A spider's web

This morning there was a very heavy mist, one of only a few that we have had this year so far. All the spider webs – and there were a lot – were covered in dew drops. When the sun started to come through the mist they looked beautiful and I managed to capture one on my camera.

Today I have realised that I need more people to come and work with me in Buddha Garden. People who will share the vision and live here and share the work. As both Pierre and Vivek move on to something else I need others to come and share the work with me and like me, grow with the place.

I need to weave a different web.

Growing anywhere

We harvested sweet potatoes this morning and I was most impressed with this one. It had managed to not only grow under the brick wall onto the path, but to reach a good size as well.

Just goes to prove I suppose that you can grow anywhere and that maybe overcoming lots of difficulties makes you stronger. In which case I should be like Hercules!

New day

I was taking pictures much earlier than usual today. Early enough to see the sun rise over the Souryan garden.

It reminded me of how beautiful Buddha Garden is at this time of the morning. How privileged I am to be able to see and enjoy the newness of each day.

A lot of baggage

I went to a mediation meeting this morning with someone who I had a very noisy argument with last week. Before we started the mediator asked us to put down all our baggage about the situation before we started. I was horrified to get the above image which was of huge piles of baggage on both sides of a road that went into the distance!

It was a good meeting as it was good to me to articulate and understand why I am still in Auroville. I now have more hope and positivity about what I am doing.

New beds

We started the first of four what I call 'intermittent beds' in the Wild Orchard. The main growing time on these beds will be the cool season when we will grow tomatoes and lettuces. The rest of the year, when we don't have so many volunteers, we will grow either green manures or vegetables like pumpkins that don't take a lot of looking after. This will improve the soil as well as providing more vegetables.

The first job, as the picture shows, is to take off the top layer of grass. It will be watered this afternoon and the top soil broken up tomorrow. Then we will put a layer of compost on top and start growing something. We need irrigation pipes but the irrigation system is already there so It won't be a lot of work.

At this stage the bed looks more like a path. A path to a new way of doing something?

New colours

Today I went to the New colours project in the nearby village which is an after school project for children there. Two of their volunteers came to Buddha Garden and then asked me if I would go and help them start a garden there.

This is a picture of what will be their garden which is like a walled garden which you find in some large country houses in the UK. Here it looks very beautiful, but the soil is very clay and it is going to take a lot of work to get the soil in good condition.

I have got to think how I am going to teach the children how to do the work. I asked the volunteers to try and find a way to make the project belong to the children.

New project

This is the new project that I started today.

It will be called 'emergence' and is an abstract piece. First time I have ever tried doing anything abstract with embroidery.