 25th

I spent a lot of today working with images.  I made a poster for our introductory course and started trying to make a plan of the new house we are going to build in Buddha Garden.  This is a new house for an Aurovilian which we are going to build near the kitchen garden and which Pierre will be the first to use.

I used the artwork software that I had on my iPad and this turned out much harder to use for this purpose than I imagined.  As the above rather wobbly sketch shows.

I found some different software for making engineering drawings which automatically straightens the lines and even calculates the measurements, but even this takes some practice to use.  It is obviously going to take some time for me to do this job properly and will not be something I can dash off in a few minutes.

Would paper and pen be easier?  I am rather tempted to go back to this but feel that although in the beginning it would be easier when it comes to doing all the calculations the new software is better.  So for the time being I will persevere with that and see how I get on.

Recently I have been surprised how much I have been working with images.  I am doing far more than I think, but because it is for work I don't think of it as 'art'.

Dianna's delight

Today I have been very busy putting up all the Buddha Garden posters that I have been making over this last week or so.  The plastic ones are for use outside where it can get wet and explain all about different parts of the garden.  The paper ones on the notice board and provide general information about Buddha Garden.  One of the extra things I did was to make a little notice to go at the back of our recently acquired electric bike.

We call the bike 'Dianna's delight' because it used to belong to my friend Dianna who sadly died in June of this year.  She really loved the bike and often used to talk to me about how good it is how easy to ride and how I ought to have one.  The special thing for me is that it runs on electricity rather than petrol so fits in with our commitment to using renewable energy.  When Dianna was diagnosed with her last illness - a muscle wasting disease - , she had to go back to the UK.  Before she left Auroville she gave the bike to me saying that I could have it for Buddha Garden.

A few weeks ago, when Norman her husband came back to Auroville, we brought the bike to Buddha Garden.  I find it rather large and intimidating compared to my bicycle and have found it hard to ride.  Although I ride my bicycle a lot with this larger bike I don't feel properly in charge.  It feels like it has a mind of its own! Rajan, Vivek and Pierre have no such scruples and really love it.  I see them riding it with evident enjoyment which I feel brings a little of Dianna's energy into Buddha Garden.

Doodling

I am very tired tonight after my usual very heavy Friday after noon meeting.  I was thinking how I didn't have any pictures for today when I looked in one of my iPad apps and found this - done during this afternoon's meeting.  I'd forgotten.  I remember I was very bored and amused myself twiddling around with these colours for a few minutes.

Does it mean anything?  If it does I am too tired to see it!

Flowing

In many ways this has been a very intense day with not only a lot to do but also thinking and talking and dealing with many issues.

Yet there was also a sense of everything flowing which is what I have tried to capture in this picture.  There was complexity and yet a strong feeling that it all fitted together somehow.

Morning sun

This morning the sun was huge red shimmering orb.  What amazed me were the colours of the clouds which, instead of taking their colour from the red and orange of the sun took the blue from the sky.  I couldn't see how they had got that colour and it looked quite surreal as the cloud which had the strongest blue was right in front of the sun.

I think if I have the time I may try to do a different interpretation of this.

the end of the day

Recently with the change in the weather we have had some very colourful sunsets and sunrises.  Over the years I have tried to express what I saw, but it is very difficult either with a camera or other media to capture the essence of it.

The whole sky seems to glow red and the trees look very black by contrast.  If you look carefully it changes moment by moment as day gradually turns to night.  The fact of it being a transition period seems to enhance the richness of the colours.

This was the best I could do tonight.  I feel that having the picture on a screen rather than paper helped the sky to look more glowing, but the sky is never just one colour.  Although when I first look at it I always think it is.

Then and now

Over the weekend I did a lot of posters for our Buddha Garden notice boards and came across this picture of the first vegetable garden that we made.  We had just finished planting all the beds and after all the hard work and wondering whether I was ever going to finish I remember feeling very warm about it.

Today I took a picture of the same garden (which we now call the Souryan garden) from the same place. 

I feel it looks a lot less rickety than in the beginning!  What with the brick raised beds and climbing frames made with metal poles and wire.  We used bamboo poles in the beginning and they had to be changed every six months or so as they got attacked by termites.  Then they would lean over at the most alarming angles when the weight of the plants got to be too much.  The kitchen is now hidden by the neem tree which was about a metre high when the first picture was taken.

I still feel incredibly warm about this garden.  Its the first thing I see when I go out to work in the morning.  I feel it has absorbed a lot of my different energies over the years as well as being a superb teacher.  This is where I learnt to grow healthy food.

this is what I did - Sunday November 18th

I have been working with images all day and these are the posters that I completed today. Phew!

poster

I have spent most of the day making this poster for our notice board.  

I used a software that I have had for some time, but realised that I was using it very differently. With Zam showing me how to use the other graphic software that I have on my iPad more effectively he obviously taught me principles that can be used anywhere.

This is a much more complex poster than I usually make.

Celebrating the garden

                               

                                The fruit patch with all the little trees mulched

Today I felt that I wanted to celebrate the garden.  We have had a goodly number of volunteers recently so the place is looking really beautiful although we still have some beds where there are too many weeds.  I had to laugh when one volunteer who was leaving said she thought it unfortunate that all the beds where she had been weeding had weeds starting to grow again.  I had to explain to her that weeds are like that and the best you can do is keep them manageable, not eradicate them completely.  And in any case weeds are useful as we use them for chicken feed and compost.

This morning we finished cutting all the glyricidea bushes in the fruit patch and using the leaves to mulch all the fruit trees.  Its brought a lot of extra light to the trees which I hope will now be more encouraged to grow.  The glyricidea leaves will provide  nitrogen for the plants when it rains and they start to break down. 

When will it rain?  None on the horizon so far even although it is the middle of the monsoon.  Maybe we will get it all in one week at the end..... 

A place of peacefulness

I was standing outside my house today with my bare feet on the grass.  I had just finished a phone call and suddenly became aware of the sound in the trees and the feeling of the grass under my feet and the sun and sky and the temperature just right.  As I was enjoying the feeling I felt it was a place to peacefulness to which I could always return if I wanted to.

That is what I was trying to capture in this picture.

(This picture was created on my iPad using a new software which is more like painting and with which I feel very comfortable)

Ever present sky

Over the last few days it has felt as if the season is changing.  It feels as if the cool season is here even although we are supposed to have four or more weeks of monsoon weather.  The sun shines very brightly and the sky is very blue and there is no rain at all.

In the picture I was able only to hint at the tracery of the clouds and I couldn't make a convincing image of the sun.  I also realised that the immensity of the sky can only be experienced when it is contrasted with something else.  Hence the Palmyra tree, many of which got rather bent in the cyclone.

The picture gives some idea of what I experienced as I moved around Auroville today.