Girls are primed to fear spiders - life - 27 August 2009 - New Scientist

Girls are primed to fear spiders - life - 27 August 2009 - New Scientist

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Little Cuss 2

I am beginning to feel really sorry for the Other Birds. Hope his breeding season will soon be over. No, August to November, good grief!!! He is as relentless and persistent as a chivvying landlady. Finish up your breakfast Mr. Smith! You know Mr. Jones always comes down for quarter past. Don’t use ALL the hot water; you do know I have other guests waiting …

This is a Laughing Dove, 25 cm. Little Cuss – pin tailed whydah – is about twice the size of the dove’s head, if you ignore all his hoo-ha of tail. The doves get really pissed off and raise their wings in threat! And Lil Cuss soars up and comes screaming down like a German fighter pilot, misses the enemy by a whisker, well feather, they are birds after all. And again … And again … And again … And again … until even a much bigger bird like this one, retreats.

It is all sound and fury, but unceasing sound, and remorseless fury. How does he do it? Red Bull gives you wings! What is his secret? He does have to keep refuelling, each time he clears the buffet of trespassers.

Hadn’t seen the Cape wagtails for weeks. A pair used to come each evening. Have a long, leisurely bath, dry off in the evening sun, and work their way steadily all around the pond, collecting insects. Lil Cuss has decided they can have a very quick bath, since they aren’t interested in his seeds. I said, a QUICK bath! And then, they too must fly away.

And the weavers, and sparrows, and Red Bishops wait patiently in the wings, so they can nip in for a quick snack, when he is pursuing invaders over the border. He often sits in the pecan tree, which is even higher, from which he can defend not just our garden, but the whole neighbourhood! This is a masked weaver, stunned after crashing into the window. He did recover.

(First instalment was on 18th August)

Aragon is 12

We needed to get another cat for Henry. He was a gentle, kind soul and I didn’t want him to be terrorised by the two Persian thugs up the road, who fought with Sparkles, threw him off the roof and broke his hip. Being a cat, with a wonderful vet, Sparkles came through beautifully, but a car got him, later.

All of our cats have been rescued animals, Pickwick and Aragon from the SPCA (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals), Sparkles was fostered, while Henry and Chocolat knocked at the door – I heard you were looking for a cat?? There are so many feral cats and unwanted domestic animals. So sad that as a society we ask, precisely the people who care about animals, enough to work at an animal shelter, to put down healthy animals, because we don’t want them anymore! So, all of our cats have been neutered, end of the line, for these five.

When we brought Aragon home in her SPCA cardboard cat box, she had a helluva lot to say. Henry looked at me with eyes like saucers – did you HEAR that? So we took the box into the garden, and opened it, out hopped Catherine of Aragon, and swore at Henry – get the f%^$%^$%^ out of my garden! Had to explain to her, that this is Henry’s garden, but, if you are nice to him, he may let you share it.

She has a little white patch on her front leg, where God was holding her still while he painted her striped coat. Henry could never understand whiskers. He was always saying to Aragon - hold still, while I chew off that loose thread. She came with a spectacular set of whiskers, like false eye lashes. Two sets, the top ones black, and the lower ones white - but Henry chewed them into a Hitler toothbrush!

Henry served Aragon with love and devotion to the end of his days, when skin cancer devoured him from the white nose. Health warning – white ears and nose don’t mix well with, isn’t the sun luverly!

Aragon used to fish in the pond, then come in, and raise her paw imperiously to Henry – wash me! I smell of POND! And like a travelling hairdresser, he would unpack his little case of brushes and potions. Cleanse, condition, blow dry and finish madam. Half an hour later she would be back, and he would do it all again.

