Fairy Grass and Our True Selves.

Springtime of 2010 in the mid west slopes of New South Wales, Australia was bountiful in wildflowers such as chocolate lilies, scrambled eggs, early Nancys and Milkmaids etc. 

Also there was much "Fairy Grass."  I think now after checking it out that it might be Lachnagrostis filiformis.  At one time I thought it was Sporobolus caroli....Here are some photos of this lovely grass, hung with dew, like fairyland. 


(NB  2/1/2015  This grass was last year identified to me as an exotic!  Hair Grass or Air grass.  am a bit disappointed.  It is still pretty.  Nice last year.)

Spring of 2011 has been rather dry and there is hardly any fairy grass,  just a few plants.  Yellow billybuttons, Craspedia,  are showing up on the hillside, but no chocolate lilies this year.

 Native bluebells, Wahlenbergia, grow in my garden.  I find them easy to propogate by strewing their fine seed on top of soil in big garden pots.  The roots can fill up the pot fully so one needs to plant them out in the ground where they make a welcome sight and flower each year;  very hardy even in drought.  The roots are curious in that they grow down 6 inches (15cm) then go horizontal for a distance then down again.  Shoots come up along the horizontal root and I guess it is protection against browsing animals.  The root has a milky white sap;  such plants may be aborininal womens' business, from what I read.  I wonder what pharmacological content is in these roots?  Once upon a time Bluebells would have stretched for enormous distances,  as did all the wildflowers.  I can only grieve for a perfectly good and exquisite ecology which has been supplanted by European plants.  Someone once told me that the Australian Nature Spirits were quite happy to meet newcomers! 
One can only guess at what the Greater Scheme in the Cosmos has planned!

Living close to the land, I am fortunate to watch signs of the impact of weather on the dynamics of Nature.  This year might be kinder for vegetables,  not like last year which was boggy and cold.  October saw the usual rapid growth of tall oats and ripgut brome which I have to go out and cut with the scythe in the early mornings hopefully before the brown snakes come out!  I have seen 3 baby snakes and 3 dead snakes run over on the tar road where they like to sun themselves.  A swarm of bees settled in a box of books with tarpaulin over them.  Scott the young local beekeeper transferred them into a proper hive, B450.
PS  2/1/2015  note-  the bees died or went away.  Soon after.  Not sure why.

If you would like a scythe you can go to http://www.scythesaustralia.com.au/.  Some of my favourite tools were made in Japan-  the people are the masters of many arts!  One good tool I made from a miner's pick and the handle of a mattock, with a wedge to hold the pick tighter on the handle.  It gets right under big thistles.  I refuse to use pesticides so need to do all by hand.  Best would be to communicate with plants if only we could.  There would be much less suffering all round!  Someone told us a story about visiting a farm in japan where they were sterilising the soil using nerve gas under black plastic!  Two people, independently, heard the soil screaming.

The dynamics of Nature makes me think of our own dynamics as human beings.
What if someone were to say to you,  "You are a magnificent, metaphysical, multidimensional Being of Love and Light."  How would you feel?   Would you think  "I am so glad there is more to me!",  or  "If I am so magnificent then why do I feel so horrible?"
 People who have read books by MJRoads  will be glad he has a new book out,  "A Glimpse of Something Greater",  to follow his "Through the Eyes of Love" double book- Travels With Pan.
 You can find more on http://www.michaelroads.com/.
What does it mean to be multidimensional?  I guess we might find out as time goes on in this new age after the end of the Mayan Calendar.

Once when I was young and doing rebirthing in the 1980s I was fascinated to discover dowsing with the pendulum, and the mystical realms of life.  I had a bit of fun dowsing which nature spirit might be associated with some people.  Do you know a girl who might look akin to a fairy queen or a boy to an elf, etc?  It might be all imagination-  but who really knows what is true?  We might find out one day...

Continuing the Saga of the Winter Mice.

My Biomathcraft blog has the first story and video, "Of Mice",  25/5/2011.
It will take a bit of work to present more of the story.

I tried to upload a video of mouse snatching food from another mouse!
The clip was so large (not downsized as for email) that after half an hour download was not complete.  Thus I tried to capture still images from the videos, trimmed, that's why they are so fuzzy.
Next stills captured show ears, and whiskers!

Another video (which I might try to upload sometime later) showed a" kind" trap in which I can catch a mouse and let it go outside, far away.
One afternoon I caught 28 mice in 2 hours.  They thought it was great fun, coming back and getting caught 4 or 5 times each!   Finally I just gave up. 
When I went away to Queensland in September I  was worried they might wreck the place.   However all was normal and the mice had all gone.  The only drama was the damage done in the shed to the plastic containers of seeds.   Even then they left me the new seeds I needs for summer!  It is as if they might Know what they are doing....I just cleaned up after them.  

In Victoria's Wimmera district one farmer had to buy $40,000 worth of Zinc phosphide, mouse bait;  so huge is the plague expected to be.  It is a most horrible way to die, if you read up the toxicology.

What If We Can Make a Happy World?

This is a new discussion adjacent to my first blog http://www.biomathcraft.blogspot.com/

All topics here will be to do with the land, meta-ecology (if I am so lucky)
We can use whatever presents itself in the world view, to share with the world at large. 
We are here with opportunity and at best a real purpose to make good changes both small and great.

