Song for Jasmine

James Camerons’ new science-fantasy film, ‘Avatar’, starring Sigourney Weaver, is doing the rounds at the box office in Geneva. I saw it recently, and I have to say, it’s an amazing film. See it in 3D if you can, it’s worth it.

Without giving away too much of the story, I can tell you that it’s set in the future where humans travel to a planet called ‘Pandora’ to mine a valuable mineral from under the feet of the indigenous natives. The natives don’t want to give up their lands, of course. The humans attack them with the usual military hardware, and the natives fight back with bows and arrows. Nothing particularly new there, the plot has a familiar ring to it.

Nonetheless, Avatar stands out from the crowd. James Cameron is not known for thinking small, and the visual effects are quite stunning. The landscapes are exquisite, and the plants and animals are beautiful. Bio-luminescent plants glow underfoot where people walk at night. The whole thing is put together superbly, with a great deal of attention to detail.

The natives (“Na’vi”) are tall and elegant, and more than a little elfin in appearance. They live in harmony with their world, respectful of the living things they share it with. Taking no more than they need to survive, they deplore the humans’ lack of balance with nature. When the tribal-chief’s daughter rescues one of the humans from a sticky situation (I told you the plot was familiar), she chastises him, telling him “you do not see”. Like so many of us, he considers himself to be separate from the web of life around him, not a part of it, so he is blind to the real beauty of it all.

It seems that message has struck a chord with many of us, and some people get depressed after seeing Avatar. They envy the Na’vi their lifestyle, and are not happy to think that they can never live that way, nor live in such a beautiful place as Pandora.

I guess I can understand that, but I don’t agree with it. The Pandora that James Cameron has created is indeed very beautiful, and the Na’vi have a great way of life. Sure, they occasionally have to dodge things with teeth the size of their heads, but apart from that, they seem to have it made. But while Pandora might be a nice place to visit, I don’t think I would want to live there. Planet Earth is my home, and I’m happy here.

It’s true that most of us cannot claim to live in harmony with nature. Probably only a few of us would want to go as far as the Na’vi, but we can probably do better than we do today. All we need to do is to go out there and start looking around, the natural world is just waiting to be found.

You don’t have to go on safari either, nor to a tropical island. You can go to your nearest beach, lake, river or woodland, and take a good look around you. You can go down to the bottom of your garden, or to the nearest park. Nature is at home in all sorts of places.

I’ve seen blue-tits working hard to bring food to their young in the nest they built in the shutters of my apartment window. I’ve even been lucky enough to see one of those chicks make its’ first flight, leaving the nest. I’ve seen baby birds clambering to hitch a ride on their mothers’ back, rather than expend the effort to swim alongside her. I’ve seen a pigeon raise a family in an empty flower-pot on my balcony. I’ve seen all sorts of pretty insects – caterpillars, butterflies, crickets, bees and beetles – in the plants I’ve grown on my terrace. Nothing unique or exotic, but all beautiful just the same.

It’s not just birds or insects either. I’ve had squirrels come up to me in Hyde Park, looking to see what I had in my hand. I’ve seen a hedgehog on my terrace, and frogs in my Mums’ garden. There are deer and foxes in the Jura that we sometimes see on our walks, or even from the comfort of our home. After a fresh fall of snow the sheer number of animal tracks has to be seen to be believed, there’s so many of them. We saw a weasel not long ago, and I’ve seen chamois and marmots in the Alps.

I’m no expert at finding these animals, I just go out and look. I don’t see them every day, but that makes it all the more precious when I do.

If you live in the concrete jungle and don’t have any countryside within reach, try visiting your nearest park. If there’s grass, trees, and flowers then there will be birds, bees, and other insects. Take some bird-seed and you might be able to tempt the birds to come close to you. Give them time to get used to you and they may even perch on your hand. Come evening, you may be lucky enough to see bats flying around too. If there’s a pond then there may be frogs or dragonflies hidden among the reeds.

