Down to Earth

My Favorite Naturalist

2011-02-27T09:18:00.000-05:00

I subscribe to a weekly newsletter written by Jim Conrad. His very interesting bio can be found at
http://www.backyardnature.net/j/jim.htm

In addition to his in depth information and profiles of birds, insects, animals and plants I look forward to Jim's often searingly poignant personal essays.

This week's piece touched me on several levels, the sensual beauty in simple things, the process of aging and the sense of loss that we have all experienced. Hoping you can relate to and enjoy it too I quote it here:
**************

LETTUCE FEELINGS
One daily job I look forward to is that of supplying a 
big bouquet of freshly picked leaf lettuce for the 
kitchen, such as that seen at 
http://www.backyardnature.net/n/11/110227lt.jpg

Picking the lettuce is a sensuous experience. Chilly, 
early-morning dew on the leaves wets my hands. A 
lettucy fragrance blossoms around me as I break off 
the leaves, feeling in my fingertips the faint but 
fatal snaps of petioles yielding to my force. As I 
return to the hut to wash the leaves I can't take my 
eyes off the visually pleasing essay before me, one 
commenting on the theme of simple but crinkly-edged 
glowings of yellow greenness contrasting with interior 
black shadowiness.

Sometimes it's hard to hand over the bouquet to the 
kitchen staff. By the time I get to the kitchen door 
I'm sort of bonded with that bunch of lettuce, even to 
the point of identifying with it.

For, when I'm picking the lettuce I'm doing that slow-
simmering kind of reflecting on life everyone does 
when engaged in non-thinking jobs. And the lettuce's 
radiant yellow-greenness emerging from silky, deep-
rooted blackness, and even its odor of bruised 
herbage, somehow strike me as exactly matching how 
I've been feeling lately -- not to mention how each 
leaf petiole gives that little snap when I pick it, 
like the thousand little losses one feels every day 
while aging, leaving behind hair, hearing, sight, 
strength, memory and more, and sometimes just plain 
giving up on this or that.

Looking at the lettuce in my hands is in many ways 
like taking a good look at my own feelings.

And, the destiny of that lettuce... I'll bet that most 
leaves get thrown away -- a bug-eaten hole on this 
one, that leaf a little too pale, this one with a 
small tear, that one with a brown spot, one after 
another just not good enough for a fancy restaurant. 
Well, if we're developing a metaphor here, at this 
point it would be easy to overdo it.

But, sometimes I do wish I knew what happens to what I 
bring to the kitchen door. I wonder what the use is of 
such fragile, translucing, yellow-green, crushed-
herbage, baroque-fringed gifts... if the one you're 
giving them to mostly just throws them away.

*****

Enjoy your day

Spring Is In My Hair…

2011-02-26T21:50:00.000-05:00

...of course I mean in the air ! And spring is in my step. It is not the view from my window of slushy brown roads nor the messages left months ago by dogs on my lawn that has elicited this feeling.

Nay. 'Twas a newsletter from Garden Guru Doug Green. Reading his Perennial Garden Design section caused a fine perspiration to break out on my troubled brow. If only I had had this helpful advice when I was a young gardener.

My garden is shaded by several venerable pines and some not so large maples. These gnarled trees have withstood near hurricane winds, been bowed under the weight of snow and lashed by rain. Far be it from me to cut them down in their prime. So, this old tree hugger will just work around them.

Besides if there were no trees where would the fairies play? That is Miss Grimm on the right. She loves to read in the shade...usually tales by the Brothers Grimm.

But in my enthusiastic new property owner phase I dug up a large strip along the driveway and under the trees with an eye to planting shade loving plants, ferns, hosta and their ilk.

My first hint that things might not go well was discovering the red roots of ancient peonies struggling there... but I did not let that deter me! Oh, no I moved the peony roots to the front bed where they would get more sun and blithely planted shade lovers under the trees. The peonies took off and never looked back to the hardships of their former life.

The new plants may have loved shade but they also loved to drink. Who doesn't? I needed several myself by the time I got through with this travail.

Year one: Dig holes, fill with organic material, plant shade loving plants. Easy Peasy. Haul many, many 10 gallon buckets (@ 50 pounds each) of rain water from 100 feet away - daily.

Result? Lost ten pounds, had very long arms and shade loving plants that appeared happy that first year.

Year two: Dig up languishing shade lovers, remove many fine tree roots that have galloped over to the clumps of rich organic material. On the theory that if there is plenty to go around the trees won't hog it all, dig in lots more organic material, re-install plants, mulch heavily. Continue hauling rain water.

Result? Exuberant trees that are now taller and more shade casting than before. Perky but puny plants, knuckles that scrape the ground when gardener is standing upright.

Year three: Buy longer hoses to connect to the outside faucet. Wrestle the permanently kinked hoses across lawn and driveway. Attach them to old soaker hoses wound amongst the plants. Alternate between rain water and well water. Spend hours pouring water down the throats of those ungrateful little bleeders, the shade loving plants.

Result? Well developed biceps. Knuckles healing nicely.

Year four: Single handedly install an elaborate watering system sold by a major Ottawa based tool and garden company.

Result? Large Credit Card bills, miles of black hose and thousands of gallons of well water later the plants were looking great. As were the trees. My arms had returned to their normal length, knuckles healed, biceps no longer aching. The water pump for the well? Toast!

Year five: Ask Doug how best to care for shade loving plants under trees. His advice? DON’T even try. Hang head in defeat and begin the daunting task of moving about a hundred plants out from under the trees and over to the other side of the driveway.

Result? Less shade and less root competition but plants still puny from the stress they suffered in years one, two, three and four. Some never did recover.

Bottom line is my advice to those of you who are only as smart as I am: Do your homework before you spend money and time to design an un-maintainable garden.

You can catch a lot of great advice from Doug Green by clicking on this link

perennial garden design

It's all over but the eating

2010-11-19T13:02:00.000-05:00

The following was written in August, filed and forgotten till now........
Summer's officially ended but no one told the weather man. This weekend is shaping up to be a warm one. I am hoping that the spirit will move me to do some last minute garden clean ups, spread some mulch and just generally get ready to hunker down.

But the purpose of this blog is to brag about my bounty. I know ...bragging is not nice ...but there is no other word for what I am about to do.

Although I wouldn't say that I had a bumper crop of anything considering the amount of plants I put in I am very pleased with the quality of the produce.

Potatoes

I planted shallowly in a trench filled with pine needles and old leaves and covered them with straw. Although a lot of the straw seeds sprouted the clean up wasn't too hard.

