I was so excited when I saw that Nimo from Empty Hands Music had just released a new music video. I love everything he has published. This one features a young girl named Shivani Ray. Enjoy!
Freedom to Thrive
I love to watch how plants return to their glory when they are freed from invasive blackberry vines. Our site is has so many sword ferns; very few of them were planted by us. Most were barely visible when we first removed the blackberry vines.
This fern was freed on March 11 of last year. The photos below show what has happened since that time.
March 11, 2019 
March 29, 2019 
April 14, 2019 
January 17, 2020
Greenbelt Restoration Work Parties: January 22 – February 5, 2020
There were three Wednesday work parties during this time period. UW Carlson Center Service-Learning students and UW Capstone interns participated in each event. Antje and I were team leaders at all three of the work parties. Haley, one of our long term team leaders joined us during the January 29th work party.
January 22
Three Service-Learning students and one Capstone intern participated in the January 22nd work party. The students did a variety of jobs. Two of them disassembled one of the drying racks and moved the dried blackberry, ivy and periwinkle vines as well as other dried weeds to another part of the site where they will continue to decompose.
This past fall, the 5 cu ft pile of wood chips that was in the part of our site that borders 25th Ave S was taken. Earlier in the year, we had a problem with yard waste being dumped in the same area. Since most of the yard waste was sorted by size, bundled and banded, we suspected it was being dumped by a company rather than individuals These were irritating annoyances and we pondered ways to prevent them from happening again.
In the past, we have moved wood chips from that place into smaller piles in the main site to make them more accessible to volunteers. Would moving them there make it less likely that the wood chips would be taken? Since our main site is very sloped, it certainly would make it a lot harder for outsiders to remove them.
The Seattle Park Department delivered 8 cu ft of wood chips the week before our January 20 MLK National Day of Service work party. During that event, the volunteers had formed a bucket brigade and moved most of the wood chip pile from the 25th Ave S area into the main site.
One of our team leaders had suggested we use the remaining wood chips in the 25th Ave S area to build a barrier along the front border of that area. The barrier wouldn’t be high enough to prevent people from taking wood chips or discarding yard waste but maybe it would be a deterrent.
At the beginning of the January 22 work party, two students and one staff member started building the barrier. Once the other students finished taking down the drying rack, they also worked on the barrier. Together, they did a great job of creating the new structure.
( Click on any of the photo galleries to enlarge the photos.)
So many of the things we do in this work are experimental. That is definitely true of this barrier.
At this point, there are more questions than answers. Will it deter people from taking the wood chips when another pile is delivered? Will it discourage companies and individuals from dumping their yard waste in the Greenbelt? Will we have to take part of the barrier down in order to get a new wood chip pile or will the delivery truck be able to dump them over the barrier? Only time will tell.
Once we finished building the barrier, we weeded in three different areas of the site. I was weeding too so have no photos of that part of the work party but here are some of the results!
January 29
Three Service-Learning students and one Capstone intern participated in this work party.
It had rained a lot since January 22. One of the areas we had started to weed at that work party looked like this a day or two later.
It was clear we needed to cover the area with wood chips when we weeded there to make it less muddy and to prevent erosion.
As I mentioned earlier, Haley was one of our team leaders on January 29. She led a team of two students in this area. Her husband also joined that group partway through the work party. The group continued the weeding that had been started the previous week, and then covered the cleared land with wood chips.
Here is an “after” photo! There are no more puddles of water anywhere in that area.
The other students and staff weeded additional areas we had begun weeding on January 22. These students also added a layer of wood chips to part of a path that had become muddy.
These are two “after” photos from one of the areas the second team weeded that day.
February 5
Two staff, two Capstone interns and three Service-Learning students participated in this work party.
Every work party during January the weather forecast had been for rain. We had lucked out in that the weather was always better than the forecast. There may have been light rain showers, but there was never heavy rain. Our luck ran out on the first Wednesday in February. That day, the rain poured throughout the 2 1/2 hour work party.
We spent most of our time working on our newest planting area which is in the southeast corner of the site. I don’t remember when we started to clear that area but when we worked on it towards the beginning of August 2019, it had looked like this:
By November 2019, a large part of the area had been cleared and was ready for planting.
It seemed like a good place for the whole group to work on February 5. Because of all the rain, the ground was muddy and, in some places, slippery. The first thing we did was to build a wood chip path from the beginning of the area to the new hemlock tree at the far end. We also put a new layer of wood chips on the path leading to that planting area.
Before
After
We then weeded that section of the site and in nearby areas.
