Dandeli, Karnataka
Bird of the Day: Brown Fish Owl
Dandeli, Karnataka
The Seasonality of Flowers
These flowers are called “fósforos” in Spanish, meaning “matches.” (Guess why!) They’re much beloved by Steely-vented Hummingbirds.
Xandari’s guests often remark on how difficult it is not to take dozens, even hundreds, of photos around the resort–one reason for that is the abundant flora. Even though I know I probably shouldn’t do another post on flowers (see my others here and here), I will use a similar excuse and say that I have a very hard time walking by the amazing blooms and not pulling out my camera to snap a quick picture. Flowers only bloom for a short time before dropping their petals and waiting in repose for the next season–this small window of loveliness is one of the reasons why they are so compelling. Continue reading
Notes from the Garden: Experimenting with Square Foot Gardening
Sticks always help with communication across language barriers. Here we are marking the spacing of our radishes in Cardamom County.
Today, we tried a little experiment. I have mentioned my passion for efficient agriculture techniques and square foot gardening is one we are experimenting with in the garden here in Cardamom County. The vision is to grow as much food as we can to supplement the kitchen’s needs. Space is a luxury not to be wasted when it comes to growing food! Using elements of the square foot gardening method taught by Mel Bartholomew, it is amazing how much food you can fit on a 4 ft x 4 ft plot. Although he teaches that you should make raised beds, I think if you have good soil, as we do here, then there is no need. I think the audience his method appeals to is the urban and suburban dwellers, so making raised beds is usually the fastest way to good soil in their case. The part I take from his method is the dense plant spacing and not using single rows:
Xandari’s Mandala Herb Garden
If you’ve been following some of the recent posts about Xandari’s trails, flowers, and gardens in general, then you are probably aware that the resort’s property abounds with plant life that is beneficial to visitors — both human and otherwise — in some way. One element of the gardens that James and I have not emphasized as much, though James mentioned it in his post on Aloe vera and I did in an earlier post, is the mandala, a circular garden near the spa and the entrance to Xandari that holds dozens of herbs.
“Water” or “rose” apple, an insipid fruit that grows in the tropics
Thekkady – Periyar Tiger Reserve
Photo credits: Johny Tom
The Periyar Tiger Reserve is one of the major wildlife sanctuaries in Kerala. With 925 square kilometers of forest, it is the largest protected national park in Kerala, and perfect habitat for the Asian elephant. The forest is a great place for animal lovers, bird watchers, and trekkers. Continue reading
A New Way Of Tasting
Does the world really need a new lifestyle magazine at this moment in time? If the magazine is created by someone who revolutionized the way wine is evaluated, the answer may be yes:
CAN A WINE EVER be perfect? If so, who is qualified to pass that judgment? Is it the winemaker who is trained in viticulture or oenology? The merchant with a fabled palate who buys the wines year after year? Or is it the critic, with no formal training but a strong sense of smell, a notebook and an ability to taste 10,000 wines a year?
Bird of the Day: Indian Scimitar Babbler
Ganeshgudi, Dandeli, Karnataka
That Traveling State of Mind
I took this while backpacking across this very empty and flat part of the Camino in Spain called the Meseta.
In my daily life, I flee myself in sneaky ways. I flip on a movie. I hang out with friends. I have habits when I am at home. There are these creature comforts that become little patterns that can give me an easy way out. Since I’ve been traveling, different parts of myself have surfaced. And if I don’t like those parts, tough luck. There is no easy way out, only a way forward. To just be with what I am experiencing, as it is.
The culture of the different places I have been and the range of different things I see activate streams of thought and states of mind I do not find myself in from my experiences at home. I really appreciate this about the traveling state of mind.
I think this is a different kind of tourism. Visiting different parts of myself inspired by different parts of the world.
Ramayana Masam
Photo credit: Ranjith
The Ramayana is the holy book of Hindus. In Kerala during Karkkidaka Masam, which is the last month of Malayalam calender, the epic Ramayana is read in Hindu homes and temples. This year Ramayana Masam begins on July 17th and ends August 16th. Continue reading
One From The Long-form Pantheon
This may not be the first, and certainly will not be the only place you see this reference to Bill Gates’s favorite business book. We have a longstanding love of long-form journalism, aka detailed descriptive story-telling. So we link to the post on gatesnotes in celebration of an otherwise-might-have-missed-it book:
…Brooks was also a masterful storyteller. He could craft a page-turner like “The Last Great Corner,” about the man who founded the Piggly Wiggly grocery chain and his attempt to foil investors intent on shorting his company’s stock. I couldn’t wait to see how things turned out for him. (Here’s a spoiler: Not well.) Other times you can almost hear Brooks chuckling as he tells some absurd story. There’s a passage in “The Fate of the Edsel” in which a PR man for Ford organizes a fashion show for the wives of newspaper reporters. The host of the fashion show turns out to be a female impersonator, which might seem edgy today but would have been scandalous for a major American corporation in 1957. Brooks notes that the reporters’ wives “were able to give their husbands an extra paragraph or two for their stories.” Continue reading
Burt, Bees, Believe
Jody Shapiro. A quiet conversation with the founder of Burt’s Bees.
