Thursday, January 4, 2024

Blackberry Winter


The dark orb of summer
bursts on the tongue,
a counter-seasonal treat for the            shortest day

Contraband from the foreign land
   of Stronger Sun
nestles on the winter table,
berries black beside the holly red,
frozen and thawed 
   for the Christmas spread

The fruity juice, summer-born,
well adorns a hibernian feast
  and seems to come from long ago

Come again the berries will,
ripening on the green horizon
  of welcome lengthening days

-- FJ

Tuesday, December 19, 2023

Everybody is a NIMBY about something

 Development industry types and some politicians blame those who want to preserve neighbourhood character for having a "not in my backyard" attitude, but they too cry "NIMBY" -- just about other things. For example, some object to lawns, or free roaming cats, or trees. They want to see in THEIR backyard -- a building site

The neighbourhood-preservation NIMBYs are about not wanting another building in their back yard. Or a high-rise tower overshadowing it, or other people's security cameras looking into their windows.

This type of NIMBY wants still to have a backyard, with birds, trees, flowers, and home-grown vegetables. 

Which NIMBY seems most reasonable? Has the concept of the Good Life disappeared completely, thanks to pave-and-build edicts by some extremist provincial premiers?

Remember all the time and money spent on munipalities' Urban Forest Master Plans? But now, trees are out, concrete is in (Apparently it's "equitable".)

What happened to the Urban Forest Master Plan, on which so much money was spent "consulting" people? 




Monday, November 20, 2023

Why is AuduBON now considered AuduBAD?

John James Audubon (1785-1851) was a mixed-race (French/Creole) son of a West Indies planter and slave owner. Growing up in France he became a painter. Birds were his specialty and his passion. At 18 he moved to North America, trying unsuccessfully to make a living in business and eventually becoming an art teacher and professional portraitist of people and of birds. His avian drawings were well-received in Scotland and London, then published in book formats with text 1831-39 and now universally recognizable. Later Audubon moved to New York and brought out more bird books in partnership with other ornithologists, which led to the use of his name by the first Audubon Society in 1896.

Many regional and national Audubon Societies were formed, but as John Audubon has in recent years been called a racist and white-supremacist, by 2023 many of the societies have dropped his name. Others have not, because to them the name "Audubon" stands for conservation, not racism.

It wasn't only Audubon that upsets the present birding world; plant and animal names derived from the names of those who first described them for the species nomenclature devised by Carl Linnaeus have come under attack. Many of the naturalists involved have been accused of "colonialism". 

But it isn't only individuals coming under attack; science is as a whole. We'd expect scientific classification to be above or outside of identity politics ... but it's not allowed to be. Nothing is. Science, learning and study may no longer be a-political. Everything has to be absorbed by the Culture Wars. 

Many naturalists whose names were attached to plants and animals became "colonials" because 18th - 19th century shipping technology made it possible to travel the world collecting specimens from far-flung regions -- regions which contained earlier settlers, the ab-original ones (the prefix "ab" meaning first). "Our ancestors had already discovered those plants and animals", say their descendents. Of course they must have, but they didn't devise a scientific classification system for them -- they hadn't devised written language at all. The Linnean system is about species themselves and their biological descent, not about the people who brought the specimens from the field to the laboratories of Europe (where the microscope had also been invented, which made detailed species description possible). 

Like aboriginal people, in Celtic lands the pagana ("women of the countryside") knew all about native herbs and their properties for good and ill, health and disease. Plants, roots, leaves and berries could heal, or poison. Pagana, knowing which was which, were powerful and others might revere or fear them. Accordingly they were called either wiccans, druids or witches. They were anonymous like the native peoples of the New World ... but the official classification of species was done later by biologists. It was never about race-politics.

Yet now, not only are Audubon, Linnaeus, and specimen collectors black-listed; the names of plants, birds and animals themselves are to be laundered by Correctness. There are offenders in your own garden that you may have to re-name, or dig up. No longer will you be able to host fuschias (named after German botanist Leonhart Fuchs) or dahlias (named for the Swedish botanist Anders Dahl). And abandon your forsythia, named after the 18th century Scottish horticulturalist William Forsythe, and your gunnara, after Johan Erntegunnerus, the Norwegian bishop who compiled Flora norvegica, 1766-72.

Bannish any Clarkia you host, named for Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition -- can't get more colonial than that. But would your Echeverria be okay, named after Mexican botanist/artist Echeverria y Godoy? He drew the plants of Mexico and perhaps kept any views on slavery to himself, so he might fare better than John Audubon. Lady Sarah Amherst, like Audubon an ornithologist-artist, painted her namesake-pheasant (and other) illustrations while living in India: terribly colonial. But no doubt Joe Pye Weed, a lushly-purple pollinator-attracting plant, will be allowed to keep its name, as Joe Pye was a Mohican chief born in the northeast US in the 18th century.