I was able to just lift the straw and take a few potatoes all season long. I even had enough to share with neighbours which is great. The potatoes come out nice and clean this way.

I didn't like the woody quality they had when they got much bigger than the ones shown at the left so I harvested them earlier.

I had roughly 50 potato plants and probably got about 50 to 60 pounds of potatoes from them. I think the low yield was due to the close planting. But I would definitely buy Red Chieftain seed potatoes again.

The conditions were great, lots of rain fall and I didn't see a single potato bug or other diseases. The slugs were just moving in as I took the last batch out. Better luck next time slugs - NOT!

While they were drying in the breeze I noticed a few bites taken out of them. I moved them to a chair but still found some were being stolen. The culprit was identified as the resident chipmunk. With back legs kicking furiously and front legs shoving mightily he was trying to get a good-sized potato into his burrow in the Half Moon garden. So I took them all inside with the exception of a pile of the really tiny ones which I left on the porch. They were quickly snatched up. I am hoping this will deter him from taking my tulips.

Tomatoes
I planted a mixture of 32 tomato plants; Opalka, Box Car Willy, Sweet Million, Roma, Belgian Giant and some that I can't remember the names of.

Early on, in spite of changing the location of the plants from last year, they still contracted early blight. At least you still get tomatoes even though the plant has lots of dead brown leaves around the bottom. Due to watering problem or too much rain some showed a bit of blossom end rot and cat face.

Too late it occurred to me that the disease was probably carried on the tomato cages and even my shovel. This year I will disinfect those before I put anything away.

I had approximately 100 pounds of tomatoes from those plants. Not a bumper crop but enough for myself and friends. No insects except the slugs and centipedes at the end of the season.

Throughout the season I would pick about 10 pounds of tomatoes every couple of days. These would be quartered and seeded and thrown into my crock pot where they simmered overnight with the top off. By morning I had three pounds of nice thick sauce. I spooned this into 4 cup plastic bags which I lay on a cookie sheet in the freezer. These nice flat envelopes store well in the freezer.

Of course I have breakfasted on tomato sandwiches every day since July. My cat Reg always demands his toast and tomato so we both will miss these sandwiches when all the tomatoes ripening in my oven are gone.

Pictured at the left and right is Belgian Giant which has become a real favorite. It was a very large sprawling plant, didn't produce many tomatoes but they were huge, juicy, low acid, low seed with a gorgeous rosy pink flesh. Here is one weighing in at almost a pound and a half or two thick sandwiches worth.

I keep the green and not so ripe tomatoes in a flat cardboard fruit box on one or two shelves in the oven. Easy to remove if I get moved to bake something. They ripen slowly and beautifully in the dark of the oven. Here is the last of them picked early because of a threatened frost which did not arrive.

The Opalka were wonderful this year but the Roma were the pits; very small and dropped off the vine in the slightest breeze. I am not sure why some of them are yellow or green at the stem end. Could be some disease.

None of the seeds I had saved from previous years came up but I tried saving again this year.

Cucumber

I only planted four and one died. The vines stayed very short and small while my friend had beautiful vines crawling up a trellis very early in the season. Perhaps it was just the variety as suddenly mine took off and did themselves proud. I had a dozen or more lovely healthy large cucumbers in all. There is still one left in my crisper.

Butternut Squash
Thank you No Frills. Sometime last fall I bought a tasty, deep orange-fleshed butternut squash. I saved the seeds and planted them in my winter sow project. After the wind took my greenhouse down and scattered the sprouted seeds all over my sidewalk I managed to save about four plants. Those four plants produced loads of blossoms and immature squash but by the time the weather started to turn I was able to harvest only five. On the right is the first and largest one. I ate one of the smaller ones last night (November 18th and it was yummy. That was my whole supper. )

Sweet Potatoes
My favorite nursery, Burt's greenhouses in Odessa, had some Georgia Jet Sweet potato slips for sale this year. It appealed to my spirit of adventure so I bought three. I was pleased to harvest a couple of nice sized ones.

The one to the left is about a half pound. There was another that was about a quarter pound and then some really strangely shaped ones that I will probably plant up and see if I can keep over winter. Talk about sweet. Really yummy with or without butter.

When I dug them up I took some of the rooted vines and brought them indoors. They have sprouted again so I have high hopes.

In spite of all my efforts I do have failures. I won't give up my day job for the onion and garlic crop. I am not sure what I do wrong but these two just won't grow for me.

Asparagus
Nothing but embarrassing pictures of these. Asparagus proved less than successful again this year too. I bought ten more plants and dug up what I thought were the dead roots of the the ones I bought last year, A few were still alive so I replanted and crossed my fingers. At least this year they mostly all showed their ferny little faces. I don't hold high hopes for a future in asparagus farming. They won't be ready to harvest till next year at least anyway. Perhaps I should have made more effort to find a new spot for them.

Peas

The peas did fairly well in spite of the repeated assaults by my friends, rabbit and chipmunk I still had a great feed of them and froze a couple of small packages. Definitely need more of these next year.

And so summer is over, the harvest is done, the potatoes are snugly put away.

I have dug up all the rhizomes that need to come in and put in more tulip bulbs. Now its time to rest and plan for next year.

Happy winter all you gardening friends. Hope your harvest was bountiful and you have a safe and happy winter.

Interesting Huaorani news

2010-11-19T11:04:00.000-05:00

A friend sent me this link.

Flying Car

http://www.eaavideo.org/video.aspx?v=635469588001

Imagine my surprise when half way through the man doing the speaking and demonstrating says he was raised by the Huaorani tribe after they killed his father! It was Steve Saint.

Take a gander. Pretty interesting stuff even without the Huaorani element.

2010-06-24T15:43:00.062-04:00

My Huaorani Obsession Continues

I am living, eating and breathing Huaorani these days it seems.

The following are bits and pieces that I came across today on the net while researching the question of whether Missionaries do more harm than good.

I know which side I fall on but if I decide to speak to a church group as I was asked to do I should review and weigh all sides of this complex story.

This article in Wikipedia "Operation Auca" deals with the killing of five missionaries by the Huaorani in 1956.