If you don’t have time to go somewhere, you can put a birdfeeder in your garden, on your balcony, or just mounted on the wall outside your window. Birds will find it, and you can enjoy them from the comfort of your own home. You can really see their characters emerging when you see how they behave around a feeder, it’s fun to watch.

If you’re not sure where to start looking, there are plenty of good sources of information. Your local library or tourist office can tell you about nature-groups, natural attractions, or forthcoming nature-related events in your area. If you know someone more experienced, ask them to show you where to look. There are several good TV programmes too, such as Springwatch in the UK. Or you could search the web for nature-bloggers in your neck of the woods, and ask them a few questions. They’ll be sure to help you if they can.

I’ve not seen anything as big or colourful as the creatures that the Na’vi encounter on Pandora, but fair’s fair, I’ve not met anything that tried to eat me, either. If you take the time to go looking for it, nature is never far away. Go take a look, you’ll see.

The recent spell of freezing weather is coming to an end, but not before it dropped a foot of snow on our terrace. Birds have a hard time in such cold weather, in fact it amazes me that they manage to survive at all. There’s a very interesting post over at Willow House Chronicles about how birds survive cold temperatures if you’d like to know more about how they manage it.
We’ve been putting out food for the birds again this winter, normally just clearing the snow and placing it on the wall. That seems to suit birds like the robin, above, and our resident sparrows, but it can easily be covered by snow or washed away by rain, so this year we’ve also added some proper bird-feeders.

So many of the feeders in garden centres seem impractical and decorative, but after some shopping around I finally found this very practical feeder shown on the right. It’s not particularly cheap, but it does keep the seed clean and dry against all weathers, which has got to be a good thing. I don’t have anywhere obvious to hang such a feeder, so I took the low-tech solution. I found a suitable branch on our morning walks, tied it to the railings of the fence, and hung the feeder from that.

We also got two suet-feeders, and then spent some time looking for suet in the shops we frequent. Our favourite bio-store, Satoriz, didn’t have any, but they did have peanut butter, so I used that instead. I’m sure I could have found suet if I had looked around enough, but since the peanut butter is organic and any suet I find would not be, I prefer to use the peanut butter. I buy organic food for myself because I don’t want to eat pesticides, and I don’t see why wild birds should do so either.
I mixed some bird seed in with the peanut butter, quite a lot in fact, put it in the suet feeders, and hung them from another stick I’d picked up on our morning walks.

For a bit more variety, I tied some millet to the fence too, and I continue to put food loose on the wall for those that prefer it there. I also have a thistle-seed sack-feeder for finches, but no seed to put in it yet. Soon, I hope!

Now the restaurant is open, all we need are customers. First to find us was our robin, of course. You can see him here checking out the feeder during the day of heaviest snowfall. Like so many birds, he shows a great deal of curiosity at anything that changes in his environment. Having decided that it’s safe, he continues to be our most regular visitor.

A couple of days later and a few more birds had found us. The great-tits seem to like the peanut butter, while blue-tits like the tall feeder. We have even been visited by a magpie, who comes a few times daily, takes 3 or 4 peanuts in one go, and flies off to enjoy them somewhere else. I expect that as time goes by we will get more visitors, and hopefully more species too – I know there are woodpeckers nearby.
The magpie is our largest visitor so far, and unless the chickens down the road escape from their coup we’re not likely to get anything much bigger than them. Some people do get larger birds visiting them, such as our friend Shannon Ryan. Take a look at what she gets visiting her bird feeders. They must take quite a bit of feeding!

Just a few days ago, I commented over at The Marvellous in Nature that we didn’t have enough snow yet for snow-shoeing. Well that has all changed! We now have several centimetres, or quite a few inches, depending on which you prefer.

The photo above was from our morning walk last Friday. The stream below on the right was taken then too. Plenty of snow there, as you can see. Later in the day we had more snow, the picture on the left being taken from the warmth and comfort of our living room.

