Radha Govinda Jhulan Yatra!!!!

Today is the first day of the annual celebration of Jhulana Yatra. This is a week long observance of  the divinely sweet, eternal past time of Radha and Krishna amorously swinging together on a simple wooden swing tied from a tree branch and bedecked in fragrant flowers, amidst a late Summer's warm breeze and golden clouds, enjoying the Supreme Rasa of eternal, infinite divine love.  This is the sweet love all the world is craving for more than anything, but does not realize it....eternal divine love with Godhead.     

Jhulana Yatra has begun!

This is such a sweet occasion, it's my favorite time of year....And I'm so thankful Krishna blessed this lowly one with this very special murti to honor and decorate!

Bhakti Center updates:  The garden is growing like mad:

"Tender Grey" zucchinis looking very happy

Butternut sqaush, anyone?

Is that a ripe fig?!!!!!

The new garden bed in the works

So, everything is looking amazing.  It makes me wish it was June 8th again.  And we got the first ever fresh fig from the land yesterday, and wow, was it super yummy.  Krishna must have loved it.  In the new garden bed I'm going to plant fall crops; cabbage, chinese mustards, mustard greens, broccoli, peas. And I better make a third bed as well!  I also want to plant carrots and beets and chard.  And lettuce.  And cauliflower.  Maybe I'll need four beds.  The process I came up with to make the beds is really easy, low impact and actually kind of fun.  And apparently it grows great vegetables.  I just take off the top layer of grass mat with a pickaxe (easy to do).  Then I shape it nicely and evenly.  Next, I dig down about a foot with a garden fork (lazy) and break up any clods and get out as much grass and roots as possible.  Lastly I fertilize it heavily with organic ammendments.  This time I used cottonseed meal, mushroom compost and kelp meal.  I don't have my own compost yet, so had to buy some ammedments.  I've never seen vegetables in KY grow so fast.  After stuff is growing I mulched it heavily with dried grass clippings, ( an inch away from the tender stems!!!)  And voila, food.

I'm stoked about the figs.  I wasn't sure if they were going to do anything, and all of a sudden they started ripening overnight.

Here's some cool info on Jhulan Yatra and some amazing pictures from India:  http://www.hknet.org.nz/parishad134.html

All glories to the effulgent Divine Lotus Feet of Srimati Radhika and Govinda, our only eternal shelter, refuge, and goal

I'll be posting more on this celebration soon.   Hare Krishna.