"The deaths of the men galvanized the missionary effort in the United States, sparking an outpouring of funding for evangelization efforts around the world. Their work is still frequently remembered in evangelical publications, and in 2006 was the subject of the film production End of the Spear. Several years after the death of the men, the widow of Jim Elliot, Elisabeth, and the sister of Nate Saint, Rachel, returned to Ecuador as missionaries with the Summer Institute of Linguistics (now SIL International) to live among the Huaorani. This eventually led to the conversion of many, including some of those involved in the killing. While largely eliminating tribal violence, their efforts exposed the tribe to exploitation and increased influence from the outside. This has caused Huaorani culture to begin to disappear, but anthropologists argue over the ultimate effect—some view the missionary work as cultural imperialism, while others contend that the influence has been beneficial for the tribe."

"The Huaorani, also known by the pejorative Aucas (a modification of awqa, the Quechua word for "enemies"), were an isolated tribe known for their violence, against both their own people and outsiders who entered their territory.

Huaorani
The Huaorani around the time of Operation Auca were a small tribe occupying the jungle of Eastern Ecuador between the Napo and Curaray Rivers, an area of approximately 20,000 square kilometers (7,700 mi²). They numbered approximately 600 people, and were split into three groups, all mutually hostile—the Geketaidi, the Baïidi, and the Wepeidi. They lived on the gathering and cultivation of plant foods like manioc and plantains, as well as fishing and hunting with spear and blowgun. Family units consisted of a man and his wife or wives, their unmarried sons, their married daughters and sons-in-law, and their grandchildren. All of them would reside in a longhouse, which was separated by several miles from another longhouse in which close relatives lived. Marriage was always endogamous and typically between cousins, and arranged by the parents of the young people.^[1]
Before their first peaceful contact with outsiders (cowodi) in 1958, the Huaorani fiercely defended their territory. Viewing all cowodi as cannibalistic predators, they killed rubber tappers around the turn of the 20th century and Shell Oil Company employees during the 1940s, in addition to any lowland Quechua or other outsiders who encroached on their land.^[2] Furthermore, they were prone to internal violence, often engaging in vengeance killing of other Huaorani. Raids were carried out in extreme anger by groups of men who attacked their victims' longhouse by night and then fled. Attempts to build truces through gifts and exchange of spouses became more frequent as their numbers decreased and the tribes fragmented, but the cycle of violence continued.^[3]

Aftermath
Life magazine covered the deaths of the men with a photo essay, including photographs by Cornell Capa and some taken by the five men before their deaths. The ensuing worldwide publicity gave several missionary organizations significant political power, especially in the United States and Latin America. Most notable among these was the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), the organization for which both Elisabeth Elliot and Rachel Saint worked. Because of the martyrdom of her brother, Saint considered herself spiritually bonded to the Huaorani, believing that what she saw as his sacrifice for the Huaorani was symbolic of Christ's death for the salvation of humanity. In 1957, Saint and her Huaorani companion Dayuma toured across the United States and appeared on the television show This Is Your Life. The two also appeared in a Billy Graham crusade in New York City, contributing to Saint's increasing popularity among evangelical Christians and generating significant monetary donations for SIL.^[26]

Saint and Elliot returned to Ecuador to work among the Huaorani, establishing a camp called Tihueno near a former Huaorani settlement. Rachel Saint and Dayuma became bonded in Huaorani eyes through their shared mourning and Rachel's adoption as a sister of the Dayuma, taking the name Nemo from the latter's deceased youngest sister. The first Huaorani to settle there were primarily women and children from a Huaorani group called the Guiquetairi, but in 1968 an enemy Huaorani band known as the Baihuari joined them. Elliot had returned to the United States in the early 1960s, so Saint and Dayuma worked to alleviate the resulting conflict. They succeeded in securing cohabitation of the two groups by overseeing numerous cross-band weddings, leading to an end of inter-clan warfare but obscuring the cultural identity of each group.^[27]

Saint and Dayuma, in conjunction with SIL, negotiated the creation of an official Huaorani reservation in 1969, consolidating the Huaorani and consequently opening up the area to commerce and oil exploration. By 1973, over 500 people lived in Tihueno, of which more than half had arrived in the previous six years. The settlement relied on missions aid from SIL, and as a Christian community set up by missionaries, all those living there were obliged to follow specific rules completely foreign to traditional Huaorani culture, most notably the prohibitions of killing and polygamy. By the early 1970s, SIL began to question whether their impact on the Huaorani was positive, so they sent James Yost, a staff anthropologist, to assess the situation. He found extensive economic dependence and increasing cultural assimilation, and as a result, SIL ended its support of the settlement in 1976, leading to its disintegration and the dispersion of the Huaorani into the surrounding area. SIL had hoped that the Huaorani would return to the isolation in which they had lived twenty years prior, but instead they sought out contact with the outside world, forming villages of which many have been recognized by the Ecuadorian government.^[28]^[29]

Christian views
Among evangelical Christians, the five men are commonly considered martyrs and missionary heroes. Books have been written about them by numerous biographers, most notably Elisabeth Elliot. Anniversaries of their deaths have been accompanied by stories in major Christian publications,^[30] and their story, as well as the subsequent acceptance of Christianity among the Huaorani, has been turned into several motion pictures. These include the documentary Beyond the Gates of Splendor (featuring interviews with some of the Huaorani and surviving family members of the missionaries) and the 2006 dramatic production End of the Spear, which grossed over $12 million.^[31] Even so, Christians have noted with concern the disintegration of traditional Huaorani culture and westernization of the tribe, beginning with Nate Saint's own journal entry in 1955 and continuing through today. However, many continue to view as positive both Operation Auca and the subsequent missionary efforts of Rachel Saint, mission organizations such as Mission Aviation Fellowship, Wycliffe Bible Translators, HCJB World Radio, Avant Ministries (formerly Gospel Missionary Union), and others. Specifically, they note the decline in violence among tribe members, numerous conversions to Christianity, and growth of the local church

Anthropologist views
Anthropologists generally have less favorable views of the missionary work begun by Operation Auca, viewing the intervention as the cause for the recent and widely recognized decline of Huaorani culture. Leading Huaorani researcher Laura Rival says that the work of the SIL "pacified" the Huaorani during the 1960s, and argues that missionary intervention caused significant changes in fundamental components of Huaorani society. Prohibitions of polygamy, violence, chanting, and dancing were directly contrary to cultural norms, and the relocation of Huaorani and subsequent intermarrying of previously hostile groups eroded cultural identity.^[27] Others are somewhat less negative—Brysk, after noting that the work of the missionaries opened the area to outside intervention and led to the deterioration of the culture, says that the SIL also informed the Huaorani of their legal rights and taught them how to protect their interests from developers.^[34] Boster goes even further, suggesting that the "pacification" of the Huaorani was a result of "active effort" by the Huaorani themselves, not the result of missionary imposition. He argues that Christianity served as a way for the Huaorani to escape the cycle of violence in their community, since it provided a motivation to abstain from killing.^[35]

The following is an excerpt from the web site Icarus Films
http://icarusfilms.com/cat97/t-z/trinkets.html

( My notes: The man called Moi who is trying to unite the tribe against the oil company Maxus is the man who I visited with in the late 1990's. The following f

ilm deals with encroaching oil company influence in Huaorani lands.