There's a Cooper's hawk, a Harris hawk, and a Wilson's warbler -- common names all, so who knows which are infamous, and what for? How about the Rivoli hummingbird and the Anna's hummingbird, named for the Duke of Rivoli and his wife Anna? Do the name-censors know for what crimes they might have their names struck off the bird list? Or why an American Quaker leader and a Surgeon-General should be?

How far will this censorship go, we might ask? We can assume that in the present heated climate (societal, not planetary) it will spread like dandelion weeds. But Audubon Societies are conservation societies, and we should ask, given that 29% of all Earth's species are facing extinction, which is more urgent -- conservation, or race-activism? 

In any case, for many peace-loving gardeners uninterested in the Culture Wars, a dahlia will always be a dahlia and a fuschia always a fuschia. 


Saturday, November 18, 2023

The 'fifteen minute city' offers zero minutes of peace and quiet

 A healthy city needs a town centre, a commercial centre. "Downtown" is where you find banks, stores, offices, municipal hall, museums, professional services conveniently clustered. You go there to do business so you don't have to do business everywhere else. Beyond this commercial centre there needs to be a fringe of non-commercial relief: the residential space. 

Historically, towns began as commercial centres on trading routes, or places where transport routes intersected. For convenience and access to work, growing populations gradually settled near and around them, each family in their own house or cottage with its own food-producing garden and often a fence or hedge for privacy, and peace and quiet.

The "fifteen minute city" has no minutes for peace, quiet and privacy. Commericalism is everywhere. There's no relief from business, from busy-ness and crowds -- the "madding crowd" which Thomas Hardy recommended getting far away from. There's no escape from what poet William Wordsworth called "getting and spending" when "we lay waste our powers". He meant powers of reflection, of quiet unhurried thought. The old-fashioned residential zone beyond the Town Centre vouchsafed gardens, fruit trees, cats on fences, porches with a mailbox and a shelf for the sprinkler that kept the lawn alive on which the kids could play. The fifteen minute city offers the opposite: compression and some supposed version of "convenience" ... but never fifteen minutes of solitude or silence. 

How is the mental health of people who are crowded together without solitude, silence, and space for reflection? How does the stress level of urban congestion relate to the crime rate? There used to exist the ideal of the Green Belt surrounding an urban centre, reached in stages of sub-urbia which gently declined into wooded space. Now we contemplate a city comprising only one continuous Grey Belt, in which "work, play, and business" are bundled together. This doesn't work for those who want a private house and garden some distance from noise, commercialization, sun-blocking high-rises, and jostling crowds.



Saturday, November 11, 2023

Goodnight to the Animals

Slumber safely, animals,

    dreaming bees and crocodiles,

The sun now up will soon go down,

    and night spread hush on field and town

Nothing makes a season stay

    'Until next time' we always say,

As Earth the Mother turns from Sun

    we bid adieu from one to one:

"Later 'gator and Antelope"

"Manana Panda", we faithfully hope

And Toodle-oo Kangaroo

See ya soon, Arctic Loon

Bonne nuit, Chimpanzee

And Goodbye Ants and Eagles free

À bientot Pink Flamingo,

À demain, Orangutan,

    Adios to Buffalos,

        Adieu to Caribou, Ogopogo, 

                        and Sasquatch too

So long, you short Dugong, 

      Pip-pip, you Python thick

        Cheerio and Tally-ho, woolly Lamb 

                     and feathered Crow,

Take good care, Arctic Hare 

'Til next year, Black-tailed Deer


A season passes in a flash

Fur coats thicken, squirrels stash

So change you clocks, Brer Fox,

Here comes another equinox

Time to hibernate, old Bear

Find a safe and cozy lair

Go to sleep wise hens and sheep

'Til dawn, our Good-Night-Dreams will keep

Time's rushed past since New Year's Eve

Now shut the door before you leave


Thursday, October 19, 2023

Take a look at Britain's 'Tree of the Year'

 https://news.sky.com/story/wrexham-sweet-chestnut-wins-uk-tree-of-the-year-2023-competition-12987403#:~:text=The%20tree%20in%20Wrexham's%20Acton,Wall%20which%20was%20recently%20felled.

Yes, this chestnut tree won the UK Tree of the Year contest and is an absolute marvel -- low, wide, deep green canopy, from some angles looks like the texture of healthy green broccoli massively magnified ... 

Now it will go on to enter the "European Tree of the Year" contest. This is not a good sign -- that trees need a special "show", a "contest", because they've been demoted to trivia, after once being the very lungs and the clothing of Mother Earth, forests the guarantor of climate stability, the maker of clouds and defence against drought.

Sometimes we celebrate things that are on the way out. Will every tree, every forest, soon be nothing but  a tiny outdoor-museum exhibit? THEN how will Earth breathe?




