What a week! The pavilion (formerly known as the gazebo) is DONE! Well, done for now. (Always more to do, you know – tiling the floor, putting in gardens, etc. Not to mention that the varnish on the benches was still a wee bit tacky… still “done enough” – and it was spectacular.)
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And the party! For those interested in the more religious aspects of the celebrations, I dusted off my Baha’i blog and did a post Twin Holy Birthdays. Here, in my regular Flora and Fauna weekly, I am showing you some of the behind the scenes Cooking Stuff.
Ladies with jackfruits from our tree that were to be turned into curry. These two were over mature, and so we had to keep picking smaller and smaller ones til we got some that were the right size. Cleaning those two small jackfruits took a team of ladies several hours.
This is my back porch before as it usually is, and then in use as a cooking site. You’ll see that the ladies laid down some roofing iron and built a fire on that. Then my friend Madhu – who is about 5’0″ has an oar and is stirring a huge pot, full of chicken, rice and spices: chicken palau.
The eggplant we’d ordered was not enough and we could not find a supplier for more, so in the middle of cooking I took my friend Beauty to her own farm down the road – and here she is picking baigan, i.e. eggplant, a few hours before the party was to start.
On the Fijian cooking side of things:
Here are chickens defrosting for the lovo.
Here are Junia and Akuila tearing damp burlap bags to cover the lovo.
And here is Ratu playing in the lovo smoke 🙂
(Thanks to Akka for getting these clever “lovo shots”)
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When the cooking was done, I gave the cooks a little gift I’d made for each of them – a little heart with “200” (for Baha’u’llah’s 200th birthday) on a hanky. I’d never embroidered before, but thought about my grandmother who did embroider the whole time, a lovely meditation but not much help with all the preparations. As I gave them out, I said with all truthfulness, “I’m giving each of you a hanky and half an hour of my life.”
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FLORA – Austin got this new flower that he just loves. The colors are even more vibrant than the photo shows.
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FAUNA – Attention, Alice! (my 7-year-old wannabe entomologist) New bugs!
No, I don’t know what they are – either of them. Maybe Alice will find out for me and have her mom send me an email.
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One other bit of farm news: FIRE ! An irresponsible neighbor set a fire this week that crept onto our property and was climbing the hill and up the valley. Junia and our neighbor Sanjay had to work for Three Hours creating fire breaks to keep it from catching out Sanjay’s cows, our coconuts and Junia’s permaculture site. Sheesh!
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Happy week, everybody. We have more official visitors supposed to arrive in a few hours. If yes, you’ll get a photo and a report in the next blog.
Hugs!
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