For Frack Sake

I'm a little pissed off with the government on their response for finding newer forms of energy, actually that's not true I'm more than than just a little bit peeved. For goodness sake replacing a fossil fuel that will run out soon with another that will do exactly the same thing knowing the world's energy consumption levels is ridiculous. What is more worrying is the environmental impacts, the pictures of places from America where there has been fracking should indicate it is not a good idea. The planet has only so much of these resources & they do affect the environment that they are extracted from as well as the fact that it is not carbon neutral either kinda misses the point of the governments renewable energy targets. If we concentrate on creating reliable renewable & biotechnologies, then surely that has got to be a better answer & a better way for our planet.

Crystals

It's been a while since I touched upon a Witchcraft subject, so I'm going to talk about these sparkly beauties. Crystals have been big business in the New Age & Pagan markets & many books have lists of crystals & their attributes. I've trained in crystal therapy, don't judge me it was a free course & it did definitely do something, but I have a feeling that it was more down to the placebo effect, I believe this due to the fact if 'energy' came into it sure it would bare the scars of a wounded planet possibly wounded men & women as a lot of our beloved crystals are far from ethically sourced, the recent political battles with the platinum mines are case in point. So if they have these energies that heal why don't they bring the energies that harmed the people or landscape in extracting them? Yes gemstones have different properties in their make up diamond being pure carbon, quartz being a silicone dioxide as well as a high scoring word in scrabble, but are we holding on to superstition just for a mass market or does it really work & my scepticism is just working overtime. Does the leaving them out in the sun destroy the 'negative energy' by radiation & the full moon 'realigns the energy' through it's magnetic pull. I never thought I'd see the day when I might put science into said post. I suppose quartz does power watches, but if you wanted quartz that badly go in your garden, those white round pebbles are quartz, Britain is full of quartz, you don't need to get it from some country thousands of miles away, flown in at the expense of the carbon footprint of the planet & at least you know it's ethically sourced & you haven't harmed the planet to get them. I do admit though that I have kept some of the crystals I bought in my less enlightened as to how they were sourced days.

April Showers

It has rained a fair bit over the last couple of weeks, everybody is moaning about it but aren't they missing the bigger picture here? What is April known for weather wise? Rain, April showers, so why is everyone surprised it is raining in rainy season? Why are people grumbling about it? if you don't want to live in a place that has much rain, live on the south coast of Kent, then you will probably be glad of the rain when it comes. Seeing as though most of the country is facing drought this summer I would have thought that people would have been welcoming of the rain. I posted on facebook to a friend who was moaning about the rain, pointing pout the drought situation & how the rain is dealing with the possibility of it removing the threat of it, her response was, I don't use a hosepipe as I live in a flat, so therefore have no garden, I pointed out she still used water though, although I did miss a trick by not mentioning about the watering of the crops that provide her with food. If you are having such real problems with the rain get some waterproofs, some wellies & start splashing about in puddles, it is fun & brings back a certain amount of childhood innocence & mischief. rain it is good for us, even when the whole drip of water down the back of your neck sends unpleasant shivers down your spine or you find that your waterproofs have developed a leak. Enjoy the precipitation, Yours soggily, Pagan Chaplain

Dumping Stuff in the Canal

One word of advice if you have live fish swimming in & out of your shopping trolley, you have parked it in the wrong place. Maybe it is just that canals have a magnetic charge that specifically targets shopping trolleys. This week saw the removal of a load of things dumped into the stretch of the canal I walk along by a crane attached to a narrow boat & it appears that  some people just really don't care about the environment, it seems that some people like to dump all sorts of things in there. Over the cold snap we had last winter somebody had parked their child's broken kiddie car onto the ice, possibly just to see how long it took to sink. Sometimes it makes you think what is going through people's heads at the time, but the thing that concerned the most more than the shopping trolleys, the bikes & other things that have wheels, was a car battery, thankfully it didn't look as though it had leaked, but if it had it could have killed so much wildlife. I was not the only one who was angered, one onlooker said he knows some people who do it & he had torn strips off them for doing it, good on him, it was just a pity he couldn't tell what they had dumped in there from what had come out of it as I'm sure it would have looked & smelled lovely in their living room & would be the talk of the neighbourhood. It isn't as if the Black Country doesn't have enough scrap metal collectors to take their rubbish away. OK the canals do seem to lack bins for things other than dog excrement (although these aren't used as frequently as they should be either). One of the days we are going to see a fish looking like the one out of The Simpsons. please if you find a shopping trolley in your garden from a night you can't remember please return it back to the supermarket I'm sure they will appreciate more than a water vole would.

