Electric vehicles take a lot less work than combustion engines. But they still require maintenance.

The Siddhidata Kulam has for years cultivated the best papaya from seed. Here is Yogi Adinatha with a ten-pound papaya! Yes, we weighed it. Ten Pounds!

The biggest donor to Iraivan is? Guess what? The Rudraksha Tree! Each month the Wailua Mission prepares the rudraksha beads grown on San Marga for sale. The proceeds from the Mini-Mela go to the Iraivan temple. We just had "Rudraksha Day" on July 27th.

At the quarterly meeting of the Hindu Heritage Endowment, June 10, 2019, the stewards approved a new endowment called the Kauai Aadheenam Feed the Monks Fund. This fund was jointly created by Poumagal Pillay Mootoosamy of Montreal, Canada and Padmini Samuthiran of Singapore. They both came up with the idea and the minimal funds to start the endowment, at just about the same time. We have created a new web page for this endowment: you can go here to contribute

The stewards and staff discussed the financial statements for the first quarter of 2019. This involves comparing the investment returns with the traditional benchmarks and reviewing various documents, bar charts and graphs. The principal of HHE is invested with Halbert Hargrove of Long Beach, California. Over the long term, the HHE investments are expected to steadily gain while there may be short term losses, depending on the market. They meet at the Princeville Resort. Gurudeva thought this was the ideal setting to visualize abundance for over 75 HHE funds. The hotel lobby is the venue, and the lobby looks out over the Hanalei Bay and surrounding mountains. It is truly inspiring.

To go to Himalayan Acres, which is what we call the agricultural endowment lands on the south side of the river across from Iraivan, requires that we drive one mile north of the Aadheenam and then take a left to go west and across the river.

To make that crossing we go over a ford that has about 10, two-foot culverts buried in concrete that take river water under the flat surface that provides a bridge over the rocky base of the river. Of course, when the river is in spate, then 5 feet or more of water flows above the ford, and we cannot makes the crossing.

Recent floods blocked the culvert with rocks and even when the river was low, we could not cross.

Acharya Arumugaswami, who heads the noni operation, was determined to clear the culverts which make ford crossable ever when the river is a little high. Off we went for adventure on dry, sunny day to see what could be done.

Two rainy retreats ago, Kumarnathaswami and Adi Srikantha milled a first batch of Formosan Koa logs. Continuing several rainy days later Acharya and Brahmanathaswami milled the remainder of all that will be needed, and then some, to build this a table for the cedar room. It's a trestle table designed by the famed Stickley brothers in the early 1900s. The creative top is the brainchild of Paramacharya Sadasivanathaswami, fancy medallions and all.

Some images of our monastery hydroponic greenhouse. Everyday the Siddhidatta Kulam brings in greens and vegetables to be used for cooking. Here was are able to grow many things that we can't grow outside due to too much rain or insects. Things like tomatoes, cucumbers and softer lettuce varieties such as butter lettuce now grow in abundance. Aum Namah Sivaya

The most recent goings-on of the Siddhidata monks are in:

One of Natyam Dayanatha's day jobs is to perform engine repair. Here he is working on one of our generators. Thank you Natyam.

Finish up those emails, shut down the computer, clean up the desktop and off to the weekend! Two days a week we monks get to see the sun rise, go out and about and stop to smell the honey. A few shots were taken this past retreat, let's see what they're up to...