1st of March : Druk Padma Karpo, school re-opened after a prolong winter break of nearly 85 days in a highly celebrative spirit ,post the stupendous and outstanding “BOARD RESULTs”secured by the students of std 10th, that appeared for their public exams-2015. The entire team of teachers and support staff headed by the Chair person and the Principal take great pride and pleasure in heartily CONGRATULATING the competent performers !! And wish our fresh batch of Ex. students ,Unceasing success in their future endeavors. Amidst, high energy , the kids swarmed in the campus very proudly ,each of them carrying eye catching ,HOLIDAY projects to present and submit to their respective Heads for Evaluations! The school also had the pure honor and privilege of playing Instrumental part in celebrating the joint B’ Day of H.Holiness and H.Eminence’s this winter, under the host ship of the young Drukpa Association (YDA),Leh. The school in this manner obtained DUAL blessings required for an auspicious recommencement of our Wonderful school!

The atmosphere at DPKS picked up great momentum with the posters of different candidates covering nearly the entire campus. The students eagerly engaged themselves along with the teachers to prepare for the polls to re-elect the new 2016 student council. Congratulations to the new student council.

A fundraising luncheon for the Druk Padma Karpo School was held in Singapore on Friday 4th April 2015.  The school's founder His Holiness the Gyalwang Drukpa was present and the theme of the event was "Appreciating the Humanitarian Activities of His Holiness the Gyalwang Drukpa".

His Eminence Thuksey Rinpoche, Chair of Druk Padma Karpo Educational Society (DPKES), organised a special condolence assembly of all students and staff on 26th June 2014 in memory of Philip Cornwell who died that morning aged 67.

Dr. Philip Cornwell, Trustee of Drukpa Trust, had a successful career in transport planning before becoming involved in the Druk White Lotus School, eventually becoming its international project manager and raising hundreds of thousands of pounds for the school.

This week has seen more preparation of the vegetable beds by the landscape team.

We have also been planting up more seeds into beds and trays. The upside of planting into trays is being able to monitor and control them from the more negative impact of the flooding water irrigation regime, which can be quite harsh on emergent seedlings. The downside is that they need watering twice a day but this isn’t unusual for smaller containers in any climate and has been easy enough to achieve so far. I am wondering about seeing if there are any residential children who may be interested in a spot of light Sunday / weekend seedling watering for when I am not here. The seedlings will be potted on or transplanted soon enough.

It was school planting and gardening afternoon on Saturday towards the gardening competition, which was boisterous and productive. I prepared an A4 sheet of very simple garden criteria for each classroom to have. Karma walked me around the classrooms and I distributed a few little plants and seeds as well as talked about the children’s plans for their gardens. I look forward to watching the gardens develop but it will be Stuart who will judge them later on in the year.

Basset from JAINS also arrived on Saturday for an initial analysis of remaining works to the irrigation system. Mathura, Tsetan and I walked around the site with him assessing the installation and we also discussed the pump installation with Angdus. Basset did not seem to think there were any great hurdles and estimated a fully operational system within a month.

See what can be done in one year below.

The Plant Nursery Spring 2013, first fruit trees               

The Plant Nursery Spring 2014, fruit trees blossoming         

The tree stock in the nursery is coming into leaf and following a few light rainy periods everything is looking a little cleaner and less dusty than usual.

The week has been focused on beginning to purchase seeds and flower and vegetable seedlings and plant them into the nursery or distribute them to the house mothers and classrooms around the school. We have tried to buy alfalfa three times now from the agricultural department in Leh but have had the misfortune to arrive at just the wrong time to get the right chap to give us the ticket to take away some of this precious commodity.

I met with Angdus to discuss remedial and new construction works for the play area. We looked at a variety of different tyre-based features that should be easy enough to build. This structure will be somewhat dependant on how many tyres we can source in the meantime.

I arranged for a children’s planting day in the classroom gardens for the garden competition.

Tsetan and Ritzen collected the willow for the spine on Monday morning and set about planting it for the rest of the week.

Wednesday was a residents gardening afternoon and there was a whirlwind few hours when the children and house mothers set about digging the soil in the Spine and planting it with (French) marigold seed around the grasses.

Watering seems to be under control but it is time consuming and requires some thought to get it all done especially as we begin to plant up more and more bays in the nursery and it gets warmer and warmer. I have been planting more seeds with a view to increasing flower and seed stock and have been experimenting with a mix of planting in containers in the office and in the outdoor soil bays. I am also experimenting with creating some permeable shade (and dog proofing) in the outdoor bays using the dead  poplar and willow stems and buckthorn. It’s much warmer now and the second polythene roof of the polytunnel has been taken down.

The poplar and willow replant has continued.

The majority of the vegetable beds in front of the plant nursery have been dug over with manure and reshaped into bays in preparation of planting them up, below left. I have planted some more flower seedlings and some of the previously planted seedlings are beginning to come through, which is jolly exciting. There’s sunflower, English marigold and a few as yet un-identified species.

Many of the residences are preparing their flower beds in advance of the garden competition. It is great to see that many are looking really very neat.

This week has mostly been about planting poplar to replace the dead stock. We have re-planted in the plant nursery, at the top of the residential spine, at the visitor centre and the long strip adjacent to Rancho's cafe as planned.

I am working on a watering rota to discuss with Tsetan as there is now a fair amount to manage ahead of JAINS arrival to get the drip irrigation system tested and commissioned. A few gaps in the plant nursery fence have been fixed to try to prevent dog incursion. If this works it will avoid needing a whole new fence. The knock-on effect is that the kitchen green waste isn’t getting eaten by the dogs but it is getting a bit smelly so we will need to think about that. We have got some great shelves in the landscape office and the skeleton of a small table I pulled out of the scrap heap has had a new top put on to it. Everybody wants to use the Landscape Office now.