Birmingham's Gay Scene Needs A Face Lift

I do have a small group of us who go out guerrilla gardening around the gay scene in Birmingham, we are starting up again to brighten up the place & make the gay scene look a bit better, it had a shiny veneer put on a couple of its main roads, which left the other half of it looking rather bedraggled & sorry for itself & certain things that back onto the area that got spruced up, looking shabby. So the guerrilla gardening group was set up last year, we have ad some successes, some failures & some outright surprises. But with the closure of a couple of the main bars it is starting to look a little derelict, OK the guerrilla gardening group can't fix that but trying to give the area a floral display might go a little way to making the area look good as well as attracting beneficial insects. But it would be nice to get some more people on board, then perhaps we could move onto bigger projects that would make an even bigger impact. I know we are having a shiny new monument putting in with the rhino sculpture in, but we need more than that. I'm trying to rally support but things are going very slowly, which is frustrating to say the least, people are quite happy to moan but are not willing to get their hands dirty. if you know of an area that needs tidying up & renovating start small work your way up & you will be impressed by your little victories, you may drum up help from the local community even if it is a couple of cups of tea. It would be good if more people took pride in their areas so they don't look shabby, but hey ho you can't expect miracles but you can make a difference no matter how small.

Going Gardening

Today I have decided that it is going to be a gardening day, a war on nature to make things look pretty that is more welcoming to other nature paradoxically. My garden is over run with herb robert & although it shares my namesake & is pretty it has sprawled everywhere & all from one tiny plant 4 years ago, it doesn't even attract much in the way of wildlife to it, oh the foolishness of aesthetics, if  I had known about exactly how aggressively it spread I would have never let it stay. I suppose that is how the problems with the likes of buddliea, rhododendron & Japanese knotweed started. I also have problems with ivy, forget me nots, strawberries, mustards & marigolds but all these just need thinning rather than eradicating as they are beneficial to either myself or nature. So when people say they are being at one with nature in the garden they are not being so as nature taking over is always desirable either to us or nature. I am planting with nature in mind, but hoping the outcome will be both as appealing to nature as it is to me. Our garden will under go a major transformation as some of the beds will disappear due to an extension being built on the house, so I shall be recycling the bricks to create a new raised bed in a part of the garden that is sadly neglected & is a wildlife desert, but hoping to grow veg there so that I can nourish myself as well as insects. All I have to do now is by a water pistol for the war on cats.

Biodiversity in the Garden

In the past my gardening exploits have quite often either lacked the time when the was good or lacked good weather when I've had the time. I have therefore somehow neglected a bit of that biodiversity needed in the garden. There have been some nectar rich plants in the garden but often they got usurped by just what I could get my hands on that would look pretty. This year I plant to differently instead of the most biodiverse part being the bit that was tucked away in the corner so yo couldn't see it from the window unless you craned your neck, it is going to be all over the garden this year. I shouldn't be too hard on myself as I did do some planting that will & have been beneficial last year with a ceanothus, lavenders, foxgloves & bergamots, but this year I want to add to this so I can create a garden which is buzzing with activity, where the cats get terrorised by butterflies & my other half's siblings get freaked out by the hoverflies thinking that they are wasps. With the decline in pollinating insects we should do more to encourage them or it is bye bye to many of our foods. The RHS have started a garden centre labelling scheme which has a bee logo on it to show which plants are beneficial to pollinators & if you are buying plants which aren't from a garden centre follow these simple rules:-

Double flowered flowers though may look pretty but it is the insect equivalent of eating a bar of dark chocolate with a knife & fork whilst wearing boxing gloves & a blindfold.

If you can't see the source of pollen on the flower neither is an insect, so those horrible cheap looking begonias & busy lizzies are a no no

If you can smell them an insect will too, but be careful there are some flowers that smell very strongly of rotting meat or fish which will just get you pestered by flies.

Purples & yellows are much loved by insects, yes they have their own colour tastes too.

Give them some succession of food for the year, it has the bonus of your garden looking more colourful than your neighbours all year round.

They also need waster so a shallow edged pond would also be beneficial too.

So enjoy your garden & lets hope our smaller winged friend will do too