a gift. received with surrender.
The blog below has some updates on the activities shared at Parshada and the philosophy behind it.
seed saving is the mainstay of any garden..how to be independent of those poison coated market sold seeds, the only way..save your own…share with friends and keep planting the seeds as they don’t germinate easily once they are a year or more old..for once, we have to keep away from hoarding and saving for the rainy day…because ‘if it ain’t in the soil when the rains come, it ain’t going to germinate….’ so we want to keep planting and keep making our own seed, and sharing the ones we have plenty of…
so often as kids we were enraptured by the activity of playing “ghar ghar”, loosely translated as “house house”. bedsheets became forest camps, and torches our bonfires, we swelled in the opportunity to sleep in our wild dwellings and were eager to by-pass the ordinary and un-enchanted “bed” for some this bed-sheet turned make shift tent, which gave us a new ‘josh’ to feel alive and steeped in adventure days and nights.
growing up, whenever i consciously choose, to bring the outdoors inside by planting trees and vegetables in flower pots and home gardens, i feel i am touching that time of play and mystery, when “anything was possible”, and a better world was only a dream and a ‘bed-sheet’ tent away. Whilst working to co-create harmony filled green spaces, for family and friends, i am reminded of that magical feeling, and as adults, we continue to play, “ghar ghar”, only in bigger spaces, where the bed-sheet is replaces by bricks and cement, it is home, nonetheless.
photo-set by akash, priyanka and moonstar
summer is beckoning…..the call of hibiscus…. flower teas and sherbets galore..
photo-set by priyanka
the seeds to be saved and shared is a labour of love, that deepika from pebble garden in auroville has been honouring for the past eighteen years. having had an oppurtunity to viist her a year and half ago was such a gift as she showered us with more than twenty types of seeds, and returning this year with seeds of our own to share, was for me, a meeting of that sacred circle in it’s wholeness.
picture by manreet deol
sun kissed chana saag
picture by sanjay
carrots in the garden. we often use the carrot tops, being rich in potassium, for our green smoothies.
picture by priyanka
looking for land to farm on, all around atrocious prices and poplar growths..to think it could be confused for a forest, eight years later, to be cut for timber, and a hell of a lot of money. it’s all about money these days, it seems..how much can you earn from the land..the relationship has changed, the cost’s have all gone up.
soon these flowers will yield mustard seed pods..
picture by sanjay
harleen helped peel the almonds for the almond milk when she and simrat, who host two book clubs in chandigarh, came for setting up the beginnings of a library at parshada.
ragi(mandua) roti with peanut chutney
for the chutney~
peanuts 250 gms roasted
four tomatoes
ten cloves garlic
blend all three ingredients in a mixie till desired consistency..
en-vision
to pluck an orange from a tree and make it’s juice yourself and then to have the joy of it is one thing, now growing an orange tree is another dimension..
the desolate
working with hands, weaving baskets, one replaces the other, akin to thoughts..