Even before the snow came, it’s been very cold here, so obviously there are far less insects about now, but there are still a few surprises here and there. Some days ago I looked up from my laptop to see this lacewing on the outside of the window. As far as I know, they should all be hibernating now. Maybe he had heard about the bug-hotel I made last month and was going to check out the accomodation?

He’s not the only lacewing we’ve seen lately, one has decided to move in with us for the winter. He now spends his time in the spare room, which we keep unheated for my cacti.

We’ve named him Edgar, the fly who came in from the cold. Edgar has spent the last 2 or 3 days on the window-sill, which is not a particularly safe place for him to be, so I’ve moved him into a small box of shredded paper. I have no idea if he manages to find food, or if he needs any now, he doesn’t move far at all it seems. If anyone has suggestions on how to look after him and help him survive the winter, please let me know!

Then of course there’s our feathered friends. We have many birds sheltering in the eaves, and they are quite happy to avail themselves of the food we put out for them. We’ve been investigated by magpies a few times too, but they seem too shy to stay when they see us through the window. Hopefully they’ll learn to trust us and stay a little longer, they’re so beautiful.

The birds don’t seem to bother with the water much, which I think is pretty ungrateful of them considering the effort it takes to replace it every time it freezes. Still, I guess they know what they need. As long as they keep coming for the food, we will keep putting it out for them!

Wherever you are, whichever creatures you have sharing your Christmas, indoors or out, I wish you, and them, a merry Christmas.

Yesterday, I finally dug up my dead sunflowers. Even though there are still a few seeds in them, as you can see in the photo, the birds have stopped visiting them, so it’s time for them to go. I had intended to save the dead flowers to put out later in the winter for the birds, but they found them before I harvested them so I let them have them. I’ll put out other food for them later.

Sunflowers are one of my favourite flowers, I first grew them when I was a kid. I’ve taken a number of photos of this years crop during the summer, here are a few of the best. Hope you like them!

The garden is finished for the year, which is a shame because it’s been a lot of fun. We had the last of our lettuce just a few days ago. It was surviving nicely due to the lack of frost, though it was hardly growing anymore, it’s too cold now. I’m surprised it has lasted so well, I wish I’d planted more towards the end of the summer!

Today I ‘officially’ closed the garden by covering the big plant tubs with their water-trays, to avoid having the winter rains leech out all the nutrients before the next growing season. I’d never really paid much attention to how soil in pots gets depleted of its nutrients before, but that was brought home to me this year. The white tub that I have had for many years grew tiny sunflowers compared to those with new soil, which were three or four times bigger. Shame on me, I should have known better.

I don’t want to use chemical fertilisers, I don’t want to replace the soil in the pots, and I don’t think I can realistically put a compost heap on my terrace, so I’m trying something different. I’m digging small, deep holes in the soil, and burying vegetable peelings in them. Hopefully, over winter, they will rot down enough to feed the soil without also rotting next years plants. Maybe it will work, maybe not, we’ll see!

Our garden has been quite productive, and we’ve enjoyed the produce from it. A recent study claims that organic food is no healthier than normal food, but that study completely ignored the use of pesticides in conventional agriculture. I’ve read enough to convince me that pesticide-free veggies are a good thing. Of course, there are other benefits to growing your own vegetables, such as reducing food-miles.

Food-miles are a measure of the amount of fuel needed to transport food from the farm to your plate. That fuel all contributes to climate-change by emitting greenhouse-gasses, so getting your food locally means less global warming. You can’t get more local than your own garden, so growing your own food is good for the planet too!

On a larger scale, organic farming is also beneficial in the fight against climate change in other ways. Organic farming feeds the soil, not the plant, and doing so means that the soil will absorb and hold more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than chemical-intensive methods. The Carbon Farmers of America have taken this one step further, deliberately adopting farming techniques to optimise carbon sequestration, and making farms more productive in the process. The story of the farms of “Yobarnie” and “Nevallan”, in Australia, is quite an eye-opening account of how well such techniques work.

