I think this picture gives a good idea of what it was like cutting
through the undergrowth in the Garden of Unseen Helpers. I was very happy that Rajendran turned up and
did such a good job. I couldn’t have
coped with all the thorns and in any case I wasn’t feeling too good today.
Its going to take quite a time to finish as we have to replant what was
originally a path which was very rough.
I took another trip to the Garden of Unseen Helpers to see about the
next stage of the clearing up. This will
involve taking out a LOT of thorn trees, picking up a LOT of rubbish (thrown
there by the next door builders) as well as changing the fence. Hopefully I can make a start clearing up the
rubbish and taking out a few other plants.
I think I will have to leave the thorns to someone else.
This picture is of my hugme tree where I made the seat last week. I have needed to hug it a lot these past
weeks and months.
This ended up feeling like quite a busy day because I spent a large part
of the morning doing the video. Most annoyingly I had to wait several hours for
the YouTube website to work before I was able to upload the video and feel the
job was finished.
My first ideas for my next embroidery project didn’t work, but I do have
hopes about this one. I’ve called it
‘blue’ because its using mostly blue material.
I surprised how much blue material I have given that I don’t like the
colour all that much.
The picture is of Rajan’s Sunday job – digging holes for plants in his
garden outside his house.
Yesterday I made a seat next to the Hugme tree. Today I went this morning to try it out and
took this picture of what the tree looked like when I looked up into it.
Beautiful.
Spent some time in the morning working in the Garden of Unseen Helpers
again. I did quite a lot of clearing up
and in the process made this seat next to what I call ‘the Hugme tree’ – a neem
tree that I always hug as I go past it.
As I did the work I felt very close to Jean.
My friend Jean died about ten days ago and its her funeral today.
I think these flowers came out especially for her.
This looks really beautiful but we spent a lot of this morning cutting clumps of it off one of our guava trees. It’s a
parasite plant – a form of mistletoe – that will take over the whole tree if we
don’t keep in under control.
Each morning after work I’ve been regularly working at developing the
Garden of Unseen Helpers. This has
mainly involved cutting back a lot of undergrowth. Rajan bought some new (very inexpensive and
simple) tools today which as the picture shows, has made the work go very
efficiently and well.
I must remember in the future to keep an eye on the tools and make sure
they are good for purpose. Sometimes all
that’s needed to make a tool work properly is something like a new saw blade.
Its been a quiet day – especially for a Monday. I’ve spent a lot of time working in the
Garden of Unseen Helpers.
I’ve continued to work on the embroidery by putting some more decoration
on the background. It looks and feels
different when its hung up although it doesn’t look so different in the
picture.
Very pleased with these re-soled ‘new’ sandals. They originally belonged to Emma but the
soles had got very thin. It was impossible
to get them re-soled in the UK so brought them back here to do it. I am very pleased with them as they are
comfortable and they give me a spare pair of sandals which I think I might need
in the not too distant future.
The only thing I worry about is that the soles might be too smooth for
monsoon so I could slip over in the wet.
But lets see. At the moment they
are lovely to wear.
Video making time again and at least this week I have plenty of
material.
This is what the nursery looks like now as we grow all the seedlings for
the coming season of rain and eventually monsoon.
Great excitement when a friend came to visit. It makes me realize how few people I see
these days. I loved showing her how the Garden of Unseen Helpers is coming
on. She is really interested in that
sort of thing
This is how Mala and Vasantha tied up the sugar cane this morning. Growing the sugar cane has been part of the
research we are doing and I have never done it before. At the moment it is incredibly untidy as it
is tall and growing all over the place.
Mala and Vasantha seemed to know exactly what to do and tied it together
in bunches so it stood up straight again.
It looks fully grown to me but obviously isn’t. I don’t know when we will be harvesting it.
I have decided to spend a bit of extra time every day doing work in the
Garden of Unseen Helpers. I did a bit of
glyricidea cutting and moved all the piles of decaying stuff to another
location. Its slow work on my own but I
do a little every day it will gradually get finished. I feel quite excited as I do it.
I am SO pleased that this morning
we were at last able to make a proper start on the Garden of Unseen
Helpers. With the recent rains I want to
get it all sorted out and trees planted as soon as possible.
Its been very difficult to find
enough time to do it. With so few
volunteers we’ve had to focus on picking and planting the vegetables and fruit trees. Today one of our main Auroville distribution
centres was closed so we didn’t have to pick very much and that gave us time to
do this work.