Just after we got her, she snuck up on the Ungardener, who was dozing, uh sorry, watching TV, with his eyes shut. She patted him very gently on his bald pink head, and he shot up like a rocket, while Aragon and I giggled to ourselves. She used to come into the kitchen, and nibble the back of our ankles, when she was hungry, feed me! But she has us trained now, and her meals are served before she has to complain about slow, lousy service. Now she is much more refined, backs up to the cupboard and shimmies her tail hopefully – dinner? And when she wants a cuddle, she raises one of her front paws, and stands on three legs. I can remember a very young Clara imitating her … Most of our cats do the collapsible legs thing, when they want a cuddle, and throw themselves on their side – tickle my tummy?

Since she is a rescue cat, her birthday is, the vet says she is about so old, and we counted back. Yesterday was her birthday, and I had to explain to Chocolat, that we don’t knock little old ladies over, especially on their birthday. But she gets her own back. He was sitting in the garden, lost in thought. She was on the bridge, hidden behind a clump of grass. So she snuck out, dashed past, and HIT him. He went up in the air like a rocket and came crunching down on the gravel. WHAT was that? There’s nobody here, but grammar! I have to muffle my laughter, because cats don’t like to be laughed at, as you know, if they have you under their paw.

Eden Project 3

Mediterranean Biome

This is why I came to Europe. To England. To Cornwall. To see the Mediterranean Biome at the Eden Project! I have waited more than 15 years to see this. Was trailed by a chatty woman, who helpfully told me “The South African plants are over here”. Luckily the Ungardener diverted her, before I hit her. I wanted to commune with Nature, just ME and the MED. At Eden you can visit all the world’s Mediterranean climate regions, within one Biome.

Throughout the world, the Mediterranean biome is characterized by evergreen or drought deciduous shrublands. The chaparral of southern California is echoed in the old world Mediterranen maquis, the Chilean matorral, South African fynbos and the Australian mallee scrub communities. Due to the limited extent and isolation (almost island-like), of each area of Mediterranean biome, there is frequently a high degree of endemism in the flora and fauna.

From www.researchlearningcenter.com This is the site of the California Mediterranean Research Learning Center, a wonderful resource, with a map, which reaches out to all five Med areas of the world!

A geographer calls the climate Mediterranean, when the summers are long and hot, and the winters are cold and wet. Found on the Western shores of continents, due to cold offshore ocean currents. Anyone who has tried to swim off Camps Bay knows all about the cold Benguela Current. (If I want blue balls …) Annuals and bulbs must aestivate (ice cubes swirling). Other plants must find other ways to survive, defying drought and infertile sandy soil. So we find grey (lavender) or waxy (succulent) leaves, often with fragrant oils (thyme, mint, buchu) or TEETH to deter someone in search of Lunch! And wildfire is always a waiting threat, as Greece has just experienced. Because the First World always comes first, the climate is called Mediterranean. Although since plant geographers allocate South Africa’s fynbos one of the world’s six plant kingdoms (see 14^th August), perhaps we could say the Mediterranean Basin experiences a South African fynbos climate!

Oranges, peaches, grapes and wine, olives and their oil, figs, culinary herbs, perfume oils, cork oaks, gluten-free millet, sesame seeds, (sustainable?) cut flowers – Imagine your food without the Med contribution, you wouldn’t be hungry, but … Did you know that lemon verbena comes from the Med area of Chile and Argentina? A little bit of South America in my garden.

Names are evocative. And scent. As a child I remember driving to Riversdale, and that wonderful smell of Knoffelbuchu as we approached the town. Knoffel means garlic, and if you brush up against it, you will smell of garlic for the rest of the day! In California – chaparral is vegetation resulting from generations of controlled burning by Native Americans. The Maquis, the French Resistance in the Second World War, were named for the vegetation in which they hid. In Europe traditional mountain terraces are being abandoned, as young people leave for the bright lights of the city, and reject the hardships of their farming grandparents.

The Cape Floral Kingdom of South Africa – known as fynbos, with its proteas, ericas, restios (reeds often seen in the current fashion for Grass, as opposed to lawn), and bulbs. And Namaqualand, which is justly famous for its spectacular display of spring flowers, coming after the winter rain. The Clanwilliam Spring Flower Show will be from 28^th August to 2^nd September.