So your organic garden may be good for the climate, as well as providing good food. I could have squeezed a few more vegetables out of our garden this year, but I’m glad I left some space for sunflowers instead. Apart from being pretty in their own right, they’ve been feeding the bees all summer, and now feed the birds, long after nearly everything else out there has finished. If you look closely at the photo below you’ll see there are 6 goldfinches, quite a sight!

Nor is it just goldfinches, we’ve had great-tits too. As you can see, they’re not timid about getting their share, this one was quite happy to push in while the goldfinches were feeding. He’s more agile than the goldfinches, so manages to get his way.

Other birds have benefited from both the goldfinches and the great tits dropping seeds on the ground. Black Redstarts and sparrows often forage around the pots while the other birds are doing their stuff. Sparrows may be plain compared to other birds, but they’re still fun to watch. Here’s 3 of them looking on while a fourth is dipping into the bowl of water we put out for them. You can’t easily tell, but he was taking a bath at the time.

Finally, although the garden outdoors is finished for the year, we’re still growing something! Dweezeljazz has got the bug now, and is growing fresh shoots of all sorts for our salads. They’re very easy to grow, using a neat little gadget from Satoriz, and make a welcome addition to our meals. Thank you, Dweezeljazz.

Winter is approaching, and change is in the air. We’re wrapping up warmer these days, and we’re not the only ones. Insects, such as this lacewing, are looking for a safe place to spend the winter. This year, I’m trying to help them.

There are lots of places on the web where you can get good information about the type of home that you can provide for insects for the winter. They range from simple things like a pile of leaves in a wire cage to more elaborate and attractive DIY projects like the one at Herbs and Dragonflies. Other sites have more detailed information, such as the Paignton Home Garden & Allotment Society, or the Cheshire Wildlife Trust. For the ultimate in accomodation for garden wildlife, take a look at the invertebrate habitat they designed as part of their exhibit at the 2005 RHS Tatton Park Flower Show.

I wasn’t nearly as ambitious as that, maybe next year, who knows! I put together a simple bug-home from a plastic container, a few pieces of bamboo, and a bit of string. I started by sawing off the bamboo into sections, just behind the knuckles so that each section is closed at one end. Many of the sections were still filled with pith, I used a long drill-bit to clean them out.

Then I made four holes in the plastic container, two at the top, two at the bottom. The holes are spaced about a quarter of the way around the container, and the pairs of holes line up along the axis of the container. Oh just look at the picture, you’ll get the idea!

I threaded two pieces of string, one in and out of the top pair of holes, one in and out of the bottom. Then I stacked the bamboo in the container, with the closed ends inside of course! Pack the bamboo in tight, so that it holds itself firmly.

I made sure that the string was looped around the bamboo inside the container, so that when I pull it tight it will hold the bamboo tighter together. Otherwise, the string might just tear through the plastic over time, and that would not be good.

Then I simply tied it to our fence. It’s deliberately placed on a slight downward angle, to prevent water running down into the bamboo and drowning any unsuspecting occupants. It’s also close to our wall, and facing it, so that it gets protection from direct rain and winds.

My only question is, how will I know if there’s anyone living in there? Any ideas?

Summer has gone, Autumn is here. Trees are shedding leaves, flowers are fading fast, and the house-martins left a while ago. But as Jane points out in Urban Extension, sometimes there are new things to see in Autumn. I haven’t seen her special bee yet, though I’m keeping an eye on the ivy near my home. However, I have seen lots of other interesting things recently. Here’s a selection taken from a walk through the country lanes near Divonne two weeks ago.

At the top is a Pale Tussock moth caterpillar (Calliteara pudibunda). This guy was crossing the road, intent on going somewhere. I’ve never seen one of these before, but this must be the season for them, because we found another further on. They’re rather striking, the tufts make them look like a toothbrush!

