As I was walking to the Garden of Unseen Helpers, I really liked the way that the sun shone through these leaves. Unfortunately though I wasn’t careful enough about the lighting so it doesn’t show how the sun glinted on the leaves and made them sparkle.
These last two days have been very hot and bright and the soil is getting extremely dry.
I’ve been doing the Buddha Garden Food Growing
Diary today and had the idea to have the cover to include a picture of the
Auroville soil. Since we have recently
had a lot of digging done it was easy to find soil that had the red tinge to it
that is characteristic of the soil here.
It was a good idea that unfortunately didn’t
work when it came to making the cover.
It just didn’t look right with the lettering I am using.
We got more holes dug and this is in the corner
of the little wood which we are going to plant with bushes that butterflies
enjoy.
We will call it the butterfly corner.
Today we started preparing holes for tree
planting. We’ve had some holes dug and
today we filled them up with soil and compost and then mulched them with
glyricidea and the brown sticks of sugar cane.
I was very pleased with what we managed to do.
Spent most of the day doing the corrections to
the second edition of my book ‘Hands and Earth Together’. There aren’t that many but it seemed to take
a long time. One correction is that the
subsidiary title is ‘How we practice Earth
friendly food growing in Buddha Garden’.
I think it will now fit better with the colouring book which I’ve called
‘Earth Friendly Food Growing’.
The picture is of a recently planted papaya tree. All part of getting ready for the monsoon
rains.
Rajan is very pleased with his new bike that he
bought today. Neither of us, however,
can quite understand why the price went from Rs18000 down to Rs13000! And it happened without any special negotiating.
Maybe they just liked his smile.
This morning we marked out where the new bed is
going to be around the trees we are going to plant in the middle of the Garden
of Unseen Helpers.
Doing this seemed to change the energy of the
place which felt very magical.
Hibiscus are such common flowers and yet this
one was really arresting. It seemed like
it was glowing.
This is a picture of spinach seedlings from the
seeds we scattered a few days ago. They
seem like they are exploding with life and making a green cloud on the bed.
Today I finished the path through the
woods. I would love it to be accessible
and have been thinking of ways to do that.
I started making a path through the trees in a
little patch of woodland next to the Garden of Unseen Helpers. I’m going to be calling it the nature walk
and the idea will be for visitors to see and understand the natural cycles that
underpin our food growing work.
I’m really pleased with it.
Today we started digging holes in the Garden of
Unseen Helpers. The soil is softer on
top after the rain but under the surface it is quite hard. This means we have to dig a bit, put water in
to soften it overnight and continue digging the next day.
Any trees we plant in the next few weeks will
need to be watered regularly until the monsoon comes.
Another picture for the water video of the old
well. I find it so hard to get a picture
of it that captures the magic in this place.
I had a walk in the forest today and was very
upset to see two or three quite bare patches.
This is in areas where over the years we have planted trees two or three
times. Some of the trees have grown but
they tend to be in clumps where water collects.
We will have a go at planting yet more seedlings this year and try to
spend more time and energy on aftercare.
Trouble is the time of aftercare is when we are very busy with
vegetables although with the virus it may be different this year.
We’ve had some rather grey days recently. When I was walking around the farm it was
lovely to see the vibrant orange of these marigolds.
This is a picture of our pump that I took for
someone who is making a video about water use in Buddha Garden.
It looks to me like another modern sculpture.
Today at last we spread seeds in the Pryog
garden on the four research beds. The
picture is of amaranth seeds, one of the four varieties we are using.
It rained a lot last night so we thought this
morning was a good time to do it. I’m so
pleased because the beds seem to have been empty for a long time.
I don’t know whether it was a special day last
Friday but Ganesha has been dressed in these lovely orange robes since then.
I love the colour.
This is the new nursery where we are going to
try growing plants like tomatoes during the monsoon. It will be for plants that will grow during
that period but don’t like being rained on.
I was walking around today and saw these tiny
tamarind. I’ve never seen them like that
before as they are so small. It seems to
be the wrong time of year as the main tamarind harvest comes in May/June.
Rajan told me later that sometimes there is a
second harvest. If that is so it won’t
be very big as there aren’t many flowers and fruit.
I have been watching this flower over the last
week. I love the way that it stands
within its own energy and radiates it to anyone passing by.
I feel it is giving me a lesson about what I need to do as I cultivate
my inner energy.
I saw this flower on one of the weeds in the
Pryog garden this morning. I wish I
could have taken the photo sooner before the dark purple colour of the new
flower had faded.
There was something very mysterious about the
flower. I find it very hard to explain
what it was. It seemed to have a very
deep energy that made drew me towards it, but even that doesn’t do justice to
how I felt about it.
This time last year I was still in the UK and
obviously staying with Lesley in London.
This picture is of some rather smart public toilets nearby.
It seems SUCH a long time ago now. Another world.
I love this picture of Usha digging holes for
pumpkins. She was keen to start digging
holes for trees in the Garden of Unseen Helpers. I told her that despite having had some rain
the ground was still very hard and she should wait until we have had more of a
monsoon type heavy rain.
Magzhiran found some blue metal stone and spent
most of the work time this morning happily playing with it. He created this with it which he said was the
first part of his building. He obviously
knows what it is used for as this type of stone is used a lot to build roads
and building foundations.
With the electricity system being upgraded to
make the pump more efficient we now have several more pipes like these in
Buddha Garden.
Like a lot of pipes in this system they remind
me of modern sculpture.