See http://www.ourfutureplanet.org/  for ideas from like-minded people.

My garden-  in Spring this area is full of fairy grass (Sporobolus caroli),  hung with dewdrops, it is a pretty sight.  I am trying to grow wildflowers, in a harsh climate, inland New South Wales, Australia. 

The concrete echidna almost looks real.  One did march through my property some years ago.  I wish I could see more native animals, but they are rare in these parts, though not gone altogether.

The land is blessed with beautiful birds-  choughs, pink galahs, magpies, currawongs, peewees, honey eaters, topknot pigeons, parrots of all kinds, willy wagtails, occasionally quails, blue wrens, cockatoos, ravens, owls sometimes.

 There are lizards, even a stumpytail shingleback.   A blue-tongue might visit me as did a lace monitor one day.  These lizards must know someone lives here, for they came straight to the front door of my caravan. I see them not often enough.  Snakes do  live here.  I might see two each Summer.  Last Summer was incredibly rainy, after years of real drought, and I saw not one snake.

There are worriesomely few insects,  even bees are not many except for the occasional swarm. One suspects farm chemicals,  especially hormone disrupting chemicals.  We need to discuss how to remedy this worry.

There are mice in my caravan.  It seems there is a family-  an alpha male who from a dream I am naming Galirondo.  There is a pink nose one who I am guessing is a female-  she has looked me in the eye twice.  I caught four in the waste paper basket "trap" yesterday,  and I took them out into the paddock.  Galirondo came back!  It didn't take him long!  I feel mean breaking up his family!  I kind of hope they will come back.
I am just guessing about them.  Actually I don't mind them being inside.  I can study them and practise "loving kindness to all creatures" on them.  I just need to clean up a lot!

 but....There is a worry about disease-  Leptospirosis, Hantavirus!......  from the urine.....

There is a plague of mice.  A taxidriver's friend saw 100 mice running across the road.  In Springtime they will breed and the prospect is frightening!  The last plague was in 2002, in Sydney too.  
One wonders- what is the meaning of "plagues" in the greater scheme of things in Nature? 

In the 1970s I had a book "The Gift of the Deer" by Helen Hoover.  It is a heritage book now, still available on Amazon.  I lost my copy because being homeless (only renting, often having to move when the house is sold)- I often had to get rid of all my books to lighten the load.....  Helen was a metallurgist from Chicago, but she and her husband left the city to live in the forest at the edge of the Great Lakes.  She observed the deer which came to visit, and she wrote books.  They had a summer house with a piano,  but for freezing cold winter they had a small cabin.  She was studying the mice until one day when they were away someone came in to the cabin and "thoughtfully"  put out poison bait.  End of mouse study.

Helen wrote of one important observation which I have never forgotten  regarding plagues:-
At times there was massive defoliation of forest trees by the spruce bud screw worm.  Foresters poisoned them to control.  However,  Helen saw that in the years the screw budworm was abundant, it was in those years that the squirrels were fertile!  More protein in their diet.

My instincts told me that the mice may be a result of poisons on wheat crops.  The mice might be  there to eat them to "clean up" the ecology.   Unfortunately, the birds and animals that eat mice would also get poisoned.  Only the few would survive- the ones with some capacity to cope with poison....

Same with locusts.  In 2007 a million hectares of NSW were sprayed with a mix of insecticides.  I wrote letters to The Land and to RLPB and to radio national regarding this.  Last year we expected such a locust plague again but it didn't eventuate!  There is a bio friendly locusticide called "Greenguard"  which has been developed after a farmer made a great observation of fungus infected locust individuals and posted them to a lab.     In South Australia in previous years they had a drought followed by a locust plague, then an "emu plague".  I found out in the library that emus love to eat locusts!  My feeling has been we are so afraid because of lost income ( an understandable fear, in this expensive world), that even emus had to be "culled".
What if farmers had viewed the emus as a gift from nature?
They could have benefited from fresh meat and huge eggs.
 
Our society is so tight that we have to take short term action rather than long term strategies.  
Top predators might be more fertile when there are "plagues".  Instead we use pesticides which kill not only the pests but also the predators of those "pests".

 What if our world could slow down and be less competitive?
There might be less sickness from stress;  pregnant women especially need tranquillity for the sake of their babies.  There might be less cancer if farmers didn't have to overproduce so much and use so much poison.

WHAT IF.........

What if we could Rethink our Rules, to Benefit Humans and Nature, together? 
It is fundamental change that is needed, to save our World,
so that all Beings may be happy,  even Corporations et al.

The latest issue of Resurgence magazine is devoted to Rabindranath Tagore who had much to say relevant to these matters.     May/June 2011 issue No. 266.  See pag 26.
The quote is
 "By unrighteousness man prospers, gains what appears desirable, conquers enemies, but perishes at the root." 
This was written shortly before his death in 1941.
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See http://www.resurgence.org/
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Meanwhile I hope we can share ideas and experiences to do our bit to help our Planet Earth.
From Tiiu Vanamois 16/6/2011.  Today 6am was full eclipse of the Moon,  coloured red.....