I was going to order the DVD until I saw the price $390.00!!!)

Trinkets and Beads

A Film by Christopher Walker

After twenty years of devastating pollution produced by oil companies in the Amazon basin of Ecuador, a new kind of oil company - Dallas based MAXUS - promises to be the first company to protect the rainforest, and respect the people who live there.

TRINKETS & BEADS tells the story of how MAXUS set out to convince the Huaorani - known as the fiercest tribe in the Amazon - to allow drilling on their land. It is a story that starts in 1957 with the Huaorani massacre of five American missionaries, moving through the evangelization efforts of Rachel Saint, to the pollution of Huaorani lands by Texaco and Shell, and then the manipulation of Huaorani leaders by MAXUS.

Now the Huaorani leader, Moi, is trying to unite the tribe in opposition to MAXUS. "It's not just about exploiting oil," says Moi, "it's about who controls the rainforest... it's everyone's concern because this is the heart of the world..."

Filmed over two years, TRINKETS & BEADS reveals the funny, heartbreaking and thrilling story of the battle waged by indigenous people to preserve their way of life. The story of how the Huaorani are attempting to survive the Petroleum Age on their own terms exposes hidden consequences of our relentless drive to "develop" the world.

"[The Huaorani] have developed considerable skepticism and sophistication about outsiders' intentions. This forceful documentary leaves the impression that accommodation will not prove easy."—The New York Times

"Upsetting and finally, infuriating... a fine work."—Peter Matthiessen, author of At Play In The Fields Of The Lord

"A heartbreaking tale, laden with harrowing images of waste and ruin, that shows how the rampant greed of oil companies has managed to destroy a once peaceful and pristine village in Ecuador."—Chicago Metromix

"An important film that should be seen by anyone concerned about the environment, first-third world relations, globalization, ethnology, and the role of missionaires. This film...helps us move closer to understanding how the common good [the entire earth and all its peoples] is to be incorporated into our decision-making. Unfortunately, it also makes you want to weep."—Bridges, An Interdisciplinary Journal

Best Documentary, 1998 Paris International Environmental Film Festival

1998 Award of Merit in Film, Latin American Studies Association

Best Cultural Survival Film, 1998 Telluride Mountainfilm Festival

Special Mention, 1997 Panorama of Ethnographic Film (Paris)

1997 International Festival of Ethnographic Film (Rio de Janeiro)

Gold Apple, 1997 National Educational Media Network

*****************************************************************************
Here is a LINK to TED. There is a video and a transcript by Phil Borges. His pronunciation lacks something but his heart is in the right place.
http://www.ted.com/talks/phil_borges_on_endangered_cultures.html

2010-06-21T12:03:00.041-04:00

Hanging on to the Past

Once in awhile I have something so serendipitous happen to me that I just know I have a guardian angel. My poor angel used to be very overworked trying to either keep me out of trouble or to rescue me if I got away while he was on his lunch break. Yes, I know it is a him. And I once knew him very well.

Now that he is flapping around where ever angels flap he has devoted more attention to me than he did while he was earthbound. But that is the subject of another posting.

This time it was not a life-threatening situation but it was something that will make me very happy. I hope. That is where the finger crossing thing comes in.

It started out like this. I ran into a friend who began talking about a book that she had just read, "End of The Spear" written by Steven Saint I believe. Steven is the son of the missionary Nathan Saint who was killed in the Amazon basin of Ecuador many years ago.

As she spoke it seemed that she could be talking about the Huaorani tribe that I knew and wrote about in a previous posting way back in October 2009 under the title "Poems and Stories from Another Life Part II - Moi."

That chance meeting started off a chain of events that has me so excited that I had to write about it. I went home and went on the net to see if I could purchase the book. It was then that I discovered that it had been made into a movie so I ordered the DVD.

There were other treasures that dealt with the most fascinating people I have ever met. I ordered another movie "Beyond the Gates of Splendor" and a few books. The movies and one of the books arrived the other day. What gorgeous photos of the tribe...some of whom I had met in 1996 when I travelled to the Shiripuno River to visit them.

Today I watched both movies, Gates was more of a documentary than the End of the Spear one. I became totally engrossed in both of them even though they are a different branch of the Huaorani than the ones I knew. I also saw a different (slanted?) side of missionaries than I previously had been introduced to.

I am no fan of the kind of missionaries or other people who go in to "convert" (meaning tell them that everything they have been doing and believing for the past thousand years or so is wrong) people who are living in peace and harmony with nature. Especially when the word they are bringing crushes the beautiful innocence of these people, shames them into wearing clothing and seeks to obliterate their own rich and wondrous belief system. I have heard too many stories first hand from various tribes regarding their treatment at the hands of various missionaries to be anything but sad when I hear of these encounters.

If these movies are true then, yes, the missionaries persuaded the tribes people not to kill each other and other tribes people, and brought them medicine. They also brought them diseases previously unknown to them which wiped them out quicker than the killing did!

In fact I just came across an entry in Wikipedia today regarding this missionary/tribal encounter.
"The deaths of the men galvanized the missionary effort in the United States, sparking an outpouring of funding for evangelization efforts around the world. Their work is still frequently remembered in evangelical publications, and in 2006 was the subject of the film production End of the Spear. Several years after the death of the men, the widow of Jim Elliot, Elisabeth, and the sister of Nate Saint, Rachel, returned to Ecuador as missionaries with the Summer Institute of Linguistics (now SIL International) to live among the Huaorani. This eventually led to the conversion of many, including some of those involved in the killing. While largely eliminating tribal violence, their efforts exposed the tribe to exploitation and increased influence from the outside. This has caused Huaorani culture to begin to disappear, but anthropologists argue over the ultimate effect—some view the missionary work as cultural imperialism, while others contend that the influence has been beneficial for the tribe."

