Van Mahotsav, literally festival of forests or the festival of trees.It was launched in 1950 by Shri K. M. Munshi, the then Union Minister for Agriculture and Food. Van Mahotsav is an annual tree-planting festival celebrated across India from July 1st to July 7th. During this programme, saplings are planted in plantation drives conducted across the nation.So it’s more of a week long programme and often a month long on our end!

July means the monsoons come calling and that’s the best time to do our bit to make India  greener.

In 2020 we realized the problem of living indoors when the lockdown was in place.We renovated our village home and decided to spend time planting trees and starting a kitchen garden.

What started as a life raft,ended up helping us make friends and plant more  trees than we ever dreamt of.But though it sound like a dream planting trees ,finding place to do that and having a setup for watering wasn’t easy.

Neither was buying land.But like-minded friends who understood the value of sustainable nature conservation helped make this possible.

This year in July I am happy to report, that we are planting 250 saplings celebrating Van Mahotsav 2024 .We started today and we have a few  more to go.Sharing pictures from today’s morning planting activities gives me great pleasure.Looking forward to sharing with you the journey of these family of trees.

This is our third project area for afforestation.

The second  group Green project

Taking care of trees and planting saplings are a gift and a blessing.It cannot happen without mother earth,the fertile soil  into which we sow our seeds.

I can look back to the year 2014 when I started balcony gardening and gradually how things became better .From the balcony to the soil ,a higher force guides us.Trees were there before us .We live because of them.My daughter wrote an autobiography-of-a-tree  some times back and that has given me a fresh impetus to work for a greener,cleaner earth.

This is part of the Blogchatter Blog hop this week.