I’ve ordered the tree saplings
and hopefully in the next weeks we will be able to get them all planted.
Today's picture is of the
embroidery I have been doing over the past weeks and finished today. Which really surprised me. I sat down and started working and I suddenly
realised I had finished! Its possible that I will continue by doing more
embroidery on the background but at this point am not sure whether its needed
or not.
I’m going to hang it up and see
what I feel about it.
Have not been able to go out because
of the curfew so spent a lot of time doing my embroidery and some writing.
It was really interesting to see
that last year at about the same time of year we had had big rains which left
large puddles everywhere. We seem to
have had quite a lot of rain this year but I haven’t seen many big puddles like
this.
It is difficult to grasp the magnitude of what
has happened as I sit here, unable to go out because of a curfew brought on by
the pandemic. This time last year I was
getting ready to go to the UK. The world
has changed.
Found it difficult doing the weekly video this morning. This week we have
been without some of our volunteers. As
a precaution, two of them didn’t come because they were connected to the recent
covid19 case in Auroville. Fortunately,
everyone has tested negative so they were eventually able to come back. It means that those of us left have had to
work very hard with little time for photography.
Despite this I managed to create
a video which showcased some of the lovely flowers around at the moment. Like the blue Radha’s consciousness in today’s
picture.
The energy of everything growing
is lovely to feel after these summer months of arid dryness.
Very pleased to see our
volunteers (both Newcomers) return to the farm today. With
no one coming from outside Auroville we depend on them a lot more than usual.
We had an unexpectedly clear and
sunny morning this morning when the moon was very evident.
Only Rajan and I at the farm this
morning and we had to clean 5kg of basil.
At the end of it my hands were tingling!
With all the rain everything is
bursting into growth. I love all the
different greens and shapes and sizes of the leaves on these trees. This is from one of our orchards in Buddha
Garden.
We have a whole lot of these mushrooms growing
under a bush just outside Rajan’s house.
I have never seen them before and colour is quite breathtaking.
No volunteers so just us three this morning to
do all the work. Two of the volunteers
are in quarantine because of the virus – we got our first case in Auroville
over the weekend. They have been in
contact with a friend of a friend of the person who is sick. The friend of the person who is sick has so
far tested negative so hopefully they will only be off for a week.
The picture shows how the grass is growing – we
have a lot of grass cutting to do as well as all the other work.
I was so very pleased when my new hair cutting
scissors wooden comb turned up from Amazon yesterday. It meant I could cut my hair today.
I had a bit of difficulty setting up the
mirrors so I could see all parts of my head.
And also had some difficulty seeing what I was doing and coordinating my
hands with the mirror. In the end I was
very pleased with the result, mainly because it makes my head feel cooler.
I call it ‘a rat cut’ because it looks a bit as
if a rat has chewed my hair. As my hair
is quite curly its very forgiving when the cutting isn’t quite straight – which
in most places it isn’t.
This embroidery is coming along almost like
magic. I only had a very sketchy idea
about what is was going to look like.
And am continually surprised and pleased at what it looks like after I
have been working on it.
I saw this very unusual praying mantis by the
beans this morning. He looked just like
the bean plants he was near with their dried up leaves.
This morning I smelt these flowers – a kind of
jasmine – before I saw them and took this picture. I wish I could put the smell in the picture.
One of our volunteers told me that the flowers
don’t stay there very long. When I went
on my evening walk I found that most of the blossom was on the ground although
there were still enough flowers for the smell to remain.
Beautiful things like these perfumed flowers
and the water in the pond yesterday are very ephemeral.
After rain yesterday afternoon and a lot of rain with a thunderstorm in the evening we finally saw water in the pond this morning.
By the evening, when I took a friend to have a look this puddle had disappeared.
I love how Ganesha looks with this ‘beard’ of
grass. Apparently it is put there this
time of year to help bring the rain. The
grass used is associated with rain because with its special roots it
attracts/brings moisture to where it is growing.
I noticed the butterfly bush had come into
bloom today and took this close up picture.
It brings out the beautiful blue of the blossom in a way that I hadn’t
noticed when I looked at the bush.
Without the video to worry about I was able to
spend a lot more time today doing my embroidery. I love how it is slowly evolving.
