Lots to do

I still feel quite pressured with all the extra work that needs to be done in the garden. Although I am very happy that it seems to be getting completed and I hope we will be able to finish all the work that needs to be done before the monsoon starts.

With the rain the grass suddenly seems to have got a lot longer and I realised that it had to be cut quickly if it was not to get out of hand. This morning grass cutting was my first job and I think the picture expresses quite well the rather hurried way in which I felt I had to do it. I was very pleased to be able to finish the whole of the Souryan garden as usually it takes me two sessions to do that.

Because of the political situation the Visitors Centre was suddenly closed today so I had to go all the way over to Solar Kitchen to find some food at lunch time. It all happened very quickly so I wasn't able to get any extra food to cook myself. One of the problems of having a community kitchen (which is what the Visitors Centre is for me at the weekends) is that if for any reason it fails then I am unlikely to have any food in my house! Although of course I can get some things out of the garden which is more than is possible for most people.

Ouch!

After getting up early and making a start on the grass cutting I then helped Rajan sort out the irrigation system in the wild orchard. This required taking out drippers, plugging the holes with little bungs and then putting drippers in the irrigation pipe at another place. My hands already felt a bit sensitive because of the vibration from the grass cutting and with the pulling and pressing required to adjust the irrigation pipes my hands and especially my fingers were very sore.

I took the above picture to show Emma and Rachael just how sore my fingers were. As I type this my hands still feel rather painful.

An intense time

I feel that everything is very intense at the moment and that I am physically working very hard. I am doing a lot of extra work in the garden but there seems to be a lot of emotional sorting out to do as well.

I was very pleased this morning to finish the planting in not only the new 'wild orchard' but also the Fruit Forest. Unfortunately the rather washed out colours in the picture don't give a good idea of the feeling of bringing new life to what is a very eroded soil. There is some clearing up to do as well as work on the irrigation system but at least all the trees are in the ground ready for the monsoon rains.

As if that wasn't enough, a volunteer has turned up who is a graphic designer and has agreed to design some post cards for us as part of our fund raising for the new kitchen. I feel the energy flowing our way. 

All OK

At the meeting of the Vegetable group this morning Pierre's lettuce project was accepted. He is now going to organise all the farmers in growing lettuce for Auroville and beyond if we can grow enough.

I have repeated the lettuce picture just to remind myself once again why we are doing what we do in Buddha Garden.

There was light

Everything was been amicably resolved once Vivek and Pierre sat down together. Pierre realised the difficulties that his project might create in the Farm group. Vivek worked out a way to avoid them that Pierre agreed to. Watching this I was speechless as in the end I didn't have to do anything, especially doing a balancing act between the two of them.

Later I had a long talk with Vivek about the values we hold in Buddha Garden and am inspired to write about them at some point as 'the common ground we share'. During the conversation I found myself articulating the energy I thought I was creating in the Farm group. I realised that this is not the sort of energy that most people in the group want created. They didn't want what I had to offer and that was why I was pushed out.

So I will continue to try and create it in Buddha Garden. Which might be easier in the future as both Rajan and Vivek are going to join with the morning work. I am so glad to be able to do the physical work which happens at the moment to be in the wild orchard as pictured.

A beautiful present

Vivek has just come back to Buddha Garden and brought me this beautiful piece of material from Delhi. It really is gorgeous and would make a nice skirt or I could wear it as a shawl. I am loving just feeling it on my skin, the way it floats and the colour is very energizing.

I feel it is leading me to something like insight about my present situation.

Recycling

These frames have been waiting a long time to be covered with mosquito nets. They are used to cover tree seedlings like kumquat, that get attacked by insects until the trees are large enough to repel the insects themselves. I recycled two old mosquito nets for this purpose.

Something funny happened with the watering this morning as when I came back from lunch I could not fill up the water tank. I could hear the water going in, but the tank just didn't fill up. Finally Pierre spotted that someone had turned on the valve that let out the water from the tank to the Souryan garden. But who turned on the valve? Did I do it by mistake when I turned on the pump to the Souryan garden? I certainly don't remember doing it, but I have felt very distracted and grumpy today.

I am very relieved that the problem has been sorted out but a bit worried that I might be losing my mind! 

The inside of my neck

This was how the inside of my neck felt after a special yoga class that focused on the neck. Just as well because my neck feels under a lot of pressure at the moment.