There are still some flowers around, and yes, there are insects keen to visit them. This bee and the fly were just two of the more co-operative characters we encountered.

Autumn is, of course, a good time for fungi. I don’t know the names of any of these, maybe Winter Woman knows, she’s keen on fungi.

Further on, there were plenty of other insects crossing the road. On the left is a forest bug (Pentatoma rufipes). On the right is a dragonfly, a ruddy darter (Sympetrum sanguineum), who very obligingly stayed still long enough for me to take his photograph. That doesn’t happen often.

All the insects shown so far were actually on the road, for reasons only they know. This great green bush cricket (Tettigonia viridissima) was no exception. Dweezeljazz almost stepped on it, but she saw it just in time. It then hopped into the grass at the side of the road, making it much more photogenic. The Rhopalus subrufus on the right was on a wall in Divonne. Not exactly its native habitat, but well-placed for the shadow to show details you can’t see on the actual insect, so I’m quite happy with this shot.

It’s not just insects out and about in the Autumn sunshine. I was rather lucky to get a shot of the lizard before he dived under cover. The frog did dive for cover, but then drifted out to take a look, and stayed still for the photos. Very kind of him!

There’s still plenty of action on the plant front too. There are many flowers to be seen, even if they are mostly small and unspectacular by comparison with the competition in summer. These blue flowers are some of the largest still around. But even without flowers, there are some very pretty plants, like the Verbascum rosette. Elsewhere in our contryside, there are verbascum plants in their second year which still have some flowers left on them, bright against the brown of dying vegetation. Meanwhile, these first-year rosettes look very pretty in their own right.

Then there’s this old apple tree, which has sufferred badly in the late summer storms. Despite this, it’s still doing a good job of maturing its fruit, you can see there’s no shortage of them still on the tree. It’s clearly not giving up without a fight.

In my last post, I showed a picture of a goldfinch feeding on one of our sunflowers. That was the only photo I had at the time, and I was hoping to get something better than that. I didn’t have long to wait, these pictures were taken just a day or two later!

According to the RSPB, goldfinches can be seen all year round. Where I live, they seem to find somewhere else to go in summer, we haven’t seen them since Spring. Before that, we would regularly see a group of a dozen or so birds feeding on the teasels not far from our window.

We shall be putting out seed for them through the winter. Any bird, especially one that colourful, is welcome in our garden.

My little organic terrace-garden has been rather successful this year, and the produce has been very welcome at our table. We’re not the only ones to appreciate it, naturally, there are plenty of critters who have helped themselves throughout the summer. That’s OK with me, I’m happy to share to some extent, providing they don’t eat everything.

One common form of damage has been beetroot leaves eaten out from the inside by leaf-miners. There was a lot of this in early summer in particular, and I had little choice but to remove the affected parts of the leaves and throw them away. Otherwise I would have had very few leaves left on some of my plants! Apparently, some plants have evolved patterns of markings that look similar to the damage caused by leaf-miners, which protects them because the leaf-miners prefer unoccupied leaves in which to lay their eggs. Maybe I’ll ask Dweezeljazz to go out and paint the leaves for me next year, that sounds like a job for an artist!

There have been any number of butterflies hovering around the garden, even well before there were any flowers in evidence. They must have had something else in mind and yes, sure enough, I have found lots of eggs hidden on the leaves. Some were quite hard to spot, among the beetroot in particular. Some were easier, like the yellow eggs on the nasturtium leaves.

Butterfly eggs, of course, hatch into caterpillars, and I have found quite a number through the summer. On the left is a ‘Small White’ (Pieris rapae), this one was just running around the rim of the pot like he was desperate to find the end of it. I don’t know what the one on the right is called. Below them is, I think, the caterpillar of a Garden Tiger moth (Arctia caja). Apparently, Tiger Moth numbers have been decimated in the last 30 years, due largely to excessive use of pesticides. Like many other small creatures, they are now in need of protection in the UK. This one was running across our living room floor at high speed, heading for the stairs, looking for a place to pupate. He was safely redirected to the great outdoors!

