October. Monsoons are over. It is still raining crazily though. What?? Tonight it is supposed to start and go on for twenty-four hours!!! We are overwhelmed with grass. Kasha grass, taller than a person, with fluffy white flowers waving gaily in the breeze – gorgeous and resilient. Very good at helping us prevent erosion andContinue reading “Grass and beauty”
Tag Archives: rain
Fish!
Flooding
We are flooded out again and are quite concerned. What used to be an occasional and unusual phenomenon seems to have become an annual one, and the severity seems to be increasing. Most of our fields, in all directions, including those which NEVER were flooded before, are under water. Those that are not are inaccessible:Continue reading “Flooding”
More trees!
We have finally purchased our last (for this year) major batch of trees. 750 native plants for the trenches and a wide variety of fruit trees, both from seed and grafted. The heat is building up and we’ve had a couple of dust storms and very minor showers. We want to get these in beforeContinue reading “More trees!”
Cutting grass and mixing mud
The last two months have mainly been a daily slog to do these two things. Sunil works for a few hours with the grass cutter to reclaim meter after square meter of land from the wild flood-jungle it had become. And we have had the JCB digger in again to make the compost mix andContinue reading “Cutting grass and mixing mud”
One in 1200
That’s how many villages in UP are affected by the floods. News like this always seemed distant when we lived in the city. We are the last village before Mirzapur, which is the worst hit. It’s been raining everywhere (except in Banaras), and I suppose we were just too busy too notice. The rice cropsContinue reading “One in 1200”
Floods!
Well, we made a mistake not to make our bridge even higher. Our carpenter had planned it for about five feet higher than it is, and that seemed outrageously high to us. But, today, the nala has risen above it. If you stand on the bridge, you are knee-deep in water, and it is stillContinue reading “Floods!”
The Worship of the Nala
The past days of rain have turned the nala into a gushing stream. There is even a ‘waterfall’ near our building, so that we hear the sound of rushing water all day and night. Here’s a post from Prof. Nita Kumar’s blog about the inauguration of our bridge – a controversial affair! “The nala, that is,Continue reading “The Worship of the Nala”
“Where’s the loo?”
“This is not the tale of how we always had to strategise before planning to spend the day, or half the day, on our new up-coming forest retreat, “Ganga Van.” The multi-acre campus had no bathroom. It did have an “office block,” with a good-sized room set up as an office, an unfinished bathroom andContinue reading ““Where’s the loo?””
First trenches done!
We managed to hold off the rain till last night (!), and started filling the trenches yesterday. Twelve are done, and what beauties they are! They all have a mix of soil, cowdung, straw, and leaves. They are porous and feel rich and ready to welcome new life. It finally rained last night, so thatContinue reading “First trenches done!”
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