environment

Growing Green Hearts

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World Environment Day has been observed every year since 1974. Which means we’ve known for at least 45 years that the environment needed to be taken seriously rather than taken for granted. This year, China is acting as host country with the theme of #BeatAirPollution, an appropriate choice for a country that faces some of the most extreme air pollution in the world.

Air pollution is implicated in the deaths of 1.1 million people annually in China and over 7 million around the world. Although China has announced tough measures to fight air pollution, it’s hard to reconcile those actions with continued economic growth – which is what contributed to the pollution in the first place.

World Environment Day focuses on what we, as individuals, can do. Every little bit helps. But with 9 out of 10 people in the world breathing polluted air, maybe the best thing we, as individuals, can do is grow hearts of green and demand the same of our policymakers.

Real change has to be as diverse as the environment itself. It has to break through the hard concrete of old habits, at all levels of society and across borders. And it’s something we can do, but we can’t wait for another 45 years.

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Growing a Green Heart on my village road in France. Photo: PKR

 

Dry Run

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Just when I thought autumn had finally arrived with a two-day rainstorm, the winds changed and summer is back. It’s as dry as ever, and no end in sight. In keeping with this year’s extreme weather, I noticed something different on my running loop.

Earlier this year, after a wet spring, a local meadow was in fine form. This is a stretch of grassland that is used to graze local dairy cattle. It sits between a copse of trees and a local forest, and is divided by a stream that usually goes dry in mid-August.

spring, pasture, running, green

A local pasture in springtime.
Photo: PKR

This year, the stream was already dry in July, despite the spring rains. It fills up briefly if we have a heavy rain, but then dries out again. This is the same meadow in early September.

Dry golden pasture, mountains, Jura, running

The same pasture, four months later.
Photo: PKR

What’s surprising to me isn’t that the grass is golden and dry. The new thing this year is that the grass has been harvested. In two decades of living here, I’ve never seen the grass harvested for feed. Usually, this meadow is openly grazed until snowfall, and then again as soon as the last frost has passed.

And then I noticed that two other meadows usually left untouched for open grazing had been harvested for grass. In fact, all the meadows surrounding my running loop had been cut down to the ground.

A dry horse pasture in late summer

A nearby horse pasture.
Photo: PKR

Some of these meadows are on private estate lands, and I’m wondering whether there’s some new local law to harvest grasses? More likely, I think, is that the feed harvest has been so bad this year that the local dairy farmers and horse stables are trying to access any kind of local feed to augment the bad crop yields – after all, the local crops were already fields of dry stalks by early August this year.

The only crop that seems to have done well around here is a field of soy that was flooded in early rains, and has since gone golden. Surprisingly, the soy proved resilient.

Soybeans dry in the sun

A soybean pod from the field.
Photo: PKR

So now I’m wondering what kind of impact all this meadow cutting will have on local wildlife that usually depends on having a rich supply of winter grass to use for burrowing, eating, and general merriment. The times, they are a’changing.

After The Rain, Before The Storm

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The nightly storms that send rain pelting down upon our humble home and illuminate the sky with lightning are impressive. More surprising though, is waking up every morning to blue skies.

It’s not that we aren’t used to wild weather here in the Lake Geneva region; when you live between two mountain ranges, you expect thunderstorms to rattle the windows and drown out conversation.

Big clouds billow and march, rain and hail burst forth from balmy summer skies, winds change direction on a whim and another ‘orage‘ has made its mark.

Roses, pathway, mountains, after the rain

Sodden roses line a local walking path.
Photo: PKR

As I write this a couple of hours after my run in the sun, clouds are already gathering again, the air getting heavier, the wind picking up. Another storm is on the march.

But the weather we are experiencing isn’t limited to our neighborhood between the Jura and the Alps – half of Europe is counting the high numbers of lightning strikes as if keeping score. France saw almost 150,000 recording lightning strikes in May 2018, the most since the collection of that kind of data began in the early 2000s.

It’s not that we’re having more storms, it’s that the storms are having more of an impact. The average temperature in France for the month of May this year was a full degree Celsius higher than last year. Thunder and lightning storms feed on that kind of heat.

potato, crop, flood, rain, summer, running

A nearby field is flooded after the storms. I doubt the crop will recover from this kind of standing water.
Photo: PKR

As for the blue skies: At least where I live, every morning over the past week has dawned bright and shiny as a newly minted coin, as if all that noise over the past night belonged to some other country. Birds are singing, the critters are out, as if we’ve all agreed not to speak of the violent winds and rain. A large dragonfly followed me for much of my morning run, always just out of photo range.

erosion, running, water, thunderstorms, summer

I can only imagine how quickly the water must have been flowing to erode my usual running path overnight.
Photo: PKR

 

Flying ahead, settling, watching me approach, and then flitting off again, further and further away from any pond or river where it might normally live. Of course, the garden flowers are hanging and the glorious peonies of May are lost in aprons of pink petals on the ground.

