May news from Jadan Gardens

Hari Om to all Bhaktas out there in cooler climes from the semi-arid zone of Rajasthan. We have achieved 44 degrees this month and so are well qualified to cook in the shade as well as the sun.

May is a time for collecting the vegetables that come from our native trees namely kair and gunda and khejri. We collected over 100kg gundas this month and some were cooked, pitted and sundried and others we enjoyed with green mangoes either as a chilli pickle or as a sabji.

The Shiv Bagh was overhauled this month – weeding and removing tree litter and repairing the channels and this has improved the irrigation. Since the talab is now 80cm we can only water every 15 days. Fortunately a heavy rain storm came during the night of the 13th and so for a few days it was blissful and even cooler. Thereafter the fierce heat started and even higher temperatures have been forecast up until the end of June.

The neem giloy vines were cut on the 13th and the stems are being dried in the sun after having been cut into small pieces. It will need be ground to a fine powder and packed into vegetable capsules. Swamiji has told us that this is very good for the memory and the liver and kidneys. It is also commonly used to treat diabetes since it regulates the blood glucose.

Our main tube well is at an all time low and so water supply for the ashram is now coming from our Lakshmi tube well. Let us hope that it provides for our needs up until the rains come.

The other vegetables are not doing so well – some just dried up from the heat and lack of water and others such as the guar phali are going strong. We purchased a new electrically charged spray machine earlier in the month and so now we can more easily keep the bugs at bay.

A storm was in the air on the afternoon of the 25th and the air became very cool but not a lot of rain came. So as you can see it is all a struggle just to keep the plants and trees alive until the monsoon.  Please keep praying for torrential rain. We have been permitted to use the sprinklers to keep the workshop garden going. It is a very beautiful space with many varieties of fruit trees, herbs, ornamentals and rose bushes. We have been doing a lot of weeding here this month and we also cut 5kg of mint for drying.

 I have been wondering this month whether it would be possible to somehow utilize the water that we use in our residential buildings for irrigation of the Shiv Bagh and the workshop garden both of which are situated between these buildings. It would require some alteration of the plumbing system and possibly the installation of a grey water system. Yes – these are desperate times and even the little bees are living around our water filter machine so that they can survive and yes – I swallowed one this month, but that’s another story...
Yours truly

Puspa Devi
May 27th 2014