“The Kingdom of Flowering Plants holds a special compassion for human travail. Because of this, the essences of flowers support us with a special compassion through our earthbound transformation. Flower essences contain the vibratory qualities of the flowers, and are made by infusing the flower into spring water under sun or moon light.”
– Flowers of the Soul.
http://selinarainbowmoon.deviantart.com/art/Osteospernum-326945316
Although the practice of coppicing has been around for thousands of years, it’s likely that you may not have even heard about coppicing until recently. Coppicing is a way of managing a woodland that benefits wildlife whilst creating a sustainable source of timber with numerous applications.
When a broadleaved tree has its stem and crown removed certain hormone levels within the stump of the tree (the stool) undergo a rapid change. This causes new shoots to sprout from the side of the stool; which is known as the re-growth. Re-growth can be rapid, often as much as 2 meters a year, this is because the tree has a fully developed root system. The practice of coppicing can be carried out on the same tree for at least several hundred years and has been shown to actually prolong the life of a tree. In fact, often the oldest trees in our…
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This week’s summary on the news stories, reports and blogs that have grabbed our attention. We welcome your thoughts and comments on these articles.
African farming: Cassava now the centre of attention, Financial Times
Why GMOs matter — especially for the developing world, Grist
Abundance Doesn’t Mean Health, New York Times
Monsanto Is Going Organic in a Quest for the Perfect Veggie, Wired
Global Food Businesses Support Climate Smart Agriculture through New Web App, Cool Farm Tool
Lant Pritchett on why we struggle to think in systems (and look for heroes and villains instead), Duncan Green
African Orphan Crops Consortium announces 100 crops for sequencing, UC Davis
Plant Genetic Resources and Climate Change, CABI
India needs to export excess foodgrains, Money Life
‘Now I am in the garden at the back…- a very preserve of butterflies, as I remember it, with a high fence and a gate and padlock; where the fruit clusters on the trees, riper and richer than fruit has ever been since, in any other garden, and where my mother gathers some in a basket, while I stand by, bolting furtive gooseberries, and trying to look unmoved.’
There were many beautiful illustrations in the old zoological textbook I wrote about in my last post. Today I’ve picked some illustrious examples of what is known as masquerade or mimesis. Basically, prey animals during evolution developed mechanisms, to camouflage and have higher surveillance rates. Mimetic animals look like something else, not interesting to the predator, like bark, twig, leaf or even lichen. You have the examples on the pictures above, they are actuary full of mother nature’s wit. But could it be presumed, that mimesis is a form of aggressive influential behaviour? Meaning ,that flora in general, is in a way pushing other species to try to survive by being more flora like. Which in turn ends in better surveillance rates of real flora, as the, so to say, fake mimetic subjects de facto are ”incompetent plants”? Would like to hear your opinion about this science-fiction idea!
In play, ‘loose parts’ are skirting the edges of nirvana. Ask any kid. Now they probably won’t call them ‘loose parts’. They’re more likely to use the generic and all encompassing ‘stuff’ prefaced by cool, awesome, or great. It might even go the way of ‘this stuff is epic’.
Students at Emmaus Primary Catholic School – Melbourne, Australia. Photo: Jay Town. Source: HeraldSun
Wood, rope, tarps, tires, milk crates, cardboard boxes, fabrics and apparently hay bales too can make up a loose parts inventory. It’s what the kids do with it that’s a real blast. They create, they build up and pull down, they improvise, they move, groove and PLAY!
Now, thanks to Australian researcher Brendon P. Hyndman we have empirical evidence that loose parts in primary schools go way beyond a good thing. From the perspective of increasing physical activity, engaging a broad cross-section of kids and being light…
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‘A friend has some magnificent border plants which he knows only by the name Foxtail Lilies. What are they, and are they easy to grow?’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXuHRkGRFeM
There’s something counter-intuitive about exposing ‘delicate’ children to the elements, come rain, come shine: (1)
Sometimes, when we got there in the morning the snow would have blown in on to the tables and chairs and we would have to clear it off before we could start.
But by all accounts, it did Norman Collier, a pupil at the Aspen House Open Air School in Streatham in the 1930s, ‘the world of good’.
The school was opened by the London County Council in 1925 for pupils described at the time as ‘pre-tuberculous’ – children who were anaemic, asthmatic or malnourished. It was the fifth of the LCC’s open-air schools. The first had been opened in Bostall Wood in Woolwich on land donated by the Royal Arsenal Cooperative Society in 1907. But it was the first built to the council’s ‘improved design’ which would go on to be used in fourteen…
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Nigel Boldero aka 'Old School Gardener'
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