 

More storms are predicted for the rest of the week…

 

 

mountains, running, summer, thunderstorm, rain

The Jura range behind our village, sunny after the thunderstorm.
Photo: PKR

 

Tough Puffs

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Dandelions are one of those plants that people love to hate. They’re tenacious, perennial, copious; their tap roots run deep and even cut blossoms will still turn to seed heads if they aren’t culled early enough. Their leaves spread flat and wide, smothering anything beneath.

If we didn’t hate them, we’d love them for their reliability and bright sunny beauty. But the fact is, even though they were first introduced in the United States as a salad variety in the 1600s, the general consensus is that dandelions are weeds.

That’s why any weedkiller worth the name is made to wipe out dandelions. Oh, they just come back again – that’s just what dandelions do. As I ran by a freshly tilled field, I noticed bright globes of white scattered like rice at a wedding. Dandelion puffs, all in full seed, probably cut when the tractor was skimming the margins of the field.

Dandelion heads, farming, agriculture,plowed field

Severed dandelion puffs seeding a freshly tilled field.
Photo: PKR

Regardless of which crop is going to be grown on the field this season, it will include a healthy portion of dandelions. Unless, of course, the farmer sprays the ubiquitous glyphosate weedkiller – under trade pressure from the US and swayed by the vote of the Germany in support of Monsanto’s RoundUp in late 2017, the import and use of glyphosate has been extended for another five years in the European Union. This in spite of numerous studies showing the danger of the herbicide to the environment and to human health.

Dandelion heads, farming, agriculture,plowed field

Dandelions on the edge of a freshly plowed field.
Photo: PKR

At least the other chemical bugaboos of industrial farming, neonicotinoids, were banned by the EU for the foreseeable future. Good news for bees and other pollinators! It would be great to see the US follow suit.

Jurassic Garden

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There’s a lot of evidence that gardening with plant species native to one’s area can promote a healthier ecosystem for plants, insects, animals and birds. But how do we even go about planting a truly native garden, and what are the challenges involved?

A few years ago, I walked around the hedgerows and fields of our corner of rural France, picking a few wild plants that I thought were native for relocation into our small garden. I’m a mediocre gardener, so my attempts weren’t met with much success. Only one of the plants, I think it’s a Scabiosa triandra – a pincushion flower – really showed any signs of feeling at home.

Native flowers of the Jura mountains, France

Jura narcissus
Photo: Les Fritilaires

At some point, I realized that many of the plants I saw on walks and hikes probably weren’t local in the first place. All those pansies and daisies had likely escaped from gardens, where the seeds or plants had been purchased at a garden store. As Jeff Ollerton recently wrote in a blog post about the shifting baselines of conservation, what’s considered local or ‘normal’ depends on how far you are willing to go back in time. Do we eliminate most roses and tulips because they aren’t native to Europe?

My neck of the woods has been farmed, cultivated and planted for hundreds of years, so where do I go to find truly native plants? How has animal life changed to adapt to the plants that we have on offer in our various gardens now?

Native flowers of the Jura mountains, France

Jura Fritallaria
Photo: Les Fritilaires

I recently sat in on an online discussion by Desiree L. Narango on the impact of non-native plant species on the abundance and health of the animal ecosystem, even if the non-native species were related to native plants. The short version of the discussion is that native animal species often can’t simply adapt to related but non-native species. Reproduction goes down, and in general the animals – from insects to birds – don’t thrive as much as they would on a native diet. No surprise, really, since flowering plants and the animals that rely upon them developed side-by-side in the late Jurassic and early Cretaceous periods. They were, quite literally, made for one another.

 

The message was: Every garden that is planted with native species can make a difference.

Okay, so where do I start in my garden in the foothills of the Jura mountains? The local nursery, which stopped carrying all artificial pesticides several years ago and promotes organic gardening, still doesn’t sell a range of plants from this area. For all its good intentions, I imagine that the development of site-specific seed products isn’t commercially viable for a nationwide gardening chain. France has a wide range of landscapes and ecosystems – what works on the coast of Brittany is probably different from what works here on the elevated plains and mountainsides at eastern limits of the country.

There’s a seed company in the United Kingdom, Seedball, that caters to gardeners who want to plant native. The product range offers a variety of native plant species seed mixes to support butterflies, birds, bats, and so on. But what’s native in the UK might not be native here.

Native flowers of the Jura mountains, France

Jura willowherbs.
Photo: Les Fritilaires

I found one French nursery that grows and sells native plant products, but it’s on the Atlantic coast, eight hours by car. So I guess I would have to go back to hiking and picking out a few specimens for cultivation and seed gathering – after verifying that the various species were, in fact local, and not endangered.