After weeding in the rain for most of the work party, we switched to putting wood chips on pre-existing paths that were getting muddy.
This is one of the paths we “renewed” that day:
One of the students created two novel ways of filling the buckets with wood chips during the January 22 – February 5 time frame. 1) Stand behind the pile and push the chips into a bucket with her hands and 2) Sit in the remainder of the pile and push chips into the buckets with her feet. She got dirty but her methods were effective and she enjoyed doing it!
These three work parties were fun and very productive. It looks like there is the possibility of sun for the Wednesday February 12 work party! I sure hope that forecast is right.
(The February 7, 9, 12 and 14 work parties will be reported in a future post.)
PNW GreenFriends Newsletter: February 2020
To download the newsletter, click on the photo.
Enjoy!
Amma Quote
Thoughtless words, non-discriminative actions, anger and impatience always create problems.Â
— Amma
They're back!
I’m so excited. I didn’t even know America’s Got Talent was having a contest for champions!
Greenbelt Restoration Work Parties: January 15 to January 20, 2020
During Winter Quarter, January-March 2020, we have two groups of University of Washington students working with us in the Greenbelt. The first group, three Carlson Center Service-Learning students who are taking an Introduction to Community, Environment and Planning course, come on Wednesdays from 1:30-4:00. The second group consists of Capstone interns who are seniors majoring in Environmental Studies. They join the Service-Learning students at the Wednesday work parties and also work in the site on most Friday afternoons.
The first work party of Winter Quarter was held on January 15. In the days leading up to it, it became clear that weather was a potential problem. The Seattle Parks Department notified us that we were to cancel work parties if the temperature was below 32 degrees, if there was more than two inches of snow on the ground, or if more than half an inch of ground was frozen. We already had a policy of cancelling work parties if there are high winds. The chances of any or all of those criteria occurring was likely.
By the morning of the event, there was 1/2 – 1 inch of snow on the ground and the possibility of winds. We had expected 20-degree temperatures, but it had warmed up considerably. We decided to take it minute by minute. We would do a longer than normal orientation in my house and, if weather permitted, would take a tour of the site and do some restoration work afterwards.
Sarva and I led the orientation and the tour of the site. There wasn’t much time left afterwards and it was so cold that we decided not to start the restoration work that day. Still, we were off to a good start!
We gave the Capstone students responsibility for restoring a small section of the site and creating a planting plan for that area. The Capstone instructor also requires them to create a “deliverable” for the organization that is hosting them. Our students plan to create pamphlets about forest restoration that will be useful for future volunteers.
On Friday, January 17, the Capstone interns worked on their section of the site for the first time. They took down a drying rack where invasive plants like blackberry and ivy vines had been drying out for a year and moved the contents to a part of the site where dried debris is breaking down further. We will eventually plant in that composted debris.
After finishing moving the dried debris from the rack, the interns started digging out blackberry root balls and ivy from their section. I taught them what they needed to know to do those two jobs and then picked up trash from the site and the adjacent stairs, checking in with the students from time to time.
Before 
After
In future sessions, as the interns finish removing invasive plants from their section of the site, they will spread wood chips over the newly cleared area to prevent soil erosion.
On January 20, we held our second annual Martin Luther King National Day of Service work party. Our team leaders were Maya, who is Forterra’s Green Cities Stewardship Coordinator, Shirley and me from GreenFriends, and Dave who is one of our regular team leaders.
Most of the volunteers were alumni from Western Washington University’s Huxley School of the Environment and their families. They were celebrating Huxley’s 50th anniversary. Others included our two UW Capstone interns, a family from the neighborhood where our site is located, a man who had signed up for event information on our GreenFriends information list during Amma’s last Seattle area visit, and several people who found us on Green Seattle Partnership’s event page.
After an orientation, we divided into four teams and started to work! Shirley and the neighborhood family picked up branches that had fallen on pathways during the last few months, weeded planting areas in the north part of the site and loosened up or replaced flagging tape on shrubs that had grown so much that it had become tight. (We use flagging tape of various colors to show what year a tree, shrub or ground cover was planted.)
(Click on any of the photo galleries to enlarge the photos.)
Maya’s group pruned a strip of shrubs and removed invasive blackberry and ivy vines along 25th Ave S. The shrubs had been planted years before we started our restoration project. They had grown big enough that in places they had become a thicket.
Before 
Before
After 
After
Dave’s team worked in one of the few areas on the site where we hadn’t done much clearing in the past. It contained many forms of invasive shrubs and vines, primarily blackberry vines. Before the work party, I saw one blackberry vine that was at least 20 feet long.
