Kitchen Gardening

"Plants are babies, if you give them nurture them well, they will
grow happily and with laughter(woh haste haste ugenge). If you neglect them and not give them enough care they will cry and droop".
This was told to me by Fatima Akka. Fatima akka comes from the village to work in campus. She is my mentor and team member in cultivating the vegetable garden at campus. She has so much of wisdom on how to grow plants and she is my teacher.

The last two weeks have been fabulous. Everyday in the morning I worked in the garden. How beautiful the garden looks now.

I learnt some basic techniques on how to cultivate any plant and how to nurture them well. I really enjoyed working in the garden. Sometimes I work along with akka, observed how she is doing and ask her questions. Sometimes I worked by myself, trying things and implementing my knowledge. The only bad thing was at times it was really sunny and it was seeping my energy.

We have grown lots of different vegetables in the garden and I am really excited and optimistic. We were able to reboot some previously planted plants which were crying for attention.

The heavens also seem to be happy, every alternate day it blesses the garden with rain. All the hard work is paying off and I am happy.  Every evening when I go to water the garden I feel nice and Its so good to see the plants growing. Some parts of the garden look like a mini farm or field.
To reach this stage after many rounds of failing in the past because for various reasons is very holistic. I am able to see why I failed in the past and what were the reasons for the vegetables not to grow.

When I look around in the garden I can see the plants laughing happily.

Summer

For the past four weeks we had a bustling life at campus with lots of new people to meet and lots of exciting things happening.

 Every Sunday we go swimming. It has been a lot of fun. I know swimming but i know only the basic. My stroke is not completely smooth and i am still perfecting the breathing and the stroke. I just practice, take tips from my parents and freaked out in the pool. I can feel and see a significant improvement in my stroke. Also with my brother I play in the pool. Swimming was one highlight of the summer and of course the ice cream after the swim.
I did Madhubani painting. It was a very peaceful experience. I enjoyed composing the painting and working with focus on one thing.
I explored making natural paints. I did some research and then tried. I tried making with flowers,berries and earth. I was successful in making brown but failed to make colours with flowers. I felt disappointed but it was an interesting experience and i want to learn more on how to make natural colours.
Fatima akka has a lot of knowledge on plants, along her side i did kitchen gardening and i learned a lot of techniques to make my garden more efficient. I am very satisfied with the work i did and am very excited for the days to come.
I took responsibility of the kitchen for the all the four weeks. At first I took the whole responsibility on my shoulders. For the first two weeks i was always worried for the food. Most of my day I spent in the kitchen looking over things. Then I realized what I am doing. For the next two weeks things went unruffled. Also I was able to give space to my other team members and share the work equally. Things went much smoother and i was able to do lot more things. Overall i enjoyed doing the responsibility and got the hang of it.
As part of campus training I did First Aid Training. I really enjoyed cause it was a completely new topic and I learned lots of things. I took care of the first aid of the community for one week resulting me to get a practical training of all the theory i read
I did glass paining for the first time. It was a new technique and paint for me. I relished painting.
I learned how to find a tree's height. I learned the math from my father. I spend time with trees, I measures the height,age and identified the tree. I researched about the tree. Then I sat under a tree and drew a tree. I liked associating with the tree.
One very nice thing was I met lots of new people, made new friends and learned from them. I felt nice to connect with different people. I braided some of my friends hair and we had a jolly time together doing hairstyles. I learned to make artifacts from coconut leaves, it was an interesting craft. I learned about dog breeding. I did embroidery and learned some new stitches. I did land art, I made Yin Yang out of stones and did many other things with others and learned small things from others which i will always keep with me. One fun thing was playing badminton, cricket,frisbee and other games in the evening. Also the thought clubs were very fruitful for me.
I got bitten by pepper, our dog while handling him, it was a mistake from my side. I was a little overconfident while handling him and got paid for that. It was a practical test for my first aid training. Finally everything is fine.
Every Friday I went to Sandesh, I had lot of fun there. I started opening more and doing more things there.

I had a magnificent summer and i really freaked out.