Naming Hurricanes

Share the video. Sign the petition. Climatenamechange.org.

Read Full Post »

Brilliant

We enjoyed a pleasant weekend, but Monday and Tuesday have been overcast and drizzly. On the plus side, flowers can really shine on a dull day. While even bright flowers sometimes look washed out under intense sun, on gray days they make their own glow. Here are a few of the flowers that caught my eye today.

Pictured above are the small orange flowers of jewelweed (Impatiens capensis). It’s a native that grows quite vigorously in damp areas around here. It seeds about in the garden and I mostly pull it out, but left this one plant because jewelweed is loved by hummingbirds.

I usually plant a few annuals each spring, and by late in the summer, when the garden begins to look a bit tired, they add a boost of colour. Lavatera ‘Silver Cup’ is a pretty, clear pink. For brilliance, though, it is hard to beat zinnias.

The rudbeckias are reliable late-summer bloomers. This is rudbeckia fulgida ‘Goldstrum’. You can just make out a little yellow flower crab spider near the centre of the photo.

A few late daylilies are opening the last of their flowers. Wild Child (Salter 2002) was new this year and I enjoyed its colourful blooms. I was sad to see its last flower today, a bit bedraggled by the rain.

Golden Tycoon still has a few buds left and stands up well to the rain.

The angelica (Angelica gigas) is just coming into bloom and is very popular with bumblebees.

My Lemon Queen sunflower (Helianthus ‘Lemon Queen’) is also just starting her show and will soon be attracting crowds of bees.

Here are the leaves of annual coleus competing with the flowers for attention.

This echinacea, ‘Now Cheesier’ struggled last year. I moved it this spring and it is doing better in its new location.

Finally, here’s a garden variety of a native wildflower, Joe Pye Weed. This is Eupatorium ‘Phantom’.

Read Full Post »

Sunday Snapshot: Cornfield

Cornfield

Read Full Post »

Read This Book! The Polluters: The Making of Our Chemically Altered Environment

The Polluters: the Making of Our chemically Altered Environment by Benjamin Ross and Steven Amter. Oxford University Press 2010.

The Polluters is a history of industrial pollution in America from the early days of industry in the 18th century to the changing times of the 1960s and 70s. On page 3 of the book, the authors write:

Wastes were a problem from the earliest days of chemical manufacturing. But the American chemical industry of the nineteenth century lagged far behind its European competitors, and the emissions from its factories drew little notice beyond their immediate surroundings. …As pollution worsened and new problems emerged in the course of the 1920s and 1930s, scientists and the public increasingly saw the need for control and demanded action.

Leaders of the industry recognized the need for cleanup, but they were allergic to government oversight. Chemical companies insisted on doing things themselves, at their own pace, with their own means, and they gathered their forces for the fight to keep the government out. An armament of methods was developed to fend off outside pressure. One of the industry’s common tactics can be summed up as “spill, study, and stall.” When outside pressure to do something about pollution became strong, a study of the problem would be launched as an alternative to expensive action. The study would be carried out by the polluters themselves or, if it was feared that a blatantly self-serving study would lack credibility, under their influence.

…When study could not be avoided, friendly researchers would offer a predetermined conclusion. They would cherry-pick data, design experiments to give a desired answer, or sometimes offer reassurances backed by nothing more than the sheer force of assertion. The exercise of political, financial, and public relations muscle would turn this into “authoritative science,” often in the face of criticism from scientists of much greater attainment.

That, in a few paragraphs, sums up the contents of the following 170 pages. The authors go on to examine various examples and follow the seesawing attempts of assorted individuals to bring industry to heal and curb the unfettered polluting of the nation’s air, water and groundwater resources. Across the years, thousands of new synthetic compounds were developed and released into the environment without testing. Chemicals were treated as safe until proven otherwise, often by some catastrophic event. It was deemed that industry had a right to use available air and water as simple conduits for waste disposal unless there were prior claims for their use. The natural world itself, on the other hand, had no rights whatsoever.