In the book, "Spirit of the Huaorani" one of the tribe is quoted as saying of the missionaries something like this, " When you came here I had my land and you had your bible. You taught me to close my eyes and pray. When I opened my eyes you had my land and I had your bible."

The next thing I knew I was rooting through a box of old VHS tapes wanting to immerse myself in the videos of my trip. About 4 or 5 years ago, when my movie camera died, I had them transferred from the original camera tapes to VHS. At the time I was told that because I had not stored the movie camera tapes properly and the sound and date portion had been destroyed. I said, go ahead anyway as at least I can see the places I visited.

I got the two VHS tapes out, put one in the machine and began watching. Shock and sorrow were my only reaction. the tapes had deteriorated to the point where there were only tiny fragments of movie and the rest was blue or grey patches.

Something spurred me on to see if I could either buy a machine to transfer them - bad as they were - to disk. I have a "thing" about preserving the past. Sometimes to my detriment since I tend to get stuck back there in often painful moments.

The software and instructions to hook up my VHS machine to my computer and thence to my DVD burner cost $80.00 Would I ever need it again? Was there another way to do this? More calls and many price comparisons later I found what sounded like the right person for me and made an appointment to bring my tapes in.

I gathered up the tiny movie camera tapes (8 of them) and the bad VHS tapes they have been copied to. Plus about 3 that were 18 years old but still in better shape than the newer ones I had had copied "professionally".

To make a long story short the movie camera tapes were intact! There was nothing wrong with the sound at all, nor the dates. These will be copied once again but to a disk.

Obviously I had been lied to and cheated the first time around. Now I am not the kind of person to take this lightly. I will track down the SOB who almost made me lose a part of not just my history but the history of the disappearing Huaorani tribe.

I for one never can understand why a person will lie to you for the sake of a few bucks. All he had to say was I am sorry I do not have the equipment to copy these properly.

Perhaps I am not the only dissatisfied customer for his shop is closed and he now operates out of his home. I can't find it in the phone book now. Lucky him because I was thinking to give him a piece of my mind. Lucky me too as I have so little left to spare!

He would probably like to tell you that he lost his business because Wal-Mart came to town. I wonder.

Hanging on to the past, even when some people think it is damaged can be a good thing sometimes.

Down to earth - for real

2010-06-18T21:08:00.000-04:00

Yep. It's that time of year. The garden is screaming for attention. And I have been down to earth and wallowing for real.

In early spring I hired a young neighbour to dig up some sod for me to enlarge two of the vegetable gardens.

After he extended the East garden by the several foot wide strip you can see here (the long strip at the right side that is not yet covered with straw) he moved on to enlarge another garden on the South side.

After finishing this job the six foot tall 250 pound 21 year old neighbour boy laid down his shovel, proclaiming the work was too hard.

Then MY hard work began. I had to take out the rocks he left in the soil and replace the good top soil that he took away with the sod.

But I caught a break when I discovered that the old sod from a couple of seasons ago was now nice new crumbly composted soil. So that was a bonus as I did not need to purchase any.

I ended up shovelling thirty wheelbarrows full and distributing it between the newly enlarged gardens. Once that was mixed with dozens of bags of peat moss, black earth and manure I felt it was ready. And just in the nick of time - as it was now the beginning of June. It had been dry and very hot. But as soon as I got all the veggies in the rains came like a wonderful gift from the heavens. They have continued for several weeks on and off.

Here is the South garden with a view of the tomato plants. I went nuts this year and bought thirty two of them! But you never know. The first year I had eight plants and had just about enough tomatoes frozen to get me through the winter. The second year I had 15 plants but because of blight I got hardly enough for half the winter. So far this year things are looking good - weather-wise.

In addition I put in about 50 potatoes, planting them in shallow holes with dead leaves and pine needles added, then piling straw on top.

If this works you end up with easily harvested potatoes with no loss due to cutting with the shovel when you harvest. You can just move the straw aside and pull a few out! And very little digging at all as you just keep pulling the straw up with your hands and tucking it around the leaves as they emerge. I am excited to see if this works. Here are a couple of potato sprouts pushing through.

In this East garden are also hundreds of onions and garlic, leaf lettuce, radish, spinach and Giant Red Asian mustard. And peas!

Here they are clinging to an old farm gate that I found behind the barn. Forms a little privacy fence too. You can see the difference a month makes.

If Peter C Tail allows it I will share the wealth with neighbours, friends and maybe even the food bank. The little darling had already mown down a third of my peas before I put up chicken wire.

I did an experiment in January with Winter Sowing of a number of seeds. I cant sow seeds inside my house as I have not enough room or the proper light. So I chose wintersowing. Out of 40 different types about 15 came up. Of those about 12 survived till I got them planted. Originally I had them against the west fence where they would not be blown over and would get plenty of sun. But when spring arrived I didnt want to impede the growth of the other plants that they were sitting on top of so I moved them to a little greenhouse which I placed on the back porch. Up came a big wind and down went the greenhouse spewing the seeds all over the sidewalk. I scooped them up as best I could and miraculously most survived. I see that they should have been transplanted to a larger container and fertilized as they are very tiny. Next year I will try again.

If you are interested in learning about Winter Sowing check out the original website. It is very informative. Try keying in Wintersown.org

Happy Gardening to all.

Bokashi Cycle for food and pet waste

2010-03-26T09:41:00.000-04:00

We don't have garbage pickup where I live. This has encouraged me to flex my already well-developed recycling muscle. I want to make as few trips to the dump with smelly garbage in the back of my car as I possibly can.

As I mentioned earlier red wiggler worms compost my vegetable scraps and newspapers. Some bulkier things like avocado pits and melon rinds I put in the outside compost bin and wait years for them to degrade to the point where I can use them. I have actually had better luck just leaving a very informal pile on the ground. Perhaps it is because the naturally occurring soil microbes have easier access to the material. I have tried wrapping food waste in newspapers to add the "brown" or carbon element. I add a few shovels of earth but still it is maddeningly slow. Plastic, heavy cardboard and metal go to the dump along with non-compostable meat and bones.

The only thing that is problematic for me is the kitty litter and cat waste. Some people flush that down the toilet but I am on a septic system and that was not an alternative for me. Trekking the heavy bags of excrement to the dump was a decidedly unpleasant job. Adding it to my outdoor compost pile was smelly and meant that I could not use the compost on food crops. But today I think I may have stumbled upon an acceptable solution in the Bokashi system of fermentation.

The link to the Bokashi site is
http://www.bokashicycle.com/howitworks.html

Don't let the particularly amateurish videos put you off. There is some interesting information contained therein if you give it a chance.

