Embroidery

Here is the embroidery – 'return of the sun' – which I put up today.

I am very pleased with it, and as I hoped, now I have finished the piece and it is up I now have ideas for the next project. Great.

Dry earth

This dried up earth at the bottom of one of our dried up ponds reminds me of how crucial our water supply is. How we must remember to use water consciously and do what we can to protect the aquifer.

Very fragile

I am feeling incredibly fragile. As if I am covered with points and I am rolling around and every time a point hits something it hurts. This is my picture of how it feels.

I find I am worrying all the time. Every little twinge I feel in my body I am convinced there is something badly wrong – especially with my heart. Everything in my body feels very tight, especially my stomach, and the only thing that seems to help that is going out for a bike ride or going to yoga or preferably both. I also find myself with very dark thoughts a lot of the time. Everything seems very grey and I feel too old to get excited about anything or believe that there are any good things left for me in this world. Or that I have anything of value to give to the world.

I do not want to see the doctor as I am sure she will just want me to have a lot of invasive tests that I do not want because she cannot trust her own judgement now I am so old. I have made an appointment with a homeopath but I did not feel good about her talking to her on the phone. I don't feel there is anyone I can talk to about it.

Very productive garden

Every day we are producing a lot of lettuce, but I am so glad that other parts of the garden are proving just as productive. These are all the pumpkins – more than 130kg – that were produced on less than half a bed in the Souryan garden. And we also have large amounts of sweet potato (don't know how much as haven't weighed it yet) from a bed in the Pryog garden.

I am really pleased as I don't want Buddha Garden to be turned into just a lettuce factory.

My new water filter

Today Muthu came and finished off doing all the water filters. This involved putting an automatic shut off in each tank so that it is kept permanently full. I was rather amused that he doesn't have too much confidence in them though as he says I should shut off the water at night!!

I am very pleased with it. The water tastes good and my whole digestive system feels a lot less agitated and I wonder if it is because it is not getting a daily dose of not very nice bacteria! Or maybe it is just my imagination......

I have wanted my own filter for a long time and now I am very pleased to have it.

What is going on?

We got the first people in the cottage two nights ago, but it seems no one wants to stay. There were a group of three came but then two of them were a couple and wanted a separate space which we happened to have available. Most annoyingly all three of them decided to go after only one night here. Then this morning another person said she wanted to move back to the dormitory because she didn't like the toilet facilities.

What is going on? Everyone agrees it is a lovely space and for the last two days we have been working really hard to make it so. I wonder if I am reacting too much because of the difficult history of this place. Or maybe the place just needs a bit of time to settle down into its new way of being.

I will see what happens with the new volunteers expected this coming week.

My anti venom suit

Had yet another experience of someone attacking me personally and telling me that I was the cause of all the problems she was experiencing with the Farm group.

Instead of getting upset I felt my anti venom suit, let her hatred just wash over me and jumped up and down and laughed and crowed about how much influence she thought I had. I suppose this was a bit naughty, but it was completely absurd as I don't have control of the farm as it is run collectively by the Farm group.

What it did do was make her even more angry as by refusing to engage she lost the opportunity to try and manipulate me. In the picture I am putting on my anti venom suit.