‘The whole Mediterranean – the sculptures, the palms, the gold beads, the bearded heroes, the wine, the ideas, the ships, the moonlight, the winged gorgons, the bronze men, the philosophers – all of it seems to rise in the sour, pungent taste of these black olives between the teeth. A taste older than meat, older than wine. A taste as old as cold water.’

Prospero’s Cell. Lawrence Durrell. 1945 - as quoted at Eden

They say future wars will be fought over water, and this is already true. Because the climate is inviting, more housing is built. Good for Third Age retirement. Farming is squeezed out. Wildlife and endangered natural vegetation is swept aside. And all those new residents expect to continue to waste water. We may have come to live in a hot, dry climate – but we still expect miles of NASTY green lawn, and spawning golf courses! One of our golf courses was approved because they would use recycled grey water to irrigate the fairways. Having built the attached golf estate, they asked to extract water from the river instead! Some of our towns, like Knysna (surrounded by golf courses and polo estates), have, literally, run out of water. The dam is empty. The taps have run dry. And tankers had to bring water in, until it rained again. (22^nd June)

This Pink Ice protea is in my fledgling fynbos border. A bit sulky, keep losing plants either to – its HOT in Porterville, or – my roots have DROWNED in the clay soil!

When you visit Eden, remember Heligan is nearby (8^th August)

For Eden 1 and 2 (12^th and 19^th August)

Background info from the 2009/2010 Guide to the Eden Project.

www.edenproject.com

There IS a garden here!

Roses in Paradise

Yesterday was our first spring day. We could sprawl in the afternoon shade and enjoy blissful balmy weather. It is only days ago, that these metal chairs struck chill into the bones, and we had to retreat inside away from a nasty, chilly breeze.

The WILDLIFE gardening keeps coming, but there is also a garden here. Just finished pruning 26 roses in the Paradise Garden. Only the second time I have pruned them. Still learning here. But the man is right. The man is Ludwig of Ludwig’s Roses www.ludwigsroses.co.za Take your courage firmly in your secateurs, and approach a rose which towers over your head, like Tropical Sunset. Cut it down to hip height. Hurts, right? But it is almost frightening to see, he is right, within weeks, there are flowers above your head again!

I have four colour schemes: pale, dark, gold, and pink in-Persian-garden

When we started the rose garden, there was nothing, except one VERY pissed off gardener hacking out lumps of concrete, and thinking fondly of @##@$@#$ builders and their workers, and how they treat plants and topsoil. Right. So I took my trusty little hand rake, solid aluminium, and worked my way, in stripes across each of the four quarters. If I hit a lump and it sings, it is concrete, into the bucket it goes, onto the heap of shame and revenge. If all resistance crumbles when I hit the lump, it is clay, and it stays, because roses like clay, it is fertile, (and soggy see 22^nd August)

In September 2007 we planted the rose garden. The Ungardener did the roses, and trees, and shrubs. I did all the herbaceous perennial fillers, and groundcover cuttings, and where the Ungardener said “There’s a hole there!”

Roses are at their best in October, so here is our rose garden in its very first “full” flush last year. Now two of my four trees have read their instruction book. “When I grow up I’ll be a parasol” and throw dappled shade, so the roses don’t cook in hours. The shrubby things and fillers have filled out with a vengeance, and some have had to be moved on. I had no idea you would get that big! The groundcovers billow over the path and get cut back and spread around. The colours I see in my mind are slowly appearing in the garden, but can always be tweaked and adjusted. A garden is never perfect. Never complete. Never “finished”.

We already have nice fat buds on Peace, so I am looking forward to the effect this October! Prunus nigra has buds coming too. Last year they were open for the 1^st of September. Spring!

Pretty flower, no? NOT!!!