It seemed to me that few stories can be more readily divided into “good guys” and “bad guys”. Not that the authors attempt anything but a balanced report, but the facts speak for themselves. For most of the period under study, industrial leaders found friends in high places, men who were happy to do their bidding. These men condemned to death countless unknown workers and citizens who they failed to protect, often turning a blind eye to clear and readily available scientific evidence showing the dangers of pollutants.

Public concern and awareness rose after the 1962 release of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, the first Earth Day in April 1970, and highly visible incidents such as the Love Canal scandal. The Clean Air Amendments of 1970 were signed into law. The Clean Water Act was passed in 1972. The Environmental Protection Agency was created. And a Superfund was established to identify and clean up America’s most polluted hot spots in 1980.

However, those hopeful steps of the 1970s have not been sustained. In fact, there have been giant steps backwards. In 2005 Congress, at the behest of then Vice President Dick Cheney, a former CEO of gas driller Halliburton, exempted fracking from regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Here in Canada, Stephen Harper and his Conservatives have been making giant strides backwards, undoing years of small victories in environmental protection so that corporations may once again pollute unfettered. Even when regulations are in place, polluters are not prosecuted. A recent report showed that Alberta is enforcing fewer than one per cent of potential environmental violations in its open-pit mines.

Even more depressing is the fact that climate change was under discussion in the 1950s. Evidence of rising temperatures had begun to accumulate and by the 60s, prediction of increasing temperatures again appeared in leading scientific publications. Here we are, half a century on, and we have chosen to saddle ourselves, through apathy and fraudulent election practices, with an ineffectual, backwards government that fails to look to the future and refuses to address the inconvenient truth of climate change. The authors note:

The emission of greenhouse gases goes on, protected with the time-honored techniques of toothless laws and twisted science. The tactic of spill, study, and stall, now approaching its centenary, is still in use. Well-funded institutes continue to paste a veneer of scientific research onto political propaganda. Hard truths are countered with convenient but unlikely hopes.

Read Full Post »

Shining Sceptre

Kniphofia is often known as Red Hot Poker. Many varieties have scapes topped with orangey-red cones of tubular flowers, and it is easy to see how their common name came about. However, the kniphofia cultivar I added to the garden last year, Kniphofia ‘Shining Sceptre’ is more yellow and orange, and in the evening sun it really does shine. Although it is listed as 3 to 4 feet tall, my flower scapes are about 5 feet now, standing well above the clump of grassy foliage at their base. Kniphofia is a native of South Africa. The name Kniphofia honors Johann Hieronymus Kniphof (1704 -1763), a German physician and botanist.

Here’s Shining Sceptre in the late summer garden, set off by blue agastache ‘Blue Fortune’ and Rudbeckia fulgida ‘Goldsturm’ and coreopsis grandiflor ‘Baby Sun’.

Kniphofia ‘Shining Sceptre’ was a 1998 Blooms of Bressingham introduction. Alan Bloom (1907-2005)…what a great name for a nurseryman!…bought Bressingham Hall in Norfolk, England in 1946 and founded a gardening business that would flourish for many years. Alan’s sons Robert and Adrian joined the business as young men. In 2007 Blooms of Bressingham was taken over and merged with the larger Wyevale chain of garden centres.

Home gardeners owe many great introductions to the Blooms and you may find the Bressingham name represented in your own yard. Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’, which blooms close by to Shining Sceptre in my garden, is another Bressingham hybrid. It was bred in 1966 by Alan Bloom. Also nearby is Achillea ‘Moonshine’, a 1950s introduction.

Read Full Post »

World Overshoot Day

August 20th, 2013 is World Overshoot Day, the estimated date when we’ve used up the Earth’s annual supply of renewable natural resources and carbon absorbing capacity. After that, we’re using more than the planet can sustain. It’s a one-day reminder of a year-round problem: We are living too large on a finite planet. For more on Overshoot Day, follow this link to World Wildlife Fund’s article by Jon Hoekstra. There is no Planet B.