At the beginning of the work session, several members of the group moved the contents of an old drying rack so that they would have a place to put their cuttings.
Before 
Newly filled drying rack 
After (The invasive laurel and tree ivy will be removed
in the future by Park Department staff.)
My team removed the dried vines and weeds from one of the drying racks; looked for tagging tape that had gotten too tight and loosened or replaced it; and weeded several southern planting areas.
Drying rack after dried invasive vines removed. It’s ready to hold more! 
Loosened flagging tape 
Weeded area 
Weeds on a drying rack
After a snack break, all of the groups joined together to move wood chips from a pile on 25th Ave. S into smaller piles on our site. (Moving the wood chips onsite makes them much more accessible to members of future work parties.) We accomplished that task by forming a bucket brigade.
Maya took two time-lapse videos of the bucket brigade. I hope you enjoy watching them as much as I did. https://photos.app.goo.gl/W77onh6wwyBfWVN86 (Hover the cursor over the video to make it work. To make either of the videos fill the full page, click on the arrow.)
The three work parties between January 15 and January 20 were very different from each other, but each was productive and gave the participants a significant forest restoration experience.
Every volunteer who comes here contributes substantially to creating another healthy forest in Seattle.
Two Amazing … Astounding… and Inspiring Videos
My friend Kathie from Chosenperspectives sent me a video link yesterday for a performance on Georgia’s Got Talent. I watched it this morning and was astounded. I can’t even imagine having the level of concentration and balance that this woman has.
I suggest you watch the whole video, from beginning to end. I think every part of it is important. This video is just over 12 minutes in length.
The video that came up after the one above was amazing for a completely different reason. I decided to share it with you too. Again, watch it from beginning to end. The second one is about 6 1/2 minutes.
Both videos left me speechless and in awe. They also both brought tears to my eyes, running down my cheeks type tears.
Living and Learning in Amritapuri, India: December 27, 2019 – January 4, 2020
Sunrise and Sunset Photos
The sunrises and sunsets in Amritapuri are spectacular. I’ve been frustrated, both here and in Seattle, that my sunrise and sunset photos never come close to the view I see with my eyes. One day on this visit, I did an internet search to see if I could find tips for improving those photos.
One of the tips I read was to turn on the HDR setting. I took the photos below soon after I did that. The HDR photo looks crisper and I like it better. I look forward to experimenting with HDR and trying some of the other sunrise and sunset photo tips after I return to Seattle.
Normal
HDR
Amma’s Paripally Orphanage
Generally, during December, groups of children from Amma’s orphanage in Paripally come to Amritapuri to receive Amma’s darshan (blessing in the form of a hug). This year, I noticed that there were no such groups and wondered why. I got my answer Christmas week when it was announced that Amma was going to the orphanage to celebrate its 30th anniversary. Everyone was invited to attend. I heard there would be cultural performances followed by Amma giving darshan to each of the children.
I decided not to go, but I did reflect on the past. My first trip to Amritapuri was in January 1990, a few months after Amma had taken on responsibility for the orphanage. I have been there several times. The visit that I remember best was when Amma stopped at the orphanage after she held programs in Trivandrum. Those of us who had attended the Trivandrum programs went with her.
Oh how it has changed over the years. The children who lived at the orphanage when Amma had taken responsibility for it were starving. Under Amma’s care, the orphanage and the generations of children who have lived there have thrived.
I had assumed that several busloads of ashramites and visitors had gone to the orphanage celebration, but during bhajans at the ashram that night it became obvious that most of the ashram had gone. There was no sound system in the auditorium and none of the normal bhajan leaders were present. The number of people in the normally packed auditorium was tremendously reduced.
I had expected the orphanage visit to be a half a day experience but it turned out to be an all day one. The buses started returning to Amritapuri twelve hours after they had departed that morning.
I learned later that many previous alumni and teachers attended the event, in addition to the current orphanage residents. They had also received Amma’s darshan that day. To read more about the festivities… and to see photos… go to: https://www.amritapuri.org/76883/19parippally.aum.
New Year’s Eve
Some visitors left the ashram after Christmas, but many more arrived. In fact, I think the New Year crowds were bigger than at any other time during my visit.
New Year’s Eve was similar to Christmas Eve in that after dinner Amma came back to the auditorium. There were performances, Amma’s New Year’s talk, singing and other activities. One of those activities was a chant for peace in the world.
Like Christmas Eve, I knew it would be unhealthy for me to stay up late and I had a 7:30 a.m. cafe shift, so I watched three or four of the performances and went to bed. Unlike Christmas Eve, I went to sleep immediately and slept through the night.
