But….why?? Rain? Now?? Seriously??!
We are literally waiting for the sun. We have been getting tractors and tractors of aged cowdung, and picking up piles and piles of leaves, and have bought quintals and quintals of straw. We have enough to start filling the trenches with a mixture of mud, straw, leaves, and compost, and have been planning to call the excavator in a day or two. But if it rains, and continues to rain for more than a week, we will be totally washed out.
Well, no use arguing with the gods. The good thing about all the rain in the past month has been that the existing trees have shot up, and the kasha grass on the edges of the land has turned green – we badly need it to grow as one of our main layers of protection against erosion.
Going to order plants from the nursery in Kolkata tomorrow. Our seedlings are doing well, touch wood!
We drove through Banaras Hindu University yesterday to get permission to pick up fallen leaves from their 700 acre campus. We all drooled at the gorgeous, decades-old trees. I’m going to go back specially to collect seeds.
Here’s a glimpse of our kheer party on Tuesday (right). We played word-Antakshari and sipped kheer from tiny cups and generally relaxed.
The children (above) love wandering about the land. On our way back, we were lucky (again) to see the lovely nilgai and their young… (below)
gangavan.org 