We met the manager of the Ashram farm today to talk more about the lettuce project. We found out that he is not the sole manager. At least one of the other two people with whom he works are more concerned with growing as much food as they can and feel it is OK to use pesticides and fertilizers to achieve that. Since he doesn't stay on the farm this can happen without him knowing about it. So although he is committed to organic food growing he can, by the sound of it, easily be undermined; which is rather worrying.

Reminding myself

The lettuce saga continues although I now feel a bit better after a productive meeting with Pierre and Rajan. I felt that Pierre did listen and even agreed with some of the things that needed sorting out. I came away feeling that while I needed to keep an eye on what was going on I wasn't the only one responsible for things like upholding our organic standards.

Looking at this picture reminds me of why I do this work – for the joy of growing healthy and delicious food.

A difficult day

Today has been a difficult day trying to deal with Pierre's new lettuce project. He has found a local farm that will allow us to use some of their land to grow lettuce and he is rushing off without clarifying a lot of things that need to be clarified.  Like who is going to pay for the initial investment? What about if it fails? Who is going to pay? And how do we know that the lettuce will be properly organically grown?

With his overwhelming optimism Pierre dismisses all my concerns and is convinced that everything will work out OK. I am finding it extremely difficult to pin him down about anything. Maybe I am just getting old but I am finding it extremely tiring and I really do not want another one of Pierre's mess ups to sort out. At the same time I feel we are pretty stretched just keeping Buddha Garden going with the human and other resources that we have.

So I am not keen on taking on yet another project as it will spread our resources even thinner.

Look what we did!

Had an extra gardening session today in the afternoon when we planted trees in what what used to be the banana patch of Le Jardin. It was clear that the bananas where not going to grow there as most of them were very weedy looking. So we decided to pull them all out and plant something tougher there that could deal with the poor soil.

This morning we had someone come and remove the bananas and dig holes. This afternoon Kim and I managed to plant half the trees and already the place looks transformed. Very satisfying work and once it is finished we won't have to do anything there for some time except watch the trees grow.

Going a little bit further

I managed to carve out a small piece of time today to do a bit more on the hanging, tacking in the writing. I have found that I have to do this work during the day as the light isn't good enough at night.

I was going to turn it into a hanging using the original piece of material. I then had the idea (in my yoga session of all places) that I should use thicker material as a backing. So in the fullness of time I will sort that out.

In the meantime I can carry on creating embroidery pictures.

This is what I sewed

I have still got a bit to do before I can use it as a hanging.

So glad to be doing this sort of thing again!

My new sewing corner

This morning I created a sewing corner where my art materials used to be. Then I sat in it for a lot of the day and sewed quite a lot of my first design.

It can get a bit hot in the afternoon – depending on the sun – but I am glad not be using my table any more for this work. I do so much on my table that it feels really cluttered when I try to do my sewing as well.

I really enjoyed sewing today.

Sewing at last

Finally got to the sewing going today although had quite a lot of problems with the special pen I bought in the UK to trace designs on the cloth. According to the blurb the marks the pen makes will disappear after a time and/or can be rubbed off with a damp cloth. Unfortunately I am finding that the marks disappear so quickly I hardly have time to embroider them before they are gone. Which means that I cannot draw all the design at once but must draw as I go.

I have had one or two other problems but am glad to be doing it at last.

Tired of having to do this

I am really tired of the internet situation and it is starting to affect my work and my life. Almost every day I have to search for a connection on one of my dongles or in the office. With one dongle the only place I can find a signal is outside getting crawled over by ants. As a result I find I am not being very systematic with dealing with my emails and I am missing things on websites that I should be looking at regularly. I also miss not being able to skype and not being able to see Sam.

There seems to be no solution except to learn to cope with the situation without getting so upset about it.

Divine help

Yesterday I was talking with Vivek about having the students with us and how much I enjoyed being with them and telling them about what we are doing. Vivek then said how much he would like to open a farm school. We both feel this would be a very positive step in what we are feeling is rather a negative situation in Auroville at the moment.

Today when the second group of students came the teacher told me that the school wants to open a farm on 3 acres of land that they have. Would we be willing to help them set it up? Of course we will!