Month’s Flower

It starts as a baby, a flat rosette of leaves. Then as a toddler it sends up a brave spike with a spire of flowers, opening one by one. My favourite flower colour, that changeant effect shimmering between blue and pink. Think Morning Glory or our Lobostemon (in a future post …). Recognise the borage colour scheme? With macro photography it is a glorious flower. Then... It becomes a teenage thug, growing into a shrubby hip or even shoulder height MONSTER. It will smother everything in its path. At this time of year, when your eye is attuned to THAT colour, you can see fallow fields that are an unbroken blue/pink SEA. It produces a truly terrifying amount of seed, and makes triffids into common or garden pussycats.

When you panic, and seek and destroy the plants, as soon as you see the pretty flowers – you discover that it fights nasty! See the tiny little hairs, waiting, to attack! Your arms will be crisscrossed with oozing bloody cuts, which take many days to heal.

This is war. If you have this plant in your garden – fight!

Paterson’s Curse is its name. Echium plantagineum in the borage family. Purple Viper's Bugloss. It comes from the Mediterranean, and so is very happy in our climate, feels at home! Having waited through the summer (aestivation, ice cubes on the veranda), when the winter rain comes, they germinate. Up to 30,000 seeds per square metre, we can wait, for TEN YEARS! No, I didn’t count them myself – facts from www.ento.csiro.au/weeds/patcurse

Who is Pat(t)erson? 2 choices.

1. Eliza Grace Patterson was born in Ireland. Married into Australia, and is immortalised for bringing “Paterson’s Curse” to beautify her garden. Since the 1880s it has infested Australian pastures.
2. William Patterson was a Swedish engineer who worked on the Snowy Mountains Project. He warned graziers who used it as fodder. (According to that CSIRO site, it is nutritious, but poisonous. Can lead to death. Well, that is what it says! ???)

From Wikipedia

And the moral of this story is – Remember Eliza Grace, before you bring exotic plants into your garden.

Don’t bring in invasive aliens.

MEME Award

First I say Thank You to “Kaija in Northern Europe, Southern Finland” of http://crowcottage.blogspot.com/ for Memeing me (how do you write that Esther?)

Three choices, where does it come from? What is it?

1. Slatin Award for Mastery of Electronic Media in Education.MEME award was established in 2003 to encourage the effective integration of pedagogy and technology. In 2008 it was renamed after John Slatin, the first director of the Computer Writing and Research Lab at theUniversity of Texas in Austin (Hi Sheryl!)

2.The term Internet meme (pronounced /mi:m/, meem) is a phrase used to describe a catchphrase or concept that spreads quickly from person to person via the Internet, much like an esoteric inside joke. WIKIPEDIA

3. The word was first introduced by British scientist Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976) to discuss evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. He gave as examples - catch-phrases, beliefs, fashion. WIKIPEDIA

First my seven “Rainbow Awards”. I had already chosen them out of enthusiasm for “my blogs”. For my rules to qualify for each award - see my post on 15th August. So here they are again.

“Blotanical Was Here Award” red Gerbera to Victoria because she drew me into Blotanical. www.victoriasbackyard.blogspot.com

“Grow Your Own Award” slice of orange to Heather at Idaho Small Goat Farm for “First Hens to Slaughter”.

http://smallgoatgarden.blogspot.com/

Yellow xeroscape “Beat the Heat Award” sun, with a blue drop of rain, to encourage

Sheryl at Texas Wildscape.

“Blue Bird of Happiness Award” to Texas Wildscape, as the wildlife is also waiting for rain.

www.sherylsmithrodgers.blogspot.com

Green “Bugs Welcome Award” bug (with 6 legs) to Pencil and

Leaf for drawings of blue bee/wasp. http://pencilandleaf.blogspot.com/

”Indigo Iris Wow Award” to Tatyana for Driftwood photos.

http://tanyasgarden.blogspot.com/

”Violet Snowflake Brrrr! Award”, for Northern gardens, when I

seek escape from the heat. Still considering that one…, I only started blogging this June, Northern summer.

