Delivery

I was on my own a lot of today as Rajan and Vivek went off to look at a farm they are helping someone set up.  While they were away this delivery was made of a very large and heavy granite stone on which Ganesha is eventually going to sit.

The tractor driver came on his own and managed to deliver the stone almost in the right place.  I was very impressed as I had been worrying about how he would manage without any help.

Good idea!

This is a picture of one of the volunteers who developed a really good way of cleaning amaranth seeds.  She managed to blow off the chaff (which is very light) leaving just the very small amaranth seeds.

I thought it was marvellous how she did it.  When I tried something similar with lettuce seeds the chaff blew up in my face and went in my eyes.

Accounts

Rajan and I spent most of the morning running around collecting bills and sorting out the accounts for our educational programs.

I felt SO relieved when Rajan handed them in this afternoon.  Now we only have the farm accounts to worry about and get completed by Friday.

Growing

Growing as only a banana can grow.  This was planted only three days ago.

Blossom

This tree in full blossom was in the Visitors Centre.  It looked to me very much like cherry blossom and I couldn’t resist taking a picture.

Like the cherry blossom I don’t think this will last very long as a lot of the blossom had already fallen to the ground.

Draft

Today I talked with Mohan who is going to reorganise the website for me.  This is a draft of what I would like the website to look like.

We had a really good discussion with Mohan asking me some very searching questions about what I wanted to achieve from the website.  With all the effort of just getting it reorganised I just hadn’t thought about those questions.  But they are questions that need to be answered.

For the website

Today I have been thinking a lot about how to reorganise the earth to eating website.  This is one of the pictures I took – and liked – as a symbol for the ‘growing ‘ section.

Magnificent work

We still have many volunteers and Rajan gets them all working so well the garden is looking magnificent.  Almost all the beds are ready planted for the hot season and with so many people we are able to do a lot of clearing up work.

This line of potential holes for banana and papaya clears up yet another corner in the Pryog garden.  There used to be a row of glyricidea that was always drooping over the bed as well as a row of papaya which also got encroached by the glyricidea. 

This beautiful line of productive trees midway between two beds with be just right.

Veggie face!

Had a very noisy session in the school garden this afternoon. My ears were ringing by the end.  I loved this face that one of them made with all the vegetables that we picked.

They all have to think up a name for the new garden by next week when I hope the fence will be well on the way to being completed.  Its hard at times to keep track of all the ideas I am having about the garden and the courses I hope to do in the next school year that starts in June.

Found

I just couldn’t find a picture for today until I found this which was taken fairly recently.

I think it gives a sense of what the very bright sun and increasing heat are feeling like.

New toy

I bought this last week and am spending quite a lot of time working out how best to set it up and use it.  The idea is that it is a small tablet/laptop which I can easily carry around for doing notes etc.  It’s a windows 10 device which means it should work as an alternative to my laptop.

Its another second hand purchase. I am rather enjoying getting these devices and then setting them up so they work for my needs. 

New homepage

What a difference a day off makes.  At last I had some quiet time to think about the new home page on my Earth to Eating website.

Ideas came surprisingly easily and I came up with this design.  I will be talking about it with Isabelle who is going to do the logo and poster template and Mohan who is going to do the website changes.

New car

Rachael sent me this picture of her new car.  She finally decided to get a car of her own rather than share with Chris as he will now need the car during the week as well as at weekends.  He’s going to start refurbishing work on his house.

I asked her if I could drive the car but she obviously thinks I am too out of practice.  Made me feel like a teenager again asking my Mum if I could do something that she didn’t like. Although of course the places are reversed now.

Bag buying

Yesterday Rajan and I went to Pondy to do various jobs one of which was to go to the plastic shop.  This is where we get our non plastic bags for our leafy vegetables.  After growing all that lettuce for the last three months we have almost finished the last lot.

This is the store room where we go to get the bags.  It is SO packed out with stuff I felt really compressed walking along this corridor and there are rooms at the side completely full of packets like these.  I still don’t know how they found exactly the bags we wanted. Nothing is labelled.

Energy of Place

It is so difficult to express the energy of a place in a photograph. This is what New Horizon looks like now we have removed the remains of the last harvest and have started planting for the hot season.  Just standing there watching and feeling it I felt the energy of this place just starting to emerge.  It was very satisfying.

I found it impossible to express this in the photograph even although I looked at different viewpoints and angles.  Maybe this very small plant expresses it better?

What are these tomatoes?

These tomatoes are just ripening up but they taste horrible.  They don’t seem to taste of anything and have very little juice or texture.  They look like me to be plum tomatoes which I normally see in tins.  If they are, I wonder if they are really meant for salads and things like that.

