This is a close up picture I took of our insect
hotel that we made on Monday. The sticks
are full of little nooks and cranies where different sorts of insects can live.
I took pictures for the video which I made
today and which is scheduled to go live tomorrow morning.
I am eating a lot of our sprouts and
microgreens and feeling that they are really helping my recovery from
covid. We plan to give them free to other
recovering people in the next 10 days.
While I was working on repairing the gate
notice I came across these soil sculptures.
I presumed they were made by white ants although when I looked closely
there were a lot of very small black ants busy around the holes.
It rained heavily enough last night for the
ponds to start filling up.
I loved the shadow patterns in the water of the
vegetation around the pond.
I took this picture yesterday as we walked back
from doing our work in the Garden of Unseen Helpers. The shadows of farmers and potential farmers
on the earth.
With the lockdown we’ve decided to just keep
the farm ticking over rather than trying to keep up the usual schedule of
planting and harvesting.
As a result I had time to make this insect
hotel in the Garden of Unseen Helpers.
This is a picture I took last Wednesday of the
storm coming. We had no rain from these
clouds but it did rain several hours later during the night.
I hope we are not in for a generally stormy
time with the pandemic and all its related problems.
I had to take a picture of these valiantly
struggling snake gourd that were planted rather late in the season and are
struggling with sunburn. They are a
tough plant though that loves the sun so I have every hope they will survive.
I couldn’t resist taking another picture of
wild guava after the rain. The colours
looked particularly intense.
We had rain last night the sound of which kept
me awake for quite a while. Woke up to
relative coolness and everything wet. No
puddles because the dry earth had soaked up all the water.
This is the first of the new season
tamarind. I’m not sure how much there
will be this year given that the tamarind tried to make two harvests this
year. I think because of the exceptional
rains we had.
Today we put up a new fence at the entrance
which will stop cows walking all over Buddha Garden if they get in.
It was much easier work than we thought as the
fencing was longer and with stretching it a bit we covered the whole length of
what was needed. I’m very pleased as we
had talked about doing this when the new gate was put in but then we all got
sick so it didn’t happen.
So very pleased that at last we were able to
harvest some pineapples this morning.
After all that work they have come out
beautifully although a few of them have already been eaten by birds and
animals.
While walking around the Buddha Garden forest today I
came across a tree that had dropped all its leaves and was filled with these flowers. I thought at first it was an Indian almond
but later found its called careya arboreta - sometimes known as wild guava.
I’m not sure whether its edible or not. Nothing is edible right now although the
fruits are forming.
Finally our big pond is completely dry. So no more birds there in the morning and
evening.
I love this picture of a succulent I found in
Buddha Garden. The photograph makes it
look much better than the rather dull plant that it looks in real life. I think because the colours are brighter.
The volunteer in the picture is making peanut
butter the old fashioned way. Now that
the machine she used in the kitchen is broken.
Mahindran is explaining to her how his mother
taught him to make it using the same sort of device!
More babies in the form of this chick which is
only a few days old and which I saw for the first time today.
Another symbol of hope for me.
There were a lot of these flowers dropped from
the trees in different places in Buddha Garden this morning.
It’s the end of quarantine today and we all got
together in Buddha Garden for the first time to talk. It was lovely.
Rajan is now coming in regularly and here he is
talking to Mahindran who has come in to help.
I am so grateful to feel I am not running things
on my own anymore.
Saw these lovely blue flowers everywhere in
Buddha Garden today.
I don’t quite know why but blue flowers always
feel very special to me. Especially at
this very difficult time.
Despite the fact I have been sick and with no
Rajan until the last few days we have managed to find some harvests. Like these papaya and micro greens in the
white bag.
I am so grateful.
After feeling really ill for about a week with
covid infection I felt good enough to take this picture of the new leaves on
our peepul tree today.
I feel it symbolizes a new life for me although
at this stage I have no idea about what that is going to look like.
Two of us have tested positive with covid and
while the other one tested negative he has covid symptoms and cannot work.
Whatever difficulties we are experiencing
nature continues…..
These are so called ‘cooking bananas’ that grow
in a different shape to ordinary eating bananas.
They remind me of a sculpture.
Finally we got our first maize seedlings in –
rather late but I suppose better late than never.
They will need plenty of water and mulch to
survive.
With the summer temperatures upon us we are
having to do a lot of this mulching.
Even so, plants are getting burnt in the sun.
Was out walking in one of the orchards and
looking up at all the trees to see what, if any, fruit there were.
Stubbed my toe really badly on an old
glyricidea root. I fear that I may have
to say goodbye to the nail that will probably drop off.
Things are so difficult at the moment what with
the pandemic, me not feeling very well and everyone abandoning the farm, these
flowers of the desert rose lifted my spirits.
Fortunately we have a group of volunteers who
are still managing to help.
Our peepul tree in the middle of Buddha Garden
is in the process of losing all its leaves.
But one of them got stuck in the om sign by my door.
I hope it’s a good omen because we could do
with something positive right now. A lot of people are sick and I don't feel very well.
One of our volunteers is repainting all the
signs on the road. I love
the colours she has chosen. They seem to
glow in the sun.
This is the sign I put up at the entrance to
the private land. I was asked to keep it
discrete and I’m rather pleased with how discrete it looks.
I had some new signs made and this is the one
on the main entrance to Buddha Garden.
Today we got a JCB to come and they made this
path across the private land and to the new Buddha Garden entrance. They also put in a new path within Buddha
Garden to the parking place.
It was hot work but the new entrance just for
us felt very good to use.
Heard today that we are going to have a new
entrance. For the last months our
neighbours have harassing us in various ways about using the common gate and
path through their farm. Someone has
managed to organize a new path over this private land for six to eight
weeks. During this time we have to
negotiate a new entrance somewhere else on Auroville land.
These are the first ever onions that we have
grown in Buddha Garden. We have grown
small spring onions but never anything as big as these. It has taken so long though to grow quite a
small amount so I am not really sure about growing these in large quantities.
I am really pleased that finally we have put
the shade net up over the outside nursery in the Seed garden.
We are growing roccolla on the beds with
sprinklers rather than drippers. This hopefully
means we can keep growing roccolla for a little bit longer as it is obviously
struggling in the heat.
Today we did a lot of work in the Seed Garden
preparing beds for the coming hot season – although I fear we may be a bit late
for that.
I loved the colour of this fenugreek plant and
we were able to cut some of it and send small bunches to Foodlink.
This time last year I was working on my
colouring book and had just completed this picture. We were still in lockdown and now this year,
with the numbers going up again, it looks like a lockdown is on the cards again.