Tuesday, October 10, 2023

The CRD's Recreational Parking Fee Gouge (verse)

What's going on with CRD Parks?
They ban the purring engine and the sound of happy barks,
For what we bought with taxes, they add on parking fees,
It should be free to access every meadow, every breeze

How dare they charge to visit lakes and woods already ours?
They'll put a parking charge on every oak and fir that towers?
They make us pay to park, and watch an eagle overhead?
Give up day-trips by car, they say: take the bus instead

Not everyone can ride a bike to what will be a tiring hike,
and dogs don't fit in panniers
nor kayaks match with Transit's ways

But driving cars is causing such a bureaucratic fuss,
we'll have to say "we're sorry kids: unpack the picnic box"

Will the barrier next to come be "Admission-Only-By-App"?
Should that exclusion happen, public patience will truly snap




Monday, September 25, 2023

The Arthropod Who Came In From the Cold

 Summer's ending and soon the season will be colder. Spiders will slip into the nooks and crannies of houses for warmth, and they’ll thank you for leaving them in peace until spring. They are happy to avoid us, and probably hope (if spiders have hopes) that we’ll do the same for them.

These are eight-legged air-breathing arthropods in the arachnid class (not insects, which have six legs) and there are over 700 species of them in BC. Worldwide, some 45,000 species have been described by biologists, but far more, perhaps up to 120,000 still await discovery and classification. Spiders separated from crab-like ancestors some 380 million years ago, and science has discovered that they’ve been spinning orbs for 136 million years.

The web is the spider’s tool for trapping prey (insects), and its woven intricacy has inspired many mythologies which see the spider as a Great Mother symbol. In indigenous North American mythology Spider was said to have woven the world into existence, and the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians called her the “weaver of destiny”. Her scientific name comes from the Greek princess Arachne, a weaver so skilled that she decided to compete with the goddess Athena. Being a goddess however, Athena won the weaving contest, and then she destroyed her upstart rival’s loom.

The actual spider’s web is still a mystery to upstart science. Its blend of strength and delicacy seems magical. The silk of the webs, made of protein fibre pulled out of specialized glands by the spider’s legs, is five times stronger than is a length of steel with the same diameter. There are between two and eight of these glands which, complete with “ducts” and “spigots” produce the fibre, which loses water and becomes acidic as it’s drawn out, completing a phase transition into a solid. That’s a simplified description of the phenomenon. Suffice it to say that science has not succeeded in replicating in laboratories the proteins involved: the goddess retains her secrets. She lives humbly in our houses and decorates our gardens on dewy mornings with exquisite glistening silver orbs.

However beautiful their webs, spiders themselves are not pretty which is why we not only fear them but project them onto movie screens as images of monsters. But arachnid expert Samantha Vibert of Simon Fraser University writes that spiders are generally non-violent creatures. The few that bite only do so defensively, not aggressively, and few are venomous except to insects. Their insect control activity is in fact crucial for maintaining ecological balance in natural settings. Some catch prey not by weaving webs but by using an equally amazing ability to jump 50 times their own height by instantly pumping blood into their eight legs. Crab spiders can also camouflage themselves by changing colour to match that of flowers they settle on, which helps them evade the birds, wasps and frogs that eat them.

It seems a shame they have to evade us as well, since they mean us no harm and can’t help their craggy bestial looks. Their beetle companions the ladybugs are tolerated in our buildings when they appear for the same reason: to get out of the cold. At them, we don’t scream and wave brooms in horror, so maybe we should aim for a more equitable attitude to Araneae too.


Thursday, August 24, 2023

Unpaved ground is not just real-estate-in-waiting

Oliver Sacks reminds us (in Oaxaca Journal) that the big trees around us would not exist without the uptake of minerals and water from soil made possible by the "vast subterranean network of fungal filaments (which act) as living conduits." This symbiotic connection goes back 400 million years, to the origin of land plants, and still connects 90% of known plant species on Earth. When we pave the ground, we are paving over treasure.

When we look around us, admiring our favourite trees, we often forget the other myriad less visible species which keep the trees alive. We forget that soil is itself alive, and that unpaved ground is not just



"real estate" in waiting. Favourite trees in your garden or local park depend on the rest of the plant and mineral world, and the more interruptions there are in the fabric, such as buildings and roads, not to mention pesticide use, the more perilous life is for trees. They depend on the bacteria in soil, roots and filaments to circulate carbon, nitrogen, sulphur and other minerals needed for life. A hemlock has several miles of roots, entangled with fungi and uncountable bacteria. Bark too is "a cosmos of many life forms," (Roger Caras: The Forest).

Caras calls every tree "a stage, a platform, a means of holding critical chemicals in storage and converting others." Species of lichen (formed out of the symbiotic partnership of algae and fungus) live on and in the platform and in soil, rock and wood, fixing nitrogen from the air for the plant world. Tree, fungi, lichens -- all having co-evolved for hundreds of millions of years "form the chemical web of life, the utter perfection of the natural order" (Caras). In their individual beauty we often appreciate trees as discrete gems, but we forget the whole "perfection of the natural order". We must remember that "saving the trees" in our environment is about saving the whole hinterland of life behind and within them -- the unsung but essential species that live beneath our feet, hanging from branches, living in clefts of rock, mud puddles and vacant lots, busily keeping the planet alive.