Biodiversity and gardening

I came across an article on the topic in The Daily Telegraph, which I recommend reading. At the bottom of the piece are these recommendations:

• When you buy plants, try to ascertain which family they belong to. It will help you understand what they might be good for in terms of nectar, food plant and so on.

• Leave at least some of the garden to grow wild. Let it do what it wants to do and follow the course of the seasons naturally. This will have a very beneficial effect on diversity in the garden.

• Try to grow at least some native plants apart from grass. Notice what wild flowers and bulbs are native to your area and bring them in. They feed the indigenous population of birds, insects, fungi and bacteria.

• Always include leguminous plants in the veg garden to grab the free nitrogen that they produce.

• Make as much compost as you can in order to recycle nutrients around the garden. It uses up waste, be it kitchen or garden, to best effect.

The Telegraph is the paper my family read growing up. It's a conservative paper, but it does seem to take seriously the connection between "conservative" and "conservation." And it's the only paper I know that has a whole section dedicated to "beekeeping."

Challenging the future

Last Saturday, I was one of several volunteer judges for the high school environmental debates, part of Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden's annual Challenge. Pictured are the debate participants.

The Fairchild Challenge encourages middle and high schoolers to become environmentally aware through assorted programs and competitions. Now in its seventh year (and my third time judging the student congress debates), the program is being copied by other organizations around the U.S., and as far away as Singapore, South Africa, Brazil and Ireland.

It really is inspirational to be part of such an endeavor and I encourage anyone affiliated to a botanical garden or a museum to learn more.

Avocados

We've had two consecutive years of a bumper avocado crop. Unfortunately, they're not my favorite fruit, but these are a good variety and they'll spread like butter across a sandwich. I've been giving them away to anyone who wants some, but they're still way too many and the squirrels are having a fine old feast.

Last year, I gave some to Sparky. He wolfed them down and got diarrhea in the house, so he's not having any more. Some people I used to know moved, with their skinny black lab, to a house with several avocado trees. The next time I saw the dog, he was easily double the size. I think the owners finally resorted to putting a muzzle on him during avo season.

But why do trees make so much fruit when it only takes one successful germination to replace the parent? I found an answer in a 1990 movie called Mindwalk, starring Sam Waterston, John Heard and Liv Ullmann. It's kind of a forerunner to What the #*!$ Do We Know, with just as flimsy a "plot."

Waterston plays a failed presidential candidate who meets up with his poet pal, Heard, at Mont St Michel, off the Brittany coast. The film is all about the conversation they start with Ullmann's character, a Norwegian quantum physicist. It's she who puts forward the hypothesis that the tree -- my avocado -- is part of a much greater system and as such, the abundance of fruit nourishes the system, which in turn protects a new seedling, later to become the replacement tree.

James Lovelock wrapped this up in his Gaia Hypothesis, which has always appealed to me.

The Ramble

Fairchild held its annual Ramble, the weekend before last. I went twice since this year it started on Friday, running through Sunday. The first thing that caught my eye was the Rolls Royce I parked next to.

One improvement over the years is the inclusion of "green" groups, such as Urban Paradise and Urban Oasis, so everyone can learn more about sustainable living. 

Even if you're not into growing things or the environment, there's always great art and food and activities for the kids, not to mention the antiques in the main auditorium.

I spent way too much of my unemployment benefits on a couple of "must-have" unusual plants, including Flame of Jamaica (Euphorbia punicea), a shrub that will put out striking scarlet bracts.

Raccoons: Cute and dangerous

Leaving Bill Baggs Park on Key Biscayne, we came across this scene at one of the many barbecue/picnic sites. The lid was off the garbage can and this raccoon had hit pay dirt. It was only a few feet from us and not in the slightest bit inclined to leave its feast behind, despite our proximity. After a couple of minutes, it ambled back into the undergrowth.

Cute as it was, it's a sad state of affairs for several reasons: The ugly impact humans have on the environment, the loss of fear by wild animals, the danger raccoons pose to the human population. Raccoons are significant carriers of rabies, but unlike dogs and cats, they don't exhibit symptoms to alert us.