Read Full Post »

And the winner is…

Here it is! The first tomato to make it from seed to dinner plate this year is Silvery Fir Tree, a variety that Fiddlegirl shared with me. This was a surprise winner. I was expecting Sub-Arctic Plenty to win handily, but its tomatoes are still quite green. We had 3 of the Silvery Fir Tree fruits with supper last night. The tomatoes are on the small side of medium, a nice bright red, and a pleasant, juicy mild flavor. I like something a bit more tart, myself, but these were quite fine. Ah, nothing like those first tomatoes straight from the garden!

Here are the Silvery Fir Tree tomatoes on the plant.

I started my tomato seeds on March 19th and wrote about them in a post titled Tomato Season Begins, linked here. I had 7 varieties of tomatoes neatly labelled, but due to an unfortunate cat-astrophe, the seedlings ended up in a jumbled pile on the floor one day. They all survived, but lost their labels. As the plants mature, I can make a good guess at which plants are which. These are surely Indigo Rose. Cool, no? They’ve been that deep rich colour for a while now, but are still hard to the touch. I’m looking forward to tasting them.

I’m pretty sure these are Sub Arctic Plenty, which is a good producer.

And these look to be Michael Pollan. I couldn’t resist adding the namesake of this great writer to my garden. If you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend The Botany of Desire. I’m looking forward to reading his latest book, Cooked, which is in my big stack of ‘waiting to be read’s.

Read Full Post »

Dry Lake

I followed a round-about route home from Peterborough. It brought me through Marlbank, and I stopped by Dry Lake for a few minutes. It was very quiet and serenely peaceful. You’d never guess that this was once the site of a large factory employing 200 people.

There are a number of short histories of the town of Marlbank to be found online, varying slightly in their details. The local soil type, marl, determined much of its early development. The marl was ideal for making Portland cement, and in 1891 the first cement factory was opened. It conducted business under various names until it closed its doors in 1914. At its height, the factory employed 200 people and supported a busy town.

Photo: Municipality of Tweed website

Explanations for the closure of the factory vary, but Marlbank supplied some of the cement used in the construction of the Panama Canal. Perhaps demand for cement fell after the completion of the Panama Canal in 1914, and more remote and thus less economical operations were forced out of business. A few remains of the old buildings can still be seen as they succumb to new forest growth.

The area from which the marl was dredged now forms Dry Lake. When I stopped, there was a family of loons close to shore. They quickly retreated and I was only able to get a distant shot. Still, I was pleased to think that they were now the beneficiaries of that long-ago human enterprise.

Read Full Post »

I Brake For Water Buffalo

Last week, I undertook a road trip to points west of here. While travelling the back roads on my way up to Peterborough, I spotted a herd of…big, mud-coloured cows? Water buffalo! This was a first. I can’t recall ever having seen water buffalo hanging around the pastures of Ontario before. I stopped and took a few pictures.

This pair seemed to be enjoying a good soak. The appearance of the others suggested they regularly partook of this pleasure too.

When I got home, I turned to Google, and soon learned that I had stumbled upon the Ontario Water Buffalo Co.. Located north of Stirling, Ontario, the farm keeps a herd of water buffalo for milk production. Their website offers this information:

The water buffalo is an incredible species and is the primary source of dairy in many countries. In Italy there are more water buffalo milked than holsteins in Ontario. There are about 170 million water buffalo worldwide with two types; swamp and river. Swamp are primarily used for meat and draught while river is best for milking. As calves they range from 80-100 pounds while the adults reach up to weights of 2600 pounds.

I never knew. Now I do.

Read Full Post »

Sunday Snapshot: Buddy in the Garden

Buddy

Read Full Post »