There have been a number of other insects, such as this bright green beetle (probably a Chrysolina species), and the two crickets below.

The one on the right is Roesel’s bush cricket, (Metrioptera roeselii), and this poor specimen has lost one of his hind legs. Despite this, he was quite agile, climbing easily, and was able to manage a decent hop when I picked him up and released him in the nearby bushes.

It’s not just insects that visit our garden. After being absent this summer, the goldfinches are back, this one investigating the sunflower heads for seeds. Well, that’s why I planted them! I know it’s not a good photograph, but it’s the only one of a goldfinch that I have at the moment, so it will have to do. Hopefully I’ll get better photos later.

Although not closely related to the American goldfinch, it does share its taste for sunflower seeds!

Finally, late one night a few weeks ago, we found this hedgehog doing the rounds on our terrace. I don’t think he found anything edible, but he’s welcome to come back anytime. Again, not a perfect photo, but we don’t like to use flash on animals, especially nocturnal ones. He wasn’t hanging around for us to get many shots, this is the only one we got of him too!

I haven’t any photos of all the bees, butterflies and wasps that have visited my garden too. Maybe next year. It’s amazing how much variety you can get visiting just a few pots of plants.

I have written about my vegetable garden before, but I have another garden, a secret garden. It’s not secret because it’s hidden, on the contrary, it’s in full sight of everyone. No, it’s secret because I do nothing to make it grow, nothing to make it flower. My secret garden is the wild flowers around me, which I find as beautiful as any domestic garden I have seen.

There are lots of different sorts of flowers in my garden. Even the dandelions of spring are a part of it, fields of yellow that are just lovely to see, and which provide the emerging bees with some of their early-season food. For the most part, I don’t know the names of these plants. If anyone does, please, let me know!

There are lots of these daisy-like flowers, simple yellow-and-white things. I have no idea what the blue flowers below them are called, but the bees love them. So do I, the way the pink buds open to reveal blue flowers is quite something. They’re not quite as common as some of the other plants, and the flowers are a little more hidden below the upper leaves, so they’re a bit harder to find. But they’re worth it.

Then there’s one that I can name, Verbascum Thapsus, above. I learned their name quite by chance when my good friend Shannon mentioned them in her “Wildlife in Summer” blog-post recently. She has a photo of some of them flowering on a rooftop, having somehow found room to put out roots. According to Wikipedia, Verbascum Thapsus is a biennial, so those plants had been there for a while! They flower tall and bright, and they flower for a long time. I bet that if they were annuals instead of biennials, they would be popular with gardeners.

Thistles are commonly regarded as weeds, but the flowers are really quite pretty. The thistle has been the emblem of Scotland for over 700 years, and the story of how that happened is rather amusing.

I found this ‘Checkered beetle’ (Trichodes Nuttalli) on a thistle very close to my home. I’d never seen a beetle quite like this before, he’s really very colourful. Thanks to “The Marvellous in Nature” for a post just a week or two ago which identifies this critter!

This next lot, I have no idea what any of them are called. The spiky plant above is really quite impressive up-close, and I’ve seen that in winter the birds come time and again to pick seeds from it, so it’s worth encouraging. The pink flower to its right grows on small shrubs that flower profusely, one or two of them would fill a niche in a garden very easily. The yellow flower to the right is much smaller, but close up it’s really very delicate.

Then there are some more familiar plants, like the poppies that come up everywhere in spring and the pale blue cornflowers that follow them in summer. The flowers change with the seasons, but there are always so many to see, all through the spring and summer. I’ve only mentioned a few in this post, maybe I’ll show you some more of my secret garden later on. Stay tuned!