I was so convinced that I was almost ready to order the special packets of culture. But then I got to thinking. What are they really selling? I had already pretty much decided that I didn't need their fancy plastic storage items, dispensers or buckets - all stuff that is readily available at the dollar store for a lot less money.

So I got to thinking what is the magic ingredient and how can I "DIM" (Do it Myself)? As you may have gathered I am a person who likes to beat the system. So I did some more looking and found this fascinating site.
http://www.wildlifegardeners.org/forum/fertilizing-soil-amendments/1292-extreme-bokashi-make-your-own-innoculant.html

It seems making your own involves messing about with newspaper, rice water and skim milk. All readily available items.

I guess what it all boils down to is this. How much work am I (or you) willing to do? Would I prefer to fool around making my own innoculant or would I prefer to haul bags of poop to the dump. Of course I could always order the innoculant but my Scots blood balks at that. Hmmm.

I will let you know what I decide.

2010-02-03T09:32:00.001-05:00

It has been awhile since I have updated my page. But recently I saw a picture on the net that struck me like a lightning bolt.

Perhaps even as far back as the Garden Of Eden man has been waging a battle to protect his precious bulbs from squirrels.

I personally have had a modicum of success by burying cat hair, or even my own hair, just over the bulb.

Members of the on line garden club I belong to have been sharing suggestions which included a motion sensitive device that you attach to a hose.

But this picture I saw poses an ecologically safe method as well. I call it the Marie Antoinette Solution. You may remember that Marie was famous for her expression, "Let Them Eat Cake"!

And hey this might even keep them away from the bird feeders.

Since this picture was circulating freely as part of one of those "cute pictures of animals" emails and the photographers name was not included I am unable to give credit.

Protest

2009-12-17T09:49:00.010-05:00

THOUSANDS GATHER TO PROTEST GLOBAL WARMING

I recently received this clever photo in my inbox. Now I wonder if each of us spent as much time on making some small changes in our life that would alleviate global warming as we do on sending jokes making fun of it perhaps we could find a way to slow it down.

I guess there are still some who do not believe that there is a crisis. Those would be the people who also don't believe that keeping things out of land fill by trying to recycle where possible and composting food wastes will help the cause.

And they would rather allow a tap to drip for years wasting tons (yes tons)* of water instead of going out and buying a 20 cent washer to install. Or using a clothes dryer rather than hanging their clothes in the fresh air and sunshine. Leaving lights and appliances such as TV's, computers, printers, radios on in rooms where there are no human inhabitants. I don't know but I guess these would be the same people who protest about the high cost of their hydro bills.

They might even be the same ones who still water their lawns. That would be to soak in the weed killing poisons they just applied. The sooner to reach all our water supplies.

But ask the people in Bolivia who have seen a mountain top glacier shrink from miles wide and hundreds of feet deep to a small patch of slush in only a few decades. Boo hoo where will the tourists ski now? In addition to causing the loss of tourist dollars this inconsiderate glacier is now threatening the water supply of many villages below.

My aunt used to say, "Nothing lasts forever" and I guess that is what is happening here. We thought we would always have plenty of fresh water and whales and elephants and rhubarb without any thought as to our role as stewards.

Creationists believe we were given dominion over the animals. I won't get into a debate here about who or what may have been responsible for this gross error in judgment but rather say, for those who believe that man is superior to the beasts of the field then with superiority comes responsibility for their welfare.

Like spoiled children who are handed everything without having to lift a finger we have used it all up and looked for more. But what if one day the larder was bare?

Evolutionists could say that it is the natural order of things just ticking along.

I am not going to argue with either one. Because no matter who is right we have been far too casual about our natural resources for far too long. If we expected that someone else would come along and fix the mess we "stewards" made that someone must be busy because they have not appeared.

Now when the resources are almost gone we are still denying there is a problem.

If you care about this sort of thing check out this link for all kinds of information http://www.treehugger.com/

Wake up people!

Author's Note:

A reader has commented (see full text in comments below) that he does not believe that MAN (his emphasis) created this crisis. He seems to believe it to be a natural phenomenon. Whoa! Is he blaming it on a WOMAN; Mother Nature perhaps?

Unlike him arguing with mine, I will not argue with his position since being a woman I am naturally biased.

I do however stand firmly by my assertions that we are shirking our responsibility to use our resources with care.

Like Pete Seeger said:

One man's hands can't tear a prison down,

Two men's hands can't tear a prison down,

But if one and two and fifty make a million,

We'll see that day come round,

We'll see that day come round.

This "many hands" theory can apply to anything so take some action no matter how small or insignificant it may seem. You may not save the world from global warming but you will save some resources and save yourself a few bucks in the bargain on those hydro bills.

*Let's take one tap that drips at a rate of 1 liter in 1 hour, that's 24 liters a day, 720 liters a month, and 8,760 liters a year, almost 9 tons of water. And that is just ONE tap.

Poems and Stories from another life - Part V - Pase del Nino

2009-12-03T09:56:00.002-05:00

CHRISTMAS BELOW THE EQUATOR
By E. J. Brunton

In Cuenca, Ecuador, on December 24th we always celebrated with an afternoon parade of the “Nino Viajero”, or, literally, the traveling Christ child. Children are adorned in expensive, hand-embroidered, faux pearl and jewel-encrusted costumes. For several hours the streets overflow with these mini-Madonnas and Christ child replicas.

Horses, mules and burros are decked out with silver and leather bridles, strings of cookies, candies, fruits, vegetables, bottles of sugar cane liquor, and packs of cigarettes. Often the patient animals are ridden by whole roasted pigs or turkeys with paper money stuffed in their mouths. More often the rider is a local roasted delicacy known in Quichua as “cuye”. We Canadians know it as that cuddly household pet, the guinea pig, Recent entries to the scene are imported canned or bottled goods which are also strung on the
animals as a sign of significant wealth.

Each year a family will elect to decorate their horse for the event. The following year an uncle or cousin will take on the challenge and must always try to double or outdo what his predecessor has done. I imagine that explains why 16 wheeler trucks are beginning to replace the noble horse in recent years. Horses would stagger under the burden of such wealth.

Indigenous children in native costume perform a dance not unlike the English maypole dance. Each dancer, holding a colorful ribbon, weaves his way through intricate steps while winding and then unwinding the ribbons as he retraces his steps. Accompanying the dancers are groups playing the “rondador” (pan flute) cow hide drums, strings of shells, “bocina” (a several yards long instrument made partially from cow horn), and tiny ukulele-like instruments formed from entire armadillo hides called “charangos”.

