Pollenatrix

You'll find it in a garden

Watch this wonderful video describing how permaculture turned around a barren, salt-poisoned plot of land in Jordan near the Dead Sea: "Greening the Desert".

This man makes one of the wisest statements I've heard in a long time...

"You can solve all the problems of the world in a garden."

Amen to that.

Happy Easter.

Fridge magnets not included

Gizmodo has an interesting report on a fridge-like hydroponic growing machine from Electrolux. I suppose you could use something like this to grow sprouts and lettuce and African Violets, but one of Gizmodo's readers has his doubts:

"I can pretty much guaran-fuckin-tee you that the customer list for this thing gets Faxed to the DEA every single morning at 9:01."

Dog Broom or Dog Breed?

Aghhh! That's really a dog!

I had to look at that series of photos a couple of times before I believed it. 

Fur loving flocks

Speaking of birds, I have quite a nice group of regular visitors to the bird feeders outside my windows. Great Tits, Blue Tits, Robins (the "Christopher Robin" kind), Nuthatches, Magpies, Great Spotted Woodpeckers, Chaffinches, Blackbirds and and other assorted ground-dwelling Thrushes... and boy, they're noisy. Those Tits can belt out a tune that pierces concrete. At 6:30 in the morning...

Anyway, I get a great kick out of feeding them, but the most fun was watching the birds go crazy over the wads and wads of dog hair that came out of Jake's recent encounter with a brush. I spread a shockingly large quantity of fur (I really should brush him more often) through bushes and along the ground, knowing as I did it that unless the birds acted fast I'd soon be handling complaints from one fastidious elderly neighbour or another. The birds did not disappoint - by morning they were all out there, pulling on it and rolling in it and generally whooping it up. It's mostly all gone now, keeping more than a few clutches of eggs soft and warm through the last cool days of spring.

Here's some more good ideas for nesting materials, in case you don't have a shedding dog conveniently at hand...

Geiger counter on the wing

Birds around the Chernobyl site can detect areas with lower radioactivity, and that's where they build their nests.

Wildlife is thriving in the human-exclusion zone around Chernobyl, which is sobering. Can it be true that human activity is more destructive to animal populations than a nuclear disaster?

A plant that won't stay potted

While we're on the subject of "plant intelligence", here is a great story.

Mark Moffett is an award-winning biologist and photographer who has spent a lot time at the tops of trees studying ecosystems in forest canopies. He talks about his work in a "Best of National Geographic" podcast, and relates a wonderful story about his favourite jungle beast. Surprisingly, it's not a cute furry animal, but a plant. Not even an exotic plant, but the common monsteras and philodendrons that we've seen time and time again in dentist offices, the ones we grow in our own living rooms. These seemingly innocuous houseplants have amazing lives.

Photo credit: wikipedia.org