I am going to ask a foody Italian friend who should know.

Extremely busy

Got this lovely picture of mother and baby today.  Beautiful tranquillity in the midst of all my busyness.

More images

Today I looked for other possible images in Buddha Garden that I could use on Tshirts.  I came across these mangoes although I am not sure whether Rajan’s idea of ‘seed – plant – harvest’ will work with trees.

I took a range of other pictures of the flowers and the smaller mangoes and will see how they can be fitted together.

Hot and sweaty

Its been a hot and humid day today when I’ve been feeling quite uncomfortable.  There has even been thunder in the air although no rain so far.  I’ve got a bit of a headache as I write this.

At least I’ve managed to sit sufficient time in front of my computer to finish off quite a lot of jobs.

I got this lovely picture from Sam today.  I’m amazed at how quickly he seems to be growing up now.

Time

Have been thinking a lot about the Tshirt designs but wonder if I will ever have time to do them.  I wanted to do some things with my pictures with new software but just haven’t had time to look at it properly.  I seem to be talking to people so much I don’t have the necessary time in front of my computer.  I’m also having to make sure that some of the accounts are getting done.

Someone once told me that time is infinite and there is always enough time to do the things that need to get done.  So maybe I just have to trust that will happen and if the Tshirts are meant to be it will happen.

A good idea

Rajan gave me a really good idea today for Tshirt designs that we could sell.  So I went around making some pictures and this was one of them.

I will make some Tshirts for my family first and then if they are OK we will scale up the production.

A study in concentration

I took this picture of Rajan’s son Magzihran this morning.  I loved the way he was concentrating as only a small child can.

What a pity this often stops once they go to school!

Bringing into existence

At Udavi school today I had a lovely experience laying out the new garden with the students.  We didn’t have a tape measure so had to use our bodies to do the measuring.

We marked out the garden and I loved how it looked and felt.  That feeling of bringing something into being.

Clear

Today we moved the poster board which was a nice collaborative job. Unfortunately when we dug holes in the new place one of the irrigation pipes got broken.  It was an unused one so it was easy to mend, but as the holes had to be moved a bit to avoid the pipe we weren’t able to finish.

It made me laugh because yesterday in the office I heard someone say that he knew where all the irrigation pipes were.  Which is obviously not so!

As the picture shows it has made a big difference to my house which is now far more open.

A lot going on

Another day with ideas flying around everywhere.  One of them was that we should move the big notice board to make way for Ganesh.  I have been tasked with finding out the best place to put it.  There are several ideas as to where we should put it which have to be sorted out. 

My way to find out is to dig it up and carry it around the place to see where it looks right!  As you can see from the picture we have started the digging up process.  It takes time when the earth is so dry and hard.

Pictures from above

Last Sunday I met Francis and Doris when I went to get my lunch at the Visitors Centre.  They gave me copies of the video clips they had made about Buddha Garden last year.

I saw them today and realised I hadn’t copied the material to my computer. I remember them coming and using a drone (pictured above) that sounded like an angry mosquito. Looking at the clips it gives a very interesting view.  It looks so brown though – and that was after a good monsoon.

Remembering

I took a picture of these flowers growing in great profusion on the butterfly bush outside the kitchen.  They remind me of Peter as we planted one of these plants on the top of where he is buried.  In fact this bush grows from an original cutting from the one we planted

Later, talking to Vivek, it is clear that the bush will have to be removed.  We are going to cover a huge area outside the kitchen where we will sort and wash the vegetables. Once again we will have to take a cutting to grow elsewhere.

Abundance

Things feel very abundant at the moment especially in terms of the new research energy flowing in.

This picture was taken by someone on the SAVI Volunteer visit last week.  It’s a picture of rosella, an annual plant that is incredibly abundant as it reseeds itself and doesn’t need extra water to produce these beautiful fruit.  Although it does require a lot of work to make it usable in a jam or juice.

Flowers

Had a group of women working on a local farm come to have a look around Buddha Garden today.  As they walked along the path back to the vegetable area where we started they reminded me of flowers.  They were so colourful compared with the brown of the grass and the earth.

Excitement at school

Wednesday is the day we go to Udavi school and help them with their four vegetable beds.  It is very exciting that we now have the money to help them build a proper vegetable garden.  Unfortunately I didn’t take any pictures of us measuring up the new area which looks pretty scrubby so will need a lot of work.

I’ve got this picture though of a rather good contraption they made for the plants to climb on.  This group are really good.  They get on with the work in creative ways.