Things are quieting down at the Aadheenam so today we pick up the final sequence from Bodhinatha’s recent mission to California, October 14-15 in the Bay Area.

Now we are up north in the San Francisco Bay Area at the home of Janaka and Bhavani Param for a satsang with sishyas and students

Bodhinatha sits down for the pada puja.

Pada puja performed

Final arati

Vibhuti blessings.

Giving a carnatic recital during the satsanga

Bodhinatha meditates while listening

A garland of bills as birthday gift

And a really BIG birthday card. It says “This birthday card had to be this BIG…”

…”To hold all the love there is for YOU!”

Bodhinatha shares a letter from Lord Ganesha afterwards

And a birthday cake is presented

Preparing for the 2nd reception at Spinnaker Restaurant in Sausalito on Oct 15 afternoon

Jeya and Bhajana have fun getting ready

Chandran and Sahanadevi Param family engineered this beautiful decoration to mimic the look of an Indian tent. It really vitalized the room

Kartikeya Katir shares his experience serving at Kauai Aadheenam for a month, and about his efforts in the California school textbook controversy

A beautiful display table at the reception

Deva Rajan gives his fly ash presentation as he did for the San Diego group.

Guests listen carefully

Bodhinatha gives his Keynote presentation

Presenting the big birthday cake at the end

On Sunday, October 22, Arumugaswami collected volunteers to help with the five-acre noni field. As you can see, when they arrived, it was definitely in need of weeding and mowing. Instructions were to start at the end of one row of noni, which is placed in a long strip of mulch, and then proceed to weed down 1,000 feet to the other end. Then back…

Tandu Sivanathan arrived with his riding law mower to see if it would tame our tall guinea grass. It did work, but a bit slowly in our wet and overgrown conditions.

About three hours later in the day, Durvasa Alahan had mowed down the field with our Landini tractor, while Tandu had followed behind on several rows. The field is five acres and contains a thousand trees. Each tree needed to be fertilized and have any fruit on it plucked off so it would grow more branches.

The noni plants are growing rapidly. These were just planted July 29th, and are already up to two feet high. They are set in plastic mulch with a drip line for irrigation. The field is being managed according to the rules for organic farming.

Our crew poses with a happy noni tree. From left to right are Ashish Chitnis, Vijay
Shankara, Deva Rajan, Satya Palani, Jnanideva Cevvel, Sivanadiyar Satya, Vel Alahan. Kneeling is Dasan Mahadeva, and Durvasa Alahan is on the tractor.

Tandu joins for a more artistically posed shot…

To everyone who came and helped out. Thank you!