Finally the “WordSmith Award” to Esther. http://esthersboringgardenblog.blogspot.com/

Meme rules are that you must each pass the award on to 7 others. If you have been memed already, like Tatyana, pass your award on to one whose blog shares your sort of excellence.

And the other Meme rule is that you must reveal 7 things about yourself …

1. My husband, the Ungardener grew up in Schonenwerd, which is near Zurich. That is my excuse for this photo.

His photo.

2. Borrowed scenery. I grew up in Camps Bay, with Lion’s Head, the West end of Table Mountain and the Twelve Apostles, with the Atlantic Ocean stretching all the way to South America or Antarctica, depending which way you face.

3. I was totally disappointed when I first saw Schonenwerd. One sees posters of snowy Alps, But, most of Switzerland is rolling hills, the Jura (shades of Jurassic Park), like Belgium and Alsace Lorraine in France.

4. I am a librarian. (Unemployed now). But that is why I like to find things out. And acknowledge intellectual property, respect copyright.

5. A vegetarian – so the only people in this house who eat dead animals are Chocolat and Aragon. Doesn’t sit well with my green principles, but I do love my cats …

6. I have no children, by choice, too great a burden on the world’s resources. But I believe that childless people like me, owe a debt to parents. I do take for granted, that someone else will raise children. And I believe passionately with every fibre of my being that it is vitally important to teach children about gardens and nature, and Nature in Gardens.

7. Finally, I rest my case in pieces. Someone called me uncompromising. Went indignantly to my sister. She laughed like a drain. Of course you are uncompromising! (You have been warned …)

Read your Blog?

We R all busy – Running a business, Raising children, caRing for a family, and/or eaRning a living, oh and gaRdening of course. Time is short. If your blog takes ages to load I am going to move on to the next one, and so will others.

Sometimes I go to a site, and I wait, and wait, and I get a bit of pretty wallpaper. Yawn. Then I wait for messages to scroll across, waiting for …, and … Yawn! Do tell, if you have a blogroll of 50 or 100, how can you ever visit half of them, you know and I know, that you don’t read them.

Have you checked through your list recently? Some of your favourites have gone to blog heaven, bored of that. Some have been reincarnated – find me at …, which may no longer interest you. Maybe the link is a dead end for your readers (and that proves, you don’t follow them, at all).

My slow Internet connection speed also means that your pictures sometimes load

Painfully

Slowly

Line

By

Line.

That is the small reason why my photos don’t have the quality of Tatyana’s. I squash over 1 MB originals down to 3 or 4 occasionally 5 hundred KB. Yes they are no longer Wow, but my site loads quickly, and since you are not using them for wallpaper, the quality is fine. For instance, this is 300 KB from 1.3 MB. OK?

Plus it soothes my green conscience, the less junk I leave in storage, the less energy the servers have to waste on cryogenics. How many dead blogs, will live forever, long, long after their authors have forgotten them??

Since I am at Blotanical, the quickest and easiest way to read YOUR blog, is to go to “My Faved Blog Posts”. There Stuart has customised my favourite pair of gardening shoes! (Remember, first try on “My Faved Blogs”). I can revel in YOUR interesting words and YOUR entertaining pictures, without the bells and whistles I don’t have computer time for.

Eden Project 2

Rainforest Biome

Remember, that this geodesic biome is tall enough to take the Tower of London. The waterfalls cascade down over an impressive drop. You climb so high up in humid heat, despite the worst that a Cornish summer can throw at you, that there is a cool room half way up (in West Africa)- don’t stay too long, others may be more desperate than you! It was blissful to come in from the rain and defrost, while drying our sodden clothes – but the outside was too interesting to miss. Weather or NOT!