Again, I feel sad about all that I missed, but know I made the right decision. I also believed I had Amma’s support in that decision because there were several times on the U.S. tour last summer, after I talked to her about my balance problems, that during late night programs she told me to go to bed!
To read about and see photos from the New Year’s Eve programs, go to: https://www.amritapuri.org/77089/20newyear.aum
Prasad Assist Seva
Amma continued changing the directions for the prasad-givers every time I did the assistant job. I got a bit cocky about being able to go with the flow. That cockiness ended the day that darshan was held in the temple.
I wasn’t worried about the change since I had done another prasad assist job in the past and I knew the system that had been used when darshan was held in that location. As strange as it may seem, I didn’t consider the possibility that anything could have changed.
I panicked when I came to my shift only to discover that the chairs had been removed from the area and everyone, except for a few people in the darshan line, was sitting on the floor. I didn’t know how I would get down and I was even more concerned about how I was going to get up. That would not have been a problem in the past but that day it seemed like a BIG PROBLEM!
I also discovered that there were other changes. There was no longer a small line of people waiting on the balcony to give prasad and I didn’t know where the other prasad assistant was. There was no way I could be repeatedly getting up and down as the job often requires. I was near tears and felt desperate.
I was able to get down and had no trouble sitting on the floor throughout the shift. I talked to my supervisor about not being able to get up and down and she let the other prasad assistant know that I would not be available in that way. When it was time, two people helped me get up. Even though I had been shaken, I had survived the challenge and done well.
Shoes/Thongs
In India, people take off their shoes/thongs when they enter a temple or a house. In Amritapuri, we wear shoes/thongs in the auditorium now but still take them off when we are in the temple and when we go up on the auditorium stage for darshan. As a result, there is always a hodgepodge of thongs going every direction not far from those areas.
One day during this time period, I watched as one of the darshan line monitors meticulously picked up pairs of thongs with her toes and one after another placed them in straight lines. It was like a work of art. No one took the hint though. People kept taking them off and leaving them wherever they fell. The line monitor soon gave up.
This scene reminded me of a time when Swami Paramatmanda, one of Amma’s senior Swamis, remarked that how we place our footwear when we take them off, is representative of the state of our minds. That felt true to me then and it still does, or at least it is representative of MY “monkey” mind. I usually take off my shoes in the entry way when I enter my house, but there are times when I take them off in the hallway, or the kitchen, or the bathroom, and occasionally even in the living or dining room. And I certainly don’t take care to see that they are placed side-by-side neatly.
Monkeys
On Tuesday, December 31, there were FOUR monkeys in the café courtyard, two big ones high up in a tree, the small one that I’ve seen many times during this visit and one that is considerably smaller than the one I consider small. They apparently had been chased away from the back of the café earlier because they were stealing food.
One monkey had been hard enough to deal with but now there appeared to be a whole family. I watched as the small one started opening trash can lids and attempted to turn over the bins. Luckily, the trash cans the monkey looked into didn’t have food in them and it was unsuccessful in turning any of them over. I can imagine the mess it would have made if it had found the trash cans that held the food waste. (In Amritapuri the recycling stations have separate bins for hard items, soft plastic, paper, food waste, etc.)
Weather
Two years ago, it was hotter than normal when I came to Amritapuri in December. Last year it was back to “normal.” I got fooled into thinking the weather might not be shifting. But this year it’s been even hotter than it was two years ago. As I write this, it is 90 degrees and very humid. I’m sweating even though I am in my room with a large fan nearby.
I am so ready to be back in Pacific Northwest weather which this week is in the upper to mid 40’s for a high and high 30’s to low 40’s for a low. Hummmmm. I see the forecast for the Sunday after I get back is for snow. Oh, well that could change by then, or it could just be a little bit of snow that goes away fast.
To read previous posts in this series click here.
Titan Arum Flower
When I posted today about the Rafflesia flower, MZ & Cho from Chateaux Des Fleurs commented that the flower reminded them of the Titan Arum flower. I looked it up and found that even though the flowers look very different from each other they definitely have things in common, e.g. they come from Indonesia, they are very big and they have an unpleasant odor.
Again, I found some Titan Arum royalty free images on Getty Images. The photo below is from that site. Click on the Getty Images link to see a lot more photos, some free, some not.
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I also found many Titan Arum photos on Wikimedia Commons. The next three photos are from there but if you click on the link you will find many more.
I think it is very interesting that like the Rafflesia plant, the Titan Alum plant is called a corpse plant, because of its rotting flesh odor.
I have enjoyed learning about these two plants today.
