We had a scintillating Sun One home this morning to begin a short 4-day phase that will culminate on the night of Maha Sivaratri. We bring you a few photos today from our retreat outings.

Arumugaswami and Sadhaka Adinatha went to Himalayan Acres on a “check up” tour. Here is the river ford. Some young people wanted to make a swimming hole so they put rocks in front of the culverts to raise the water level and now the water is flowing on top of the road way.

This river ford was built nearly 50 years ago and is still serviceable today.

On a small field in a gully, well protected from the wind with plenty of wanter, these 35 Noni trees are doing very well. They don’t seem to mind having their feet well and are healthy and vigorous.

Only two years old, the little trees are already starting fruit. Score 1 for a successful trial test. Armed with this experience we can confidently expand the number of Noni trees on Himalayan Acres.

Wind breaks are extremely important to prevent soil erosion and protect plantings in fields. Many of our pilgrims have help plant these rows of iron wood trees.

To date we have planted 1000’s of trees, offset from each other in two rows.

With few exceptions they are all doing well…

The earliest plantings done about three years ago are now finally high above the guinea grass and are beginning to do their job of wind protection. One of these trees was planted by Swami Bua. About 8,000 feet (a mile and a half) of trees have been planted in two rows… so that’s 16,000 feet of wind break we have planted.

Tree planting is one of the great things we can do for Mother earth. And Gurudeva used to encourage his sishya to plant ten tree every year.

The silpis went on their monthly outing.. destination: the sea shore just a mile north of Kapaa. It was here that Gurudeva used to park daily for several years in his Winnebego, without fail and he and his editing team would work on Dancing with Siva. He used to say the whales knew he was working on Dancing with Siva, and they would celebrate progress on this profound work by playing in the waters near the shore for the team to see, and swimming completely out of the water with a giant splash. On the final day of the book, just as Gurudeva declared it was completed, one shale lay on his side and slapped his giant tail 27 times on the ocean surface, something none of us had ever seen before, or since.