More bees, please. More bees pleases. Thanks to the New York Times for satisfying our appetite for bee-related news and features:
Burt Shavitz, the World’s Most Famous Retired Beekeeper
Bird of the Day: Tropical Kingbird (Xandari Resort, Costa Rica)
Photo Credit: Seth Inman
Notes from the Garden: Quantifying Farm-to-Table
We are in process of building a monkey-proofed area of the garden. You can see my past post to get a feel for the evolution of this idea. The main issue with providing the Cardamom County restaurant with food from the on-site organic farm is monkeys. We were inspired by these subsistence farmers in Ixopo, South Africa, who blogged about building their monkey-proof vegetable cage. They, too, are neighbors with a nature reserve, so their situation is quite similar to Cardamom County! Now, we are on our way to having a truly farm-to-table menu!
Here is the cage we are modeling ours after. Check out their blog: http://foodieschannel.blogspot.com/2011/04/this-isnt-really-recipe-but-its-about.html
You may be wondering, why is there all this buzz these days about farm-to-table? There is more to it than just fresh, delicious food.
Obviously, a lot of nature gets destroyed for agricultural purposes. In the United States, so much land gets wasted on sprawling, inefficient development. In the in-between spaces, you could feed a nation. But we eat up our open, natural spaces for agriculture. Our agriculture is rarely local so it leads to problems of unnecessary carbon emissions from transport and a lot of not-fresh food in grocery stores. When we can use the land we have already developed on to provide the people there with food, why spread ourselves out so thin into nature? Continue reading
Xandari’s Trails
With our daily walks around Xandari to build the resort’s checklist of resident birds and take photos of as many species as possible, James and I are taking full advantage of the remarkable trail system. It allows us to travel several miles around the thirty-odd acres of private reserve in Xandari’s property without tracing back over our steps at all, which would have negative implications on the eBird data that we submit for every outing (we don’t want to increase the chances of counting a bird twice!). Descending from about ~1,150m (~3,800ft) to ~1,080m (~3,550ft), on woody switchbacks that give us vantage points over the surrounding forest and allow views into the canopies of the trees below, James and I walk through many types of bird habitat, which both in theory and in practice yields us a higher species count than if we were to simply walk around the gardens right outside any of Xandari’s villas – though I don’t mean to imply that the gardens aren’t home to quite a few species here!
If You Happen To Be In New York
We believe in, and care about biophilia, which is a phenomenon first identified and named by E.O. Wilson. Thankfully, we are not the only ones. We appreciate the intersection between art and science in elucidating biophilia evident in this book. Thanks, Polly:
Polly Brown is a London based artist, and photographer. Continue reading
Throwback Thursday: A Fruit Most Treasured
Pomegranate tree at Harvest Fresh Farm. Photo credit: Kayleigh Levitt
With Kayleigh stationed at Cardamom County we’re currently exploring ways to make our organic garden more productive, despite the challenges posed by local wildlife. With that goal in mind we visited a colleague’s farm in Tamil Nadu, in an area where they don’t face monkey challenges, but some of their produce requires special netting to protect against birds and bats.
While there we enjoyed a farm tour that included harvesting a few different species of pomegranate, which happens to be part of my daily menu for many years. (Frequent guests at 51 will notice the healthy and delicious seeds making an appearance in many ways.) Continue reading
Dark Evening Brown Butterfly
The dark evening brown butterly is found in the forested tracts of the Western Ghats and the Himalayas to Arunachal Pradesh up to 2100 maters. These butterflies prefer shady glades in moist forest habitat, and are attracted to refuse and bird droppings. They have prominent gray wing borders, and apical eye spots.
Bird of the Day: Purple-rumped Sunbird in flight near gourd birdbath
Umred-Kharandla Wildlife Sanctuary, Maharashtra
Notes from the Garden: Mango Hunting
The mango has its ancestral roots in India, so something felt really right about shaking mangoes out of the trees today in Cardamom County. Right now I’m reading this delicious book called The Fruit Hunters, written by Adam Leith Gollner. Since I have started it, I have had a whole new context to put my experience of fruit in! Turns out there are over 1,100 varieties of mangoes. The ones I know and love from supermarkets back in the United States are the Tommy Atkins mangoes, which are more common in international commerce.
Indian mangoes apparently weren’t allowed into the states for almost thirty years due to “pest concerns.” Actually, it was more like, nuclear trade concerns. India and Canada had a nuclear trade relationship in which Canadian nuclear reactors were being used to build a nuclear arsenal. In 2007 though, India signed a nuclear treaty with the United States, only under the condition that India’s mangoes be allowed back in the states. Later when President Bush flew to India to discuss the deal, he announced, “the U.S. is looking forward to eating Indian mangoes.” Continue reading
Airavatesvera Temple – Tamil Nadu
Photo credits: Binu Kumar
Airavatesvara Temple is locateded at Darasuram near Kumbakonam in Tamil Nadu. It was built by Raja Raja II during 1150 AD. The temple stands out for its intricate, beautiful sculptures. Continue reading
Organikos 