Project Aanandi Garden: Back after exactly one month !

There has been a prolonged silence...exactly one month...but, there has been much work done.

Its much too late to give a detailed feedback of the cleaning work. So suffice it to say that the contractor had a very meticulous way of working but a very poor judgement of the volume of work. So what was going to be a quick week of intensive work extended to about eight days. Another cause for extension was that the labourers would work only when the contractor was around. Also, TU (=tenant uncle) displayed his nuisance value on two days and Pradeep had to be brought in to talk to him severely after which he mellowed.

Once that was done, there was still some work that we needed to do. So that took considerable amount of time due to our lack of judgement and experience :)

The last picture that I put up in the previous post shows a gloriously plowed plot. After that however, due to many factors such as rains, some more cleaning (to be precise, clearing off the ash piles and distributing the ash all over the garden), plucking the jackfruit (5 minutes to pluck it, 20 minutes to wash off the sticky stuff!), protecting the big trees with anti-ant and anti-harmful-insect powder etc., it took us a further three weeks to come to a point where we could actually think of planting something. By this time I was getting really impatient. I even remarked that we've spent half the year cleaning, now at least in the remaining half, lets watch this garden grow !

By this time, a lot of grass and other plants had taken over the plots...yes, the same ones that we had plowed and kept ready ! So first we removed all of them from one plot and let them lie there. One Chitale kaka had told us that it will dry up there, turn onto manure and help the plants grow.

Finally on Saturday the 19th we procured seeds from Dhadphale kaku who generously also gave tips on planting and a lot more seeds than we had requested for. She also gave us some plants. Then, on Sunday the 20th, we planted all the plants - tooti (Blackberries, I believe), Coffee, mehendi, karande (a vegetable that is found predominantly in Kokan), paan leaves, a red-flower creeper, aLoo (I think it is called Colocasia), Potatoes and some mirchi (Chilli)plants. We decided to plant the seeds the next day.

The next day was spent in clearing up the long plot off all the grass and weeds. So finally, today morning, we went and planted some seeds - palak (Spinach), methi (Fenugreek), ambadi (another leafy vegetable...I don't know the English name) and shepu (Dill)

Tomorrow we plant more seeds and the last batch on Saturday. On Sunday we'll just go to water the garden and generally feel happy about the work we have done :)

I leave you with some recent photographs...

How green is my garden ! Look at the flora...