Village bands from outlying areas playing tubas, drums and trumpets consume quantities of contraband cane liquor as they compete with ghetto blasters clutched by the little Christ Child and Virgin Mary look-a-likes. Ironically the song was often Madonna’s “Like a Virgin.” No one seems to mind the cacophony.

Thirsty watchers quaff from a smeary communal glass, some dubious home-made liquids, carried in grimy pails by the vendors. The lone glass is carefully swished out after each use in the one bucket of murky water which will have to last throughout the entire parade.

Snow cones are made by shaving a huge block of ice with hand operated contraptions painted in gaudy hues. This device, accompanied by the ice and the bottles of sugary, brightly colored syrup flavorings, ambulates atop a three-wheeled bicycle. Others hawk tempting slices of pineapple, papaya, mango, sticks of sugar cane or refreshing coconut water served right in the shell.

The mingled aromas of shish-ka-bob like “chusos”, fried “llapingachos”(potato cakes), deep-fried, thinly sliced “chifles” of plantain and mouth watering slices from a whole roasted pig with its eyes, ears, hooves and tail intact, mingle to tickle your palate. You can have these on a take out basis, wrapped up in an environmentally friendly leaf, or you can eat at the stand from another communal dish. May I recommend the leaf?

At the end of the parade rides the long anticipated guest of honor; the tiny wooden Christ child. He is dressed in a silken robe encrusted with jewels. Accompanying him is a marching military band and some cavalry. This little statue was taken to Italy over 60 years ago to be blessed by the Pope, thus gaining Him the name of the traveling Christ Child.

Making your way home you catch sight of some of the participants straggling away from the parade followed by bands of laughing children who try to steal the candies and cookies which
adorn the exhausted horses. I hear that the food is handed out to the needy after the parade.

After all Christmas is for sharing in any part of the world.

Poems and Stories from another life - Part V - The Bridge

2009-12-03T09:19:00.001-05:00

The Bridge
by E. J. Brunton originally published in the Napanee Guide and Helium

On Christmas Eve 1999 I sought some solace in the blue- domed Cathedral on the main square in Cuenca. Monsignor Luna Tobar was in fine form. His voice echoed off the gold-encrusted walls and sorrowful plaster saints. This would be the last mass I would attend here as I knew I must leave Ecuador.

Outside, the poor and the disenfranchised crowded the darkened square. A cold wind wrapped itself around the portals of the ancient Cathedral. During mass shabby old women and barefoot youngsters plucked at our sleeves for a handout. Many of the well-dressed pious shooed them away with looks of disgust. I was incensed. Then and there I vowed I would do something to help them.

Next morning I hauled out Grandma’s big kettle and threw in lots of vegetables and meat for a hearty soup. While this bubbled away I made a pile of sandwiches and then struck off with the fragrant feast in the trunk of my car.

I headed for the bridge where a friend who worked with street kids told me I would find plenty of homeless people to feed. She warned me that they sniffed glue and might get a bit rowdy.

As I drove slowly up I saw a few kids on the grass near the Tomebamba River. With a little apprehension, I hailed them and opened the trunk. The rich aroma of the hot soup drew about a dozen ragged dirty boys. They had battle scars that they had sewn up with needle and thread as they couldn’t afford a doctor.

“Feliz Navidad! Who’s hungry?” I asked unnecessarily.

The boys crowded round, looking at me with curiosity, as I began to ladle the soup into plastic cups and hand out sandwiches. They wolfed this down and politely asked,

“Please Senora. May I have another sandwich? More soup Please?”

After their small brown puppy was fed, the leader of the boys asked if he could invite some nearby street cleaners and a family of 5 who were begging up at the corner.

“Of course!” I said, as I laded out more of the thick rich soup.

Another car drew up and the boys ran over. The window was rolled down just enough for the driver to thrust out a round loaf of the traditional fruity Christmas bread before the car sped off.

We sat on the curb for awhile talking about their life under the bridge. They slept in cardboard boxes with more flattened boxes and newspapers as a cover. They slept close together for comfort and warmth. They sniffed glue to forget the cold and hunger, and the pain of being alone on the streets.
When we parted, one by one the ragged boys hugged me. One said, “Senora. I asked myself today who will ever think of us on Christmas? Then you came along. How can we ever repay you?”

“Dios se lo pague,” said another; God will pay you.

Crossing the bridge to reach those boys had made my problems seem so insignificant. Their grateful smiles as they waved goodbye were all the payment I would ever need.

Poems and Stories from another life - Part V Loaves and Fishes

2009-12-03T08:48:00.001-05:00

LOAVES AND FISHES

by E. J Brunton, originally published in the Napanee Guide

“Do you think you could take more than two little girls?” Sister Maria Jose asked hopefully.

I looked at Julio and he shrugged, “I don’t see why not."

“Wonderful!” cried the nun and she flew out of the cold drafty room of the Orphanage before we could change our minds.

That was Christmas Eve, 1992 in Cuenca, Ecuador. But the story began a month earlier when I was seized by an urge to make sock dolls. After I had about thirty done I wondered what to do with them. I called my sister-in-law and asked her advice.

“Why don’t you give them to an orphanage?” was her practical reply.

So that was how it started. I called the Orphanage and offered the dolls. The nun said they would be greatly appreciated but could I bring them a few days before Christmas as most of the little girls were going home for the holidays?

“They go home for the holidays? I thought they were orphans,” I exclaimed.

The Sister continued by way of explanation, “Yes, their families are poor and so they give them to us to feed and clothe and educate until they are 12. Of course there are some that don’t have families and they will be staying here. You couldn’t take a couple of them for Christmas could you?”

I was staggered at the rapidity of what was happening here. How had a few innocent sock dolls suddenly morphed into real little dolls coming to spend the holidays with us?

At the agreed upon time we went to the orphanage to leave the dolls and to meet the little girls who would come home with us on Christmas Eve.

All of these Spanish Colonial buildings began to blur into one after awhile. They sullenly sat at the very edge of the narrow sidewalks, bordering the marble-cobbled streets.

Hermano Miguel, as the orphanage was called, was typical of these fortress like structures. Its four foot thick adobe walls had stood the test of tempests and earthquakes. The large wooden doors were studded with brass nails and deeply carved. A hole cut into the door at eye level was covered in a sturdy mesh screen so that you could communicate with the concierge. The whole was locked up with an ancient wrought iron lock accessible only with a 3 pound key.

