Summer arrived in May

Yeh, summer arrived in May this year. Every single tree is out strutting its foliage. We are in the midst of a glut of green. It is gorgeous. And I've been out paddling, and kayak camping, even swimming in the North Atlantic... in June!

Will post some photos of trips soon. If I'm not out on the water. Alison

Music in all its forms

Concert
When: Today
Where: Outside
What: New Philip Glass composition performed by a northwest breeze and a million ice-encrusted branches
Audience: A skeleton flock of herring gulls chipped off a grey sky
Blue-sky performance piece encore: A pack of silver foxes storms the hills; the City retreats.

Snowstorm and sedentary kayaks

Second day of spring. A snowstorm swirling, a sky full of whirling dervishes, an ecstasy of snow. My white kayak would probably join in but for the tie-downs keeping it horizontal on my roofrack. Beginning to forget the feel of pulling through saltwater. These days, kayaking is roll practise in chlorine.

The Abstraction of Nature

"In some sense, the physical world is no longer as real to us as the economic world - we cosset and succor the economy; our politicians gear every decision to speeding its further growth. So if someone says, 'Ending our reliance on fossil fuels will harm the economy,' that settles the issue. By contrast, if someone says, 'Relying on fossil fuels is wrecking the planet,' it seems an almost irrelevant objection - the Earth has become abstract, and the economy concrete, to us."

Bill McKibben, The End of Nature

I came across these words jotted down in an old journal of mine. And with them my thoughts: It's as though we treat Earth as our mother. And like a mother, we expect unconditional love, and unconditional forgiveness. Everything will be rectified, if we screw up, by mother earth.

Coming to a backyard near you...HENZILLA

Vancouver city council votes to allow residents to keep chickens in backyards (Chicken-Bylaw)The Canadian Press Mar 05 23:58 EST

VANCOUVER _ The B.C. SPCA is crying ``fowl'' after Vancouver city council voted in favour of a bylaw that makes it legal to keep chickens in backyards.

SPCA spokesman Shawn Eccles says he's concerned that people who never would have considered having a chicken of their own will now give it a try because of the attention the bylaw has received.

Eccles says those individuals might not have the knowledge or experience to deal with chickens, meaning it's the animals who will suffer in the end.

He says there's much more to taking care of chickens than most people realize, including the fact that the birds can attract rodents.

Vancouver will not be the first Lower Mainland municipality that allows residents to raise chickens outdoors, as Burnaby and New Westminster already do.

Residents in New York, Seattle and Portland are also permitted to keep the birds. (CKNW, CBC, The Canadian Press)

I love it. Chickens can attract rodents. So can cats, dogs and particularly people who barbque & leave stuff out in their yards. But getting closer to our food source? Ooh, scary.

Seed bombing and Canning swaps

Came across two neat ideas that have definitely found their time.

The newest weapon of the guerilla gardener: making a seed bomb for hard to reach places:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/video/2008/apr/25/seedbombing

Want to keep it local but add some diversity? This is one type of party you'll want to go to: the canning swap party.
http://www.foodroutes.org/ffarticle.jsp?id=13

Tasting Grace in Wild Spaces

[Photo: Chance Cove, Trinity Bay. Copyright: Lewis Greenland]

"People need wild places... We need to be able to taste grace and know once again that we desire it. We need to experience a landscape that is timeless, whose agenda moves at the pace of speciation and glaciers. To be surrounded by a singing, mating, howling commotion of other species, all of which love their lives as much as we do ours, and none of which could possibly care less about our economic status or our running day calendar. Wildness puts us in our place. It reminds us that our plans are small and somewhat absurd. It reminds us why, in those cases in which our plans might influence many future generations, we ought to choose carefully."

Barbara Kingsolver