There's Nothing as Important as Gardening and Gardening Isn't Important

Work

The title is an old Chinese proverb that came to mind today while weeding and raking in a garden close to our ashram. That's what we've been doing yesterday and today. It's not so much fun, but I'm trying to think of the old Karate Kid movie: "Wax on, wax off". Maybe in the end it has some meaning.

Monkeys

A little update on the monkeys. I've had absolutely no problems with them so farbut my roommate has. He left his mobile phone on a stone while we were oiling the fence a few days back. A monkey came and took it, climbed a tree and started to chew on it. There was nothing we could do to save it. Not even a ringing of the phone bothered it. Lesson number one: keep everything in your hand or in your pocket when outside the cage.

Apparently the monkeys are only a nuisance here in Vrindavan. The same monkeys give no trouble outside this city. There's a story of young Krishna teaching the monkeys to steal things. The area where this town is built used to be a big forest where Krishna played as a child. Wikitravel says that the teaching has happened later. Apparently there have been people teaching the monkeys to take people's glasses and then bring them to their teacher, who then "kindly" returns the glasses against a payment. I haven't seen anything that would suggest this really to happen. At least it no longer seems to happen since the monkeys try to eat the stolen objects rather than give them to someone.

Weather

There has been a lot less rain than I anticipated. Just two longer rain periods in the four days and some small showers. This little rain is often enough to cause a power outage. I'm a bit worried what will happen if it rains more. Luckily the fan and one light in our room seem to be connected to some sort of reserve power source. The temperatures have been around 30 degrees Celsius during the day, but the humidity is the killer. The first two days the thermometer went up to 34 degrees and even with the fan on, sleeping was not easy. The forecast promises cloudy days an some rain. Like it a lot.

Food

The food has been excellent the last couple of days, or maybe I've just gotten used to it. The first two days I wasn't that happy about it, but now it's been excellent. Today we had pasta with a really good sauce. I'm hoping there's still some of that left for dinner.