It's raining again

Yep it is! :)
 All the foresters believe it will not be raining for this Friday's forest meeting over here. Paapum (let's see)
  Truly a relief to have rains even though our balcony roof leaks.  well not really anymore, as we recently changed it..The trees we planted this year are getting a good amount of rain to kickstart a great life! :)
  Come summer, we will still probably have to water them to help them but after that we are one happy family :)
  i have noticed that planting them in the wild grass is actually benefiting them in the long run.  i know, i know, weeds dont help; sorry i beg to differ :)

Planting November 2009 Day II

  The day after our super drenched saturday planting, our boys came along.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

  They are the AV clean group (they go around cleaning around Auroville from garbage, etc.) when they are not doing that they help other places - in this case, planting trees in Lumière. We had a lot of left to plant approx.600 trees.  Planting is the easy and fun part. come and dig and fill holes?!

   Again, in pouring rain we all began operation planting trees.  straight to it, we filled the remaining pits in no time with smiles, laughter and sweat washed with the rains.

  A little yellow raincoated girl, Yashoda, following her father; a pleasant and welcoming sight!

  Again unprepared for so many planters at their pace, i was running with the wheelbarrow placing the trees; this time Raja was there to help. phew!

  We headed for the last field (4 acres) which is out of our bounds; unfenced and difficult to keep a watch out for (not to say we dont).  Elumalai, earnest and eager as usual.  Ravi, persistant and tough headed.  Ganesh, gentle and excited to do more fun. Palani, excited and playful..Padmanaban, the x-chief of the AV clean group; bustling with mantras as he planted and Kaliamoorthy, forced himself out of bed to make it today and not tomorrow - just to say that all sorts of friends were here.  We headed out to the field and explained them to plant as they wished but 4 meters apart minimum like that i was free to run and get the remaining plants.

  A full round we went planting when we realised there were 3 more wheelbarrows to plant.  they were all like "we already planted 4 meters apart, now what?!" :)

  The rains are a good time to plant trees and i was not going to wait..so we continued another round planting a little closer making sure we were mixing the species!

  thank you guys!

Planting November 2009 Day I

  Who will come?

  I SMS-ed plenty of friends to come over and plant trees if they wished.  Lots of rains since several days; so i had everyone confirm as i could prepare snacks accordingly :)

  It was pouring on saturday.  They day i had chosen as pits were ready to be plated .

  woke up in the morning with heavy showers.  i had to plant those trees to benefit from the showers.  Told everyone if it pours do not come!

  I had several courageous brothers and sisters come over.  It was fun.  It was so wet.

  i was so unprepared.  i had to play host, organiser and distributor.  As people trickled into Lumière i realised that it was actually happening that day.  Tea i prepared to warm up everyone.  B, our first candidate, came cycling; excited to plant more trees as he already did a whole bunch the other day at Samriddhi.

  Muthu and Dean brought breakfast.  Sweet of them.  Aurosylle and Ishana too made it in between an interval of rain.  Pleasant sight to see Ishana excited to get to work. right?

  Everyone wanted to get down to planting; when i thought while they were having tea i could catch up with distributing the plants to their pits - plan failed.  I ran with the wheel barrow with plants to get them started planting which is the fun bit - i mean planting not running with a wheel barrow :)  All this mind you, in pouring rain. wow!

  Effective they were. i had to keep running from nursery to pits to keep the pace going :)

  fun it was.  i believe they enjoyed it to!  we planted 400 trees that morning.

  Raja, Muthu's younger brother, discovered a quick method to make hole for plant.  Step into the filled pit, already with compost mixed, making a hole big enough for plant.  WIth knives made out of the palmyra, sharp and effective, the plastic of the plants were easily removed.  The old man's idea!  traditional.

  Everyone was happy, smiling and rejoicing the lovely rains.   the morning ended with them kids throwing mud at each other..i was their last victim - red earth it was splashed all over! good memories.

  A remaining 600+ trees are to be planted..The Auroville Clean Group will come Sunday.

  Let see how that goes.