Apart from my own interests in ecology and conservation, gardening with native species faces another challenge: Do the native plants conform to our sensibilities and trends with it comes to garden aesthetics? We have, for example, some very delicate and pretty native orchid species in our area, but they are tiny things, barely the height of a forefinger. Not very showy. And the bigger flowering plants are what most people would identify as weeds. Planting native might mean adapting gardening trends to biodiversity, and not the other way around.

Looks like I’ve got some redesigning to do, and then some hiking in the company of a guidebook and a gardening trowel.

Fossil flowers, sea lily, urbangardening

Fossilized sea lily crown with stem
Via: Urweltmuseum

 

 

Fling The Stars

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Several villages in the corner of eastern France where I live have started shutting off town streetlights from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. Until now, I never realized just how much having streetlights had formed my idea of what a community looks like at night.

Last year, flyers were hand-delivered to homes, informing us that streetlights and all public lighting would be turned off at night to save money, to save energy, to reduce pollution (both of emissions and light), and finally, to support the recovery of nocturnal animals.

Being a nocturnal animal myself, I thought this seemed like a good idea. But also, of course, good for the bats and night creatures.

Then, a week or so ago, I was driving home after a night at the movies, and I entered our village of around 1200 inhabitants near the Swiss border. It was utterly dark. I couldn’t see the primary school my daughter had attended, nor the picturesque 19th century post office, nor the 12th century church that has just been restored to its modest glory.

light pollution, streetlights, urban lighting, darkness, stargazing

A local village sign advising caution due to lack of public lighting between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m.
Photo: PKR

More importantly, I didn’t see a large group of teenage boys that was out on the one main street. There were at least ten of them, loping along together through the shadows – usually they would have been easily spotted, smoking under the cover of the lone bus stop shelter. Now, I only saw them at the last moment, jumping onto the sidewalk and off the road in the beams of my headlights.

Light pollution and the energy it takes to power night lighting has been a topic of discussion for years, and numerous cities now require non-residential businesses to turn off non-essential lights after the last worker leaves the building.

Dark Sky Communities, Udsigten, Møns, light pollution, darkness, night time

The Milky Way arches over Udsigten at the Møns Klint Resort on the island of Møn, Denmark, designated IDA Dark Sky locations.
Photo: Thomas Ix/www.foto-ix.de via IDA

But the streetlights? Even as places around the world retro-fit with LED lighting, which is more flexible and energy efficient, I hadn’t seen much discussion about actually leaving residential areas in complete darkness at night. Then I found this, the International Dark Sky Association (IDA), which aims to drastically cut light pollution at night. It has a searchable map for locating reserves and communities committed to turning of the lights.

I get it, and it’s a new line of exploration for me. But for now, if I go out on a moonless or cloudy night, it is to an invisible village cloaked in deep shadow. Light shines from windows here and there, outlining human activity and making it seem smaller. The view of the stars has become breathtaking, but it will take me some time to adjust to the new vision of our night time home.

 

Silly Bees

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Every year, solitary carpenter bees make themselves at home in our wood window casings. I can see their little bee butts working away in there. The question is, what to do about it?

bees, urban gardening, conservation

A window casing hole still plugged with growing bees.
Photo: PKR

Now, I admit, the drainage holes in the windows look mighty inviting. But because the windows open and shut, any growing bees are at risk of getting crushed before they can mature.

I really don’t mind sharing parts of our home with other creatures, and at the end of the season, the remains of the nests and pollen are easy enough to clean away. I know people don’t like the fact that these bees can burrow into wood – but after all, the casing holes are already there, and the bees don’t do any real damage.(It’s indicative of how these bees are viewed that most of the images of carpenter bees that I found were from pest extermination services – it took me a while to find one that wasn’t.)

Still, even our window sill haven is not a particularly safe solution for the bees.

The nests are intricate constructions of single cells for each single egg, with partitioned walls and a lovely supply of pollen for each egg to get a good start.

A solitary bee nest.
Image: All You Need Is Biology

Quite impressive, as long as they’re situated in a good spot.

bees, urban gardening, conservation

A vacated nest. I saw one of the new bees emerging from this spot yesterday.
Photo: PKR

Bees of various species are struggling in our corner of France, as elsewhere. If these bees are, as I suspect, Osmia cornuta – a solitary European orchard bee that pollinates fruit trees – then they are not yet considered endangered. But they are in decline in France, retreating to places with less pesticide use. In any case, this year in the spirit of conservation, I set up alternative bee houses with holes of a similar size in front of the favorite window sills.

What did the bees do? They chose the other casings that didn’t feature any manufactured wood homes. So until they’ve all left the nests, we’ll be opening and closing the windows very carefully.

Silly bees.