The concierge let us in and showed us to a drafty room overlooking the pleasant courtyard. There were roses and trees and benches. Nestled carelessly amongst the flowers were ancient pre Colombian pots.

We sat for a few minutes as a cool breeze blew stiffly in the open windows chilling us to the bone. The room was dimly lit with a single naked bulb suspended from the 18 foot ceiling.

Soon Sister Maria Jose arrived. She was starched and sharply defined but she had a mischievous look that I liked immediately. She greeted us briskly and then rushed off to gather the children.

After meeting the children we went shopping in the open air markets for warm sweaters, underpants, socks, candy and toys. My generous neighbours and my sister-in-law donated their children’s outgrown clothes for the rest of the kids at the orphanage.

On Christmas Eve afternoon we returned to the orphanage to pick up our two little charges. I had been thinking how strange it was that no forms had been filled out and the nun had not even asked our names, where we lived, what we did, or come to inspect where the little girls would be staying.

How different it was from our paranoid, bubble-wrapped society and how dangerous it could have been. Never were we asked any of these questions in the months that ensued. It is easy to see why Latin America is one of the favorite spots to pick up street children for use and abuse in various horrible enterprises such as snuff films, in the organ trade, or smuggling drugs in their lifeless bodies.

Sister Maria Jose asked apologetically, “Do you think you could take more than two little girls?”

Before we had time to ask how many, she was gone and back in a flash with 6 little girls ranging in age from 4 years to 12 years old. They were freshly scrubbed and ready to go. Well, it would be crowded in our two guest beds but how could you choose which ones were to stay at the orphanage?

We took the girls out to the house that we were building in the country on a 5 acre lot that ran down to the river. The children gamboled about, climbing trees, picking avocados, oranges, lemons and capuli and teasing the dogs while we settled up the business of the Christmas baskets for the workers.

We had about six full-time men building the house and two ladies who were clearing the fields with hoes and old-fashioned sickles with cow-horn handles. The custom was to prepare a basket with cooking oil, sugar, rice, a live chicken, salt, a can or two of tuna, some dry noodles, a bottle of cane liquor and whatever else you could fit in.

Once the baskets were handed out, a drink shared and Christmas wishes exchanged. We prepared to leave. One of the ladies who had been clearing the field came rushing up. “No basket for us Don Julio? Not even a fruit bread? Since the ladies had only been working there for a couple of days we had forgotten about them.

We felt terrible so Julio said,” Jump on. I’ll give you Christmas dinner.” One of the ladies protested that she couldn’t go so Julio gave her some money. The other lady, Luisa, begged us to wait a moment while she ran home to clean up.

After about 15 minutes she returned. Following behind her were 6 small children ranging in age from a few months to 15 years old. The turkey we were having roasted at one of the local bakeries seemed to shrink in my mind. Could we possibly feed all these people? I should have asked Sister Maria Jose about how you did the loaves and fishes thing.

Julio was his usual calm self while I tried to squelch my mounting hysteria. Once home he picked up the phone to call our friend, the resourceful Manuel. Manuel loved a challenge and readily agreed to get some more food somewhere and I set about to prepare the vegetables that would go along with the turkey which Julio had gone to retrieve. My kitchen was thronged with excited children and Luisa was peeling potatoes in quantity.

I retired to a quiet corner with my own personal recipe for hysteria - a tumbler of neat rum . I counted our guests as I wondered how in the world we could come up with gifts not only for the orphans but also for the unexpected multitude. There would now be 16 people at the table or perched on the sofas and chairs. Suddenly I thought of the used clothing in my office. I wrapped up some of it for the unexpected orphans and gave the rest of it to Luisa.

Pandemonium was in full swing when Julio and Manuel arrived. Julio’s natural leadership skills got everyone organized with various tasks. The kids would set the table, Manuel would carve the turkey, I would just continue to drink. “Relax, you don’t have to do a thing,” he said refilling my glass.

Somehow dinner was served and everyone had their fill. It wasn’t loaves and fishes but it filled the bill.

2009-11-21T12:50:00.004-05:00

What used to be called cheap
by E J Brunton originally published in the Napanee Guide

Sometimes I do things that make my more lavish friends smirk and shake their heads. For instance, I really have to think twice to throw away a nice clean bag, be it paper or plastic.

I keep all those plastic margarine and cottage cheese tubs; save string and aluminum foil, cardboard, twist-ties and elastic bands. Christmas cards and envelopes become my note paper; unusual bottles hold flowers; tin cans with the juicy tomato picture still on them keep my pencils handy. Mesh onion bags stuffed with too small bits of wool and string can be hung in a tree as a handy dispenser for birds to choose their nesting materials.

Where did I get these strange habits? Well, long before recycling became the vogue my mother was the subject of much derision amongst her friends. She kept everything; neat piles of butcher paper, huge balls of string and jars of elastic bands. Little bits of soap were saved in a curious metal basket and swished around in the dishwater. Wrapping paper was ironed and reused till it became quite a valuable antique. Tea bags were dried (on previously enjoyed aluminum pie plates) for fertilizing what she jokingly called her “tea roses”. She even saved waxed cardboard milk cartons for freezing the trout that my father brought home. No drawing paper for me when there were plenty of nice clean cardboard pieces from inside the shirts my father sent to the drycleaner.

When her friends would smirk and ask her why she was saving all that old garbage my mother would say, “Well, maybe it’s my Scottish blood or maybe it’s because I lived through war and depression. Those days left an impression on me and I just can’t waste. Why throw out perfectly useable items that you get free everyday and then go and buy those same items?

You send me pies in aluminum tins and I send mine back to you in the same tins. And that bacon grease and bread crusts in old tin cans in the freezer? I remove the tin and put that mixture into an onion bag that I hang out for the birds in winter. My husband is glad to get the kitchen waste for his compost pile and Lord knows he has a wonderful garden that I’ve heard you admire.”

Mother passed away in 1988 but the habits she instilled in me have lived on. What used to be considered cheap is now considered not only chic but indispensable with shrinking space into which to put our garbage.

I can still remember her telling me that those friends who laughed at her saving ways would sometimes ask her for a loan. I hope she didn’t rub it in, when they came with hat in hand. “I’m just like Liberace,” she would say. “I’m laughing all the way to the bank!”

Note : After posting this article I found this blog from Gaiam with some interesting green gift wrap ideas at this link

http://life.gaiam.com/gaiam