Monsoon rains and a bumper peach crop at Basunti

The first of the Monsoon rains arrived at Basunti about ten days ago and since then it has been fairly consistent. Two to three days of hot and sticky weather, then a torrential downpour, accompanied by the usual spectacular sound and light show. This is nothing compared to what is happening in The Gharwal area, which has been experiencing what can only be described as rain in biblical proportions. I am keeping my fingers crossed that this weather does not reach Basunti, as I have experienced this once before, where the rain was so heavy that I had the fish from the ponds swimming around on the lawns, a truly bizarre experience.

The Oriental White-eyes did an excellent job of fertilising the peach blossom and I have just harvested a bumper crop of peaches. Had to pick them all slightly earlier than I would have liked, but I was competing with the Himalayan Civet Cat, who was eating about a half a kilo of the ripest peaches every night. Ended up spending two days sweating it out in the kitchens, the end result being about fifteen kilos of organic, lemony, peach conserve. The first of the coming seasons groups will have the pleasure of consuming peach crumble, providing I can keep from eating it all before then…

The rest of the fruit trees in the garden are doing really well and It looks like I will get an excellent crop of lemons, limes, oranges, figs, pomelos, jamuns, and guavas. The mangoes, along with the lychees and loquats, are not going to produce so well this year. This is fairly normal and after the bumper crop last year, I expected this year to be down, as they are cyclical in their production of fruit. Should still get about twenty kilos of Mangoes, but I cannot see any of it being made into conserve this year as they are just to nice to eat from the trees.