A volunteer found this huge toad in the
garden. They bury themselves in the soil
and then come out after it has rained and the soil is damp.
I was very pleased that this volunteer could
see the beauty of this animal because so many of them don’t. Often they see them as ugly creatures and don’t
want anything to do with them.
I love the shape of the hole in this
stone. Again it was something I came
across on my daily walk that seem to be the inspiration for quite a lot of my
most recent pictures.
I love the colour red so much and couldn’t
resist taking a picture of this blossom which had fallen from a flame of the
forest tree. It made a beautiful path that seemed to glow as the colour was so
intense.
We’ve recently had some of the conditions of
lockdown eased so its now possible to travel.
This picture of the Visitor’s Centre car park shows how a lot of people
are immediately taking advantage of the new reality.
When the tree fell down it brought down the
kitchen wifi cable. Rajan had to get on
top of the water tank to put it up again.
It seems to be working fine now.
After a night of heavy rain this is what we
found in front of the kitchen in the morning.
It took quite a while to cut it all up and put what people didn’t want
for firewood into the forest. There it
will act as mulch and then compost for the soil.
Our brinjal plants are old and don’t look that
good and yet they going on producing these brinjal. The purple colour on them almost glows.
I saw these caterpillars quite by accident this
morning. I was very surprised that so
many of the leaves nearby were intact.
Usually caterpillars strip the vegetation very quickly from any plant where they are happen to be.
This is yet another lucky photograph. I took pictures of the wild flowers, which
are very small, for this week’s video.
When I took this one I didn’t realize the insect was on the blossom.
After just one night of rain the back path is
flooded. To me its clearly not a
feasible alternative as a permanent path to Buddha Garden.
The cashews
we sent off last week to be processed came back today. They look and taste wonderful.
Another picture from my daily walk. I know these bougainvillea plants and blossom
very well, but it was only today that I realized how they also have little
flowers withing flowers.
Its one of the reasons I love walking. I seem to see things differently as well as
it being a good exercise to help my creative process.
When I was out for my daily walk I came across
this beautiful sky. It wasn’t particularly
windy but I am glad I got the picture when I did because within a very short
time it had disappeared.
I was pleased and surprised by the variety and
amount of harvest we did this morning. Some
plants are struggling a bit as we come to the end of the hot season but others
are growing well as we look forward to the summer rains.
This is a picture I took at the same time last
year after some rain.
I saw this flower on my walk this morning. I thought at first it was a double
flower. But looking more closely it
could be that the pink are not flower petals
but young leaves and the little yellow flower comes in the middle of
them.
I love nature’s surprises!
The bougainvillea flowers are out in force this
time of year. Some of which have very
intense colours like this curtain of pink.
I went out with my camera and really liked the
colours on this old banana leaf. The
insect is a bonus which I didn’t realise was there when I took the picture.
Our last two residential volunteers left this
morning. So it is going to be very quiet
and we are going to have to work very hard.
This is Magzhiran who is six today.
He was actually very excited about his birthday
although this doesn’t come across in the picture.
I was walking around in Buddha Garden, looked
up, and saw this incredible number of chikku on one of the trees. It seems it was just this part of the tree
that was producing so many although there were a lot on the other part of the
tree as well.
This is what yesterday’s flowers look like in
close up. They are so small but so
beautifully made.
These are the flowers just outside my
door. But they only look like this when
the sun shines.
No sun, and the flowers close up completely and
can’t be seen.
During my walk I went to the bottom small
cashew orchard where I found that most of the new cashew trees that we planted
last year look like this. Only one or
two of them managed to overcome the exceptional flooding that happened in this
area very early in January.
When I see maize sprouting tassels it always
reminds me of Africa. Maize was the main
crop and when the plants tasseled like this it showed they were well on the way
to producing the maize cobs.
Everyone got very excited about it because they
were hungry and this maize signified the end of the hungry time.
Today I walked around Buddha Garden taking
pictures for this week’s video. I’m
amazed at this picture of the sunset. It
didn’t look anything much and its one of those pictures where I just pointed
the camera, pressed the button, and got far more than I could actually see with
my eyes.
I love the cloud patterns.
We were discussion what to do with the a variety
of trees and bushes alongside the path by the Souryan Garden. As they have got rather overgrown over one of
the beds. I’m all for cutting back the
pomegranate bushes quite strongly. They
don’t give us any pomegranates worth eating but they do give us these beautiful
flowers.
I think cutting them back would encourage more
flowers.
The rain has turned my aloe vera a beautiful
green. At the same time the plants are
putting out increasing the numbers of spikes.
I love how they look.
I’m using the jelly inside the leaves on my
face at the moment.
I wanted to do a drawing of grasping hands and
was having problems making them look realistic.
So I took some photos to help me.