The card I took for today (in the picture) is the flower that Mother called 'Divine Help' which I thought was very appropriate. I am amazed and grateful at how quickly such help has been given to us at this time.

A student group in Buddha Garden

Today the first group of three groups of students from the Chennai Montessori school came to visit and help in the garden. They were a really nice group of students who were very open and willing to try all sorts of new things. One job was to give weeds to the chickens to eat what they can and turn the rest into compost.

They all really wanted to do this job, but as the picture shows, the chickens weren't too keen on coming out for them despite the possibility of food and the students keeping reasonably quiet and calm!

Cleaning our water filter

This is a picture of the inside of the filter on our water tank, that we use to filter out all the particles that are in the water, especially during the summer when the water is much lower in the well. Each ring has a rough surface which traps the particles, but inevitably it eventually blocks up blocking the water from flowing into the irrigation system. This is when it has to be cleaned. Vasanthi and I used the scrubbing brush method:

 Each ring has to be cleaned individually and it takes ages. Rajan tried another method, banging the rings on the cement to dislodge the particles.

This was quicker but didn't get the rings quite so clean so we don't know how long it is going to last.

The company which sold us the filter said it could be cleaned with certain chemicals – which as we are an organic farm we do not want to use. We will see how long the filter lasts before it needs to be cleaned again, but maybe it is time to order a new one.

New design

This is the design for one of my hangings which I think I am going to embroider. I bought some new material yesterday which I washed today. Hopefully I can iron it (which requires that I find somewhere that has enough electricity for an iron) and draw the design so I can start work on it next week.

Another new fence

We have decided to build a new fence in the back land where we had two ponds dug a few months ago. Its the right time of the year to now start planting trees but we need the fence to keep out the cows. We can't fence on the boundary because there is a dispute with the next door land owner which is taking a long time to sort out. In the meantime we want to start planting so decided to have this extra fence.

I am amazed how quickly it has been built as the team only started yesterday and it was finished today. I am really looking forward to planting here and bringing life back to this land. Already to the two ponds are attracting a lot of bird life and the more we can grow the more life will be brought back here.

Dinner out

Vivek had invited Rajan and Sangeetha to dinner to celebrate their recent wedding and I went along as well. We went to Villa Shanthi where Vivek knows them quite well and where the food is very good – although not quite spicy enough for Sangeetha. Its a beautiful place, but difficult to take a decent photo in the half light unless you have a really good camera.

Nice memories though........... and it was good to do something completely different for a change.

Yet more glasses needed

This morning while I was sitting reading I slightly moved my head and my reading glasses fell apart. I was SO annoyed as these were another pair that I got expensively from the UK. It appeared that one of the little screws had rusted and broken apart as happened with the other pair.

I managed to tape them together but it was obvious that they weren't going to last very long like that. So after yoga I went to Pondy and got them repaired and ordered another pair as I think this pair are not going to last all that long. As the picture shows, its another plastic pair which will take the thick lenses – I couldn't afford the thin ones – and will hopefully be better in the Indian climate. With the monsoon coming I don't want anything that is going to rust.

Getting organised for sewing

I started doing some sewing work today but couldn't get very far as my iron is not yet operational and I need some iron on stiffening. But I had a good time drawing the elephant I am going to applique onto a hanging for Sam.

I decided to organise my sewing things and am very pleased with the result. Later I ordered some sewing things online and feel that this work is gradually coming together.

A meeting

Today there was a Green group meeting which, being the coordinator of the group, I had to attend. I had very mixed feelings about the meeting as everyone seemed to find it hard to keep focused on what we were discussing. Despite this, as meetings go this one was not too difficult and I did not feel too bad afterwards. Generally I am finding it hard not to get too affected by what goes on in some of the meetings I attend. I feel sometimes that my soul is slowly being destroyed by having to deal with people that I do not trust.

After I had written the notes this afternoon I spent some time fiddling around with the email account and uploaded this picture for the Green group email account. It shows a part of Siddhartha forest where I used to live with Dirk. I just love the path and I remember someone once telling me that I am a path finder. Hopefully I will be able to find a path through my present difficulties.

An idea

All day I have had this germ of an idea for a hanging which is obviously a reminder to myself based on a 

dream I had while in the UK.  

This is a first effort and I am not sure about anything in it.  Perhaps it will end up as something completely different.  It was good to get something on paper or in this case onto the screen.