You are now in the humid tropics. Here you will recognise many of your coddled house plants, at home in warmth, humidity and steady rain (but with automated misters, and ground level irrigation, so you don’t actually have to WALK through the teeming rain ). The rain forests control our climate – and we are clearing them as fast as we can. Visit mangrove swamps, which would protect the coast against tsunamis, if they were in turn conserved. You can walk through an actual Malaysian garden, smell and touch the plants you love to read about in My Little Vegetable Garden. In “West Africa” there are totem poles carved from timber used in Falmouth docks, trees which once grew in West Africa…

We need so much that comes to us from the Tropics – spices, rubber (car tyres), soya (to feed cattle and make hamburgers, or bio-diesel), cocoa (Fairtrade chocolate please!), palms (palm oil, Palmolive soap?), coffee, sugar (35 kg a year, not me!), mangoes (read a wonderful novel once about blue mangoes), bananas (my mother remembers lady fingers, which we don’t see any more, because the big plantations are all standardised), bamboo (scaffolding), pineapples, cashew nuts.

6 million hectares of primary rain forest –

are lost or modified each year –

every 10 seconds, the area of this Rainforest Biome you are walking through.

Figures don’t mean much to me, but walking around and bumping into these banners again and again, until I could recite the words, without needing to read them first – that focused my mind!

There are projects to restore and rehabilitate the rain forest. Richard’s Bay is here in South Africa where Rio Tinto is restoring the dune forests, after mining

http://www.rbm.co.za/DUNEREHABILITATION31.aspx

Finally think about tropical islands, like the Seychelles, with the Coco-de-Mer. Imagine, with global warming, as the ice melts, and the sea rises, and your home disappears under the sea. For now, perhaps there are just a few coastal parts of England, where the cliff face crumbles, and a house falls into the sea. Imagine if your whole island, slowly, and steadily, disappears beneath the sea.

For more information go to www.edenproject.com

First instalment with background and the Outdoor Biome was on 12^th August, if you missed it.

Argumentative Little Cuss!

Pintailed whydah

We have a little bird, 12 cm plus 22 cm tail! When he is not sitting in the karee surveying his territory for Other Birds, he is dive-bombing every bird in sight. First he clears the beach, where Jurg spreads the leftover bird seed. He has a harem, two wives so far, who enjoy dining in solitaryx2 splendour in a restaurant cleared of the rabble for their benefit. The ladies are LBJs (little brown jobs). The resigned Other Bird, having given up on dinner, goes to perch in the tree. Along charges Mr Whydah, his long tail flourished like a little drum major twirling his baton, or a cheerleader with her pompoms. His wings in a blur going 19 to the dozen. And from his flaming red beak flows an unbroken stream of blue four letter words. Then the poor Other Bird hops to the next branch, and Little Cuss zooms right after him, bobbing up and down with rage, the imprecations never stopping. And so we are surrounded by a ring of disgruntled birds glaring across from the neighbours trees.

We feed the birds in a “bird cage” to give them a fighting chance to eat in peace from our cats. Little Cuss can’t get IN there, his tail gets in the way. This one is a sunbird - similar in behaviour to North America's humming-birds.

To really add the crowning insult to injury, having told the other birds, you can’t eat here, you can’t sit here, you can’t BE here! He makes like the cuckoo, whydahs kick out an egg, and leave the long suffering Other Birds to raise their chicks for them.

Facts from Birds of the South Western Cape by Joy Frandsen, 1982

What is a whydah? Named for Ouidah, a town in Benin, West Africa. An African weaver bird, whose males have black plumage and very long tail feathers. Oxford English Dictionary

In our Camps Bay garden we had wild protea bushes and sugarbirds feasting on their nectar. Male sugarbirds have exceptionally long tails, which are a tremendous burden when flying against the prevailing South Easter. Nature has decreed that both of our gardens need a bird with a very long tail. I remember friends visiting, deep in conversation, broken by – wow, did you see that BIRD?!

(Sorry for the quality of the picture. We will be getting a zoom lens for Jurg. Our Canon PowerShot A430 was chosen for its macro lens, so I can take photos of flowers. And the super macro so Jurg can take photos of bugs. But this picture – you want to see the red beak – you mean there is a bird over there somewhere? Grrrr!)

This is post number 50.