First time eating fresh bamboo shoots from our forest 🌱

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Our recently discovered bamboo forest at the bottom of the 'Spiral Garden' has yielded many joys over the last month, inspiring me amongst other things to build a platform overlooking it.

From here one can relax in a suspended seat and enjoy the view or simply close their eyes and appreciate the sound of the river below, accompanied at all times by a chorus of birds unlike any other i have found here in the South of France.

It was suggested to me by @kaminchan in my last post that we could eat the bamboo so Esteban & i went to the forest and had a look for the desirable young shoots.

Almost immediately we started to discover them.

Deeper and deeper we went into the forest, searching for our lunch.

They were surprisingly hard to see against the dark earth.

Amazing patterns on some of them.

At the end we took around 12 shoots, leaving many more in the forest for next time.

We watched some youtube videos for guidance on how to cut them.

Once the exterior is stripped away this is what you are left with.

Cut up into pieces ready for cooking.

Sabrina has some amazing skills in the kitchen and turned them into this for our lunch, with carrots, chives and a creamy coconut sauce.

As the leader of our jungle expedition Esteban was keen to try the fruits of his labour and declared immediately that he liked it!

Sabrina prepared a bunch of different dishes so that both children and adults would be satisfied.

The meal also included my daily salad from the garden, this time featuring radish pods (which seem to me a much more effective way to eat them as each radish will produce around 30-50 pods).

Here is a piece of bamboo going in his mouth!

And this is what my plate looked like before i ate it all up :)

Sabrina & i have eaten bamboo before in Asia but i can tell you this tasted even better for some reason. Perhaps because it was so fresh or perhaps because this bamboo came from our magical forest? Either way, it tasted amazing and motivated me to write this post.

I also wanted to tell you about a few upgrades which have happened around here during the last week.

The kittens pissed in a box of hazelnuts (probably many times!) and they smelled so bad there was no way we could eat them so i recommissioned them to become art, alongside the acorns. It was in fact the fastest conversion of a bad feeling to a good one, with almost no separation between perceived problem and potential solution.

In this case they have become a step at the entrance of the stone circle.

Here's the one Sabrina created at the back of the bamboo platform.

And this after telling me some years ago she wasn't creative! ALL HUMANS are naturally creative of course and the only thing which cuts us off from it is our unwillingness to give it a go.

Due to some minor instability in the stones the BBQ has been reinforced with a layer of mud and stone art.

And now that it is dry, the throne is functioning perfectly again.

Feels great sitting here surrounded by the art of my family.

Have been able to do a few powerful meditations during the last week and also to fall asleep a few times. In fact, i should probably mention at this point that it feels as if this land is conversing with me during the silent moments of the day, guiding and suggesting in a way i have never experienced before.

Two quick examples before i sign out.

Esteban is reading Rodin Hood at the moment and is keen to re-enact one of the scenes as a film in our bamboo forest, so i did a meditation with this in the back of my mind and came out of it wondering if we might be able to make a bow & arrow using bamboo. I checked on YouTube and it turns out that bamboo is ideal for both!

You can be sure i will make a post letting you know how it is done.

We intend now to make a safe shooting range down in the forest where no one goes except us. As a child i was already shooting rifles at Esteban's age so i have no problem at all teaching him how to shoot a bow & arrow.

The other thing was the rest of the Spiral Garden.

Around half the land is still covered in small ash trees.

While i do still intend to create a large spiral watering feature, the land told me to relax a little for the remainder of this year and rather than grow on it, to use it as an entertainment area, for a sport of some kind.

But what sport could fit here?

Well, i looked at the dimensions of a badminton court and it turns out that a half sized court will fit exactly into the space i am looking at between two trees i don't wan't to remove. A half sized court for half sized people ;)

And so, on this great day it has been decided that Esteban & Luna will learn badminton this summer! Just behind the sweetcorn.

It was a battle making this decision because my logical side knows that war with Russia is inevitable now and will probably be announced later this year, leading to immediate price hikes for food & energy. Here's British MP Andrew Bridgen confirming on a radio show a few days ago "We are actually at war with Russia now... They're not going to tell the people probably until July or August; maybe later."

So we will need to grow more food than ever to counter these expenses, but the forest kept whispering to me "let it go Sam, just let it go". And so i have. This land will be used for having fun. Next year will be another story but for now i am excited to get started removing the trees and buying the relevant bits for badminton.

Love & Light everyone 🌱