Next year, I’ll have to try harder to entice them to other nesting spots.

bees, conservation, orchard bees, burrowing

Solitary orchard bees burrow into someone else’s window casing.
Image: Lamiot via Wikipedia

 

Spring Pops

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The past 48 hours or so have brought about several changes. Most of them I expected. One of them I didn’t.

First, the mirabelle plum tree in the garden.

In just the space of less than two days, it went from this:

Buds on a plum tree

The mirabelle tree on the cusp of blossoming.
All photos: PKR

To this:

Mirabelle tree in spring

The sky was a little cloudier, but the tree itself is a cloud of white blossoms.

And someone must have told the bees, because the entire tree is thrumming with pollinator excitement. This particular tree makes me especially happy, because when we moved here it was just a dry stump. We tended to it, and as a reward, we started getting plump, sweet yellow mirabelle plums. Not to mention this luscious display of blossoms in spring.

The other expected change was along my running route. I’m so grateful that our region of France stopped using pesticides and herbicides to keep country roadsides clear.

Roadside blossoms in spring

Violets that might not be native, nestled among other flowers that probably are. A tiny corner of roadside biodiversity.

Every few weeks from spring through late fall, large trimming tractors cut back any green growth like massive herbaceous shavers, cutting back everything from grass to weeds to tree branches in the fauchage. I’ve rarely seen any roadsides in the world as tidy as those in France.

orchids bloom in spring

Tiny native orchids that enjoy the altitude and cold winters of our mountainous region.

In the inbetween times, this approach allows the growth of wildflowers along the roadsides, which is good for plants and pollinators alike.

The one unexpected change brought by the warm weather and the past day was the fencing in of my running route. There had always been a grazing pasture one one side. Now, the path is flanked by a second pasture for the first time in the twenty years we’ve lived here.

Fenced farmland in France

The fence to the left forms a new boundary to my regular running path.

At least, I’m assuming it’s a grazing pasture because of the electrified fence. Every year, this field has rotated wheat, corn, clover and other crops – I guess this year, grazing dairy cattle is more profitable than any of those crops.

 

Last of the Season

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The weather has turned so cold over the past week or so, mostly grey with the mountains getting their first coat of white. But today came up sunny, a nice change. I watched the blue sky while I worked, and finally managed to bundle up and go for a walk at sunset.

I found these hardy blossoms braving the low temperatures.

All photos: PKR

Some of the gardens still have flowers – especially late-blooming roses – but I was only interested in the roadside variety, the ones with no assistance, coming up along the edges, defying asphalt, gravel, cars, and dogs.

They’ve felt the bite of frost every morning for over a week, they’re starting to frizzle, but they’ve still got color and beauty to give before it all goes brown and white for the season.

 

Humble, bowed but not faded, a passing late pollinator might still find joy. And if the pollinators don’t find joy, well, at least this walker did.

Built To Last

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When the house I live in was built, Leonardo da Vinci was a young man with the Mona Lisa still in his future, and Michelangelo was a toddler. The first part of our house, a small fortified tower in rural France, was built in 1478. When the stones were laid for the tower, Christopher Columbus hadn’t yet set sail for the Americas. What would become the dominant Western culture of colonialism, and later, capitalism, hadn’t yet gotten underway.

The tower.
Photo: PKR

When the second part of the house was built, a hundred years later, the world was already a different place.

This pile of stones has been, as far as I know, continuously inhabited through several historical eras, from Louis XIV’s Sun King moment, to the French Revolution, through Industrialization and the two great wars on European soil during the 20th century.

It’s hard to imagine all the history around the world that has taken place in the amount of time this human construction has been a home for generation after generation of people, not to mention the various animals that take up residence in various hidden corners.

This place was built to last, and as long as it’s maintained, there’s no reason it shouldn’t last another couple of centuries, at least.

I wonder sometimes about the people who built the tower back in 1478, and whether they could have even conceived of the world in which their construction now stands. Even if this place were to fall down at some point, which it no doubt will, the stones and the wood will simply become a part of another house, or the landscape.

Over the past 50 years, we’ve been building another kind of construction that lasts. Depending on its exposure to the elements, it can last anywhere from 40 to an estimated 450 years to deteriorate. Maybe even 1000 years.

But it doesn’t provide a home, or shelter, and it’s not meant to be provide utility for more than one or two uses.

The tower stairs.
Photo: PKR

It’s part of a dominant culture that has been well underway since the 1950s, the culture of disposability.

Picture where we are now, and try to imagine the world and our society 450 years from now. Picture that plastic sack, or that plastic bottle, or that plastic wrapping you just threw away. Once it’s not being used, it becomes a part of a cycle of garbage that does little good and a lot of damage.

There’s every likelihood that, like our stone house, those items will last 450 years.

One thing I can predict is that, if we haven’t figured out how to solve our plastic problem, people will still be wondering what possessed us to generate so much plastic for such short-term use.