Billion Trees and Beyond

Photo courtesy from the Happy Feet Facebook page Yes, it is a character from a successful animation film called Happy Feet released in 2006. Mumble is the peculiar emperor penguin, the protagonist character, having very serious genetic handicaps, yet having a unique gift of happy feet (reflexively dancing ones), the whole film is all about how the happy feet find a most meaningful and powerful expression around him. I will not elaborate on the story here, it is all available in the references attached. Let me jump into the inspiration value. This film is highly inspirational, for its plot, story, drama, animation, dialog and of course the music. This film stands for one to overcome the limitations of self (both genetic and socially imposed) and discover the innate talent which may not be relevant to the society around to start with, but hold on to it, nurture it, have a self expression around it, eventually allow it to lead to a series of adventures, resulting i

Right now the focus is to leverage Mexican Sunflower as a tree, and I am bit hard pressed on the supply side. I currently have only our Ashrama Gardens urban evergreen jungle as the factory to turn up the cuttings on regular basis. So, today was the day to prune the jungle a bit. Basically, I cleared two overhangs like the one above, on the west side of our terrace (this photo taken from the west side road, so it is actually a overhang), losing many beautiful flowers bloomed for the season. Yes, sacrifices are to be made for the greater good. The left over overhang shown above is the next victim for the next drive. Enough cuttings for 10 plantations today The top leaves portions removed, and will go in as composting material. This is the look from the west side of the terrace garden, on the terrace. There is a void here after significant pruning. I had to prune the canopy near the pole you can see in the picture, so the canopy is quite poor now.  But the M

Since I need to wait for a month to get next round of Mexican Sunflower cuttings, I am now limited by the supply side. Therefore, decided to consider other trees, picked up Singapore Cherry and Jamun tree saplings from the Dhanvanthari Vana, rushed to the Poornaprajna Vidyapeetha campus for further plantation. Upon detailed survey, what I learned was that it is much easier to squeeze a Mexican Sunflower in a corner. Planting a full fledged tree needs far more scrutiny, and therefore I could plant only 6 plants, as planting in the rest of the corners is questionable.  Some comments I have received so far on the web were that I should plant fruit bearing trees. But, I would like to go back to my first impression, which is that we need to increase green content with least effort, high speed, and least disturbance to those who need to tolerate our actions and most importantly the results need to mesmerize. Therefore, Mexican Sunflower is the right choice, and I will continue wi

Inspirations behind the “Billions Trees and Beyond” drive – Saalumarada Thimmakka Saalumarada Thimmakka (who is a living green legend aged beyond 100 years) and her husband Chikkaih (who expired in 1991) are from a village in Karnataka, illiterate, belong to the labor class, had no children, and considered the plants they planted besides a highway close to their village as their children and legacy, and ended up planting and taking care of 384 (mentioned as 284 in some references) banyan trees in an 1.5 km stretch of the highway.   Also, there is a mention of she planting around 8,000 trees over 65 years, but this mention is not universally referred.   The key inspirations came from the work around 384 banyan trees she planted. Salumarada Thimmakka’s work became an early global icon of an individual action during the time whole world was going through an identity crisis around environmental issues which had its first peak in 2008. Salumarada Thimmakka’s individual wo

Photo courtesy: http://www.ksu.ac.in/Images/KSU/PG-UG%20centres/pp_college.jpg I am still aiming the neighborhoods close to my home, especially the institutional opportunities as I get to plant more in one session as such. Currently, I am limited by the supply of saplings, I am getting my plants freely for now through the Mexican Sunflower cuttings from our garden, the supply is limited, and I need to wait a month or so therefore for a drive like this. I hope we will have more saplings with more varieties coming through charity soon.  Already, one of my neighbors has asked me to come and take saplings from their garden. My priority also is to sign up more volunteers to keep the blog level documentation on so that many can join this movement from around the world and feed the plantation data to us, and we keep documenting them away in a timely fashion for all to see and glee.  I hope that my individual action will inspire many volunteers, especially the Internet savvy youngs