Song for Jasmine

Walking in Geneva with DweezelJazz recently, near to Carouge, we were surprised to find these House Martins nesting under a ledge on an apartment block. It took me a moment to realise that these were no ordinary nests, constructed from mud. Oh no, these are made from steel!

Now I do know that birds can use tools, and that they can invent them as well. There’s Betty, a New Caledonian Crow, who is famous for having figured out how to bend wire into hooks to retrieve food. You can see that in a youtube video of her exploits.

Then there’s Jasmine, our African Grey, who was also very adept at undoing nuts and bolts. She even tried to re-assemble them after taking them apart, and came very close to doing so more than once. However, unless these House Martins have learned how to use power-tools, I rather suspect these nests were provided for them by some kind soul. Whoever it was, in my opinion, you deserve a medal.

The birds clearly approve too, these nests are very well-used. In the few minutes we spent watching them, most of them had someone come or go at least once. The shelf underneath the nests is also a good idea, people passing by can do so without having to worry about what might fall on them.

Good for you, Geneva!

If you live in the United States, HR 669 may eventually kill your beloved pet. Don’t get it confused with swine flu (H1N1) or avian flu (H5N1). No, HR 669 is not a virus, it’s a bill currently inching its way along the process to becoming law, one which could make it illegal for you to keep your pet.

So what’s HR 669 about? The supposed intent of the bill is sound, namely to prevent invasive species from establishing breeding populations in the US. This makes sense – though it’s coming a little late, Florida probably has more non-native species than anyone can count. Unfortunately, the bill is very ill-conceived. It will not solve the problem, and as many have pointed out it will in fact make matters worse.

I heard about HR 669 from GrrlScientist’s blog, she has been writing about it a lot recently. In “HR 669: The Nonnative Wildlife Invasion Prevention Act” she describes the main features of this bill. I won’t attempt to reproduce her comprehensive analysis here, you should read her post if you’re interested. And if you live in the United States and own a bird, lizard, hamster, fish, or practically any animal other than a cat or dog, you should definitely be interested!

The bill assumes that all non-native species are a threat to native American wildlife, and that they should be banned until proven to be harmless. The bill doesn’t distinguish different regions of the US, so an animal that has the potential to establish itself only in Hawaii, or Alaska, will be banned, even if it couldn’t survive anywhere else. The United States has a wide range of ecosystems, so practically any animal you can think of keeping as a pet could survive somewhere in the US, and is therefore likely to be banned under this bill, should it become law.

Animals which are banned will not be allowed to be imported or exported, traded, sold, or bred, and of course, not be allowed to be released into the wild. If you have one of these banned animals when the bill becomes law, you can keep it, but only if you can prove you had it before the bill is passed. Do you happen to have a receipt for that parrot you inherited from your grandmother 30 years ago?

HR 669 doesn’t stop there. Even if you can prove it, you will still be subject to all the above restrictions. Also, you will not be allowed to transport the animal across state boundaries. Forget about moving to get a better job unless you want your pet to be euthanised. No, you can’t give it to someone else, that’s not allowed either.

If this has you at all concerned, please read the above post on GrrlScientist’s blog, and consider following the link to take action to oppose this bill.

GrrlScientist has some follow-up posts that are worth reading too. In “World Parrot Trust Speaks out Against HR 669” she reproduces a letter from the Executive Director of the World Parrot Trust, in which he adds his voice to the opposition. I find it particularly poignant that parrots will suffer because of this bill. Those of you who know Jasmines’ Story will know that we tried to export her to the US, where we knew she could have lived in a healthier environment. We were unable to do so because the US was not accepting imports from our part of France, for fear of bird-flu, and in any case her exportation would have been a slow process because African Grey are on the CITES lists. Jasmine might have lived had it not been for that restriction, and if HR 669 becomes law, many other animals already living in the US are likely doomed to a similar fate.

Easter has come and gone, and those of you lucky enough to have a garden may well have been out in it planting things. I don’t have a garden, and my mum is probably raising her eyebrows right now because I didn’t get that much done in hers over Easter, but I do have a terrace, and I am looking forward to trying my hand at growing a few plants this year.

I’ve grown vegetables in pots before, but not without pesticides and fertilisers. This year will be different, I intend to follow the growing trend and see how well I manage without chemical assistance. If it’s good enough for Michelle Obama, it’s good enough for me!

Michelle Obama wants to plant an organic garden in the white house lawn, and apparently this is upsetting the agricultural chemicals industry in the US. They are concerned that it sends the wrong message because it is organic. This despite the fact that more and more people out there are moving away from pesticide use. The fourth Semaine sans Pesticides (‘week without pesticides’), just last month, was twice the size of the one last year.

14 countries participated, from Canada, South America, Europe, and Africa (a summary is available online). Pesticides are nasty chemicals, and it seems a lot of people, the world over, think we can do without using so much or so many of them. But how?

Fortunately for the small gardener, there’s a lot of good information out there about natural pest control, such as using coffee to repel slugs and snails, using neem oil as an environmentally-friendly pesticide, companion planting, for mutual pest-resistance, selecting plants to attract useful insects, and growing vegetables in pots. I’ve even read some of it, and have decided what I want to grow this year.

I want to grow lettuce, beetroot, chard, and spring onions. Beetroot leaves are good in salads, so they’re not just for the roots. I also want to plant a few herbs (basil, thyme, rosemary, mint), as much for the smell as anything. I’ve chosen these plants for a variety of reasons:

• they’re easy and fast to grow, so I can hope to get something quickly
• for the most part, they’re cut-and-come-again, so I can hope for a long season
• lettuce and chard, in particular, don’t keep too well in the fridge. By growing my own, I hope to have them fresh whenever I want them.
• they don’t need staking, so occasional high winds and storms won’t damage them (I hope)
• in the event of a disaster (hailstorm, heatwave, locusts, whatever) I should be able to replace them rapidly

Incidentally, if your parrot likes beetroot, do bear in mind that it retains its colour as it passes through the digestive system of your feathered friend. Jasmine liked beetroot, but the first few times we gave it to her we were a little concerned about the red droppings at the bottom of the cage a few hours later!

I also want to grow some flowers, partly for the colour but also for the local birds and insects – some of them anyway. The local bees will probably like the thyme, and I’m sure they’ll go for sunflowers too. The sunflower heads will be kept for feeding the birds later in the autumn and winter.

The minimal research I’ve done so far suggests that french marigolds are good at deterring aphids, so they’ll be very much in evidence, in and around the other plants. Nasturtiums are easy and, if I am to believe what I hear, edible too, but I’m not convinced. Maybe I’ll try them, maybe not.

I don’t intend to be too ambitous with my gardening this year. I won’t have a great deal of time for it and I’m not expecting to save a lot of money. I do expect to grow some tasty food, and to have a lot of fun in the process. I’ll let you know how it goes!

The BBC published an article on Tuesday with the title Farmers fear EU pesticide rules. Interestingly, a few hours later they changed the title to “Euro MPs back pesticide controls”. This concerns the very law that I mentioned in a previous post, “Optimism“.

It’s a shame the BBC changed the title, but the story still made it out into the world with that title, so i feel I am allowed to refer to it as such. So why should British farmers fear these rules? The majority of the EU states welcomes them, as do I, though the MEPs don’t ask me for my opinion.

Apparently, they fear the rise in price that would follow the drop in productivity, even to the point that the ‘British carrot’ could become extinct. Why, then, does the Soil Association believe otherwise? The Soil Association is an organisation that supports and promotes organic farming. They published a report in October 2008 entitled “England And Wales Under Organic Agriculture”, in which they discuss the consequences (email them if you want a copy, it’s not available for download). They point out that going completely organic could, for the UK, reduce the use of fertilizers by 95%, spraying by 98%, and increase jobs by 73%. There are many other benefits, not least of which is a huge reduction in the carbon footprint of their food.

The common objection to going organic is that yields would decline. This report shows that they would not suffer as much as is often claimed, Britain would not starve. It might even be better off with the right balance of farming techniques, there’s plenty of scope. If the Argentinians can manage to raise organic beef on large farms and export it around the world, surely Britain can do likewise?

Unfortunately, the soil-association report doesn’t mention the fate of the British carrot, so I don’t know what would happen there.

France is not so scared of going organic, it seems. The French are putting 12 million euros annually into turning their farms organic. They want organic production to grow considerably in the near future. France is the biggest consumer of pesticides in europe, but they don’t seem to be scared of running out of carrots as they change their ways.

Personally, I buy most of my food from a French organic chain, Satoriz (Jasmine often came with us). Their prices are reasonable, the quality is good, and they have a full range of organic products, from soap and baby food to beer and wine. Oh yes, and carrots, like the one at the top of this post. I’ve also noticed that the food I buy from there tastes better than food I get from elsewhere. Satoriz have a lot of shops in my area, and have recently opened a large new outlet. I hope they continue to do well.

America, too, has an agricultural system strongly based in the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. As Obama prepares to be sworn in as president, there are people calling on him to reform the way the USA produces food, citing largely the same reasons.

So if all the French, the Argentinians, and the USA think they can produce food without so many chemicals, I have to wonder what the British farmers have to fear? Surely they aren’t really scared for their carrots?

Jasmine is an African Grey parrot. That’s her flying through the banner, here in the kitchen, and elsewhere on this site. She came to live with us in April 2007, and just 18 short months later we had to have her put down. She had such severe allergies to the chemicals and products that people use everyday that she wasn’t able to survive. She should have outlived me, but she wasn’t even three years old. She would have been three this month, November 2008.

I have become increasingly concerned in recent years about pollution, climate change, and the ways in which we are poisoning our world. African Greys are an endangered species, on the CITES lists, and for Jasmine to succumb to allergies induced by modern western life is as ironic as it is tragic.

Jasmine’s story has been told elsewhere, on the Dweezeljazz and Chipper’s Alley blogs. With this blog I hope to share some of the things that I find beautiful about the world and to raise awareness (my own included) about the ways in which we can help to preserve it.

I am English in origin, but have lived in France for many years now. I intend to build this site in both languages in parallel, and hope the native French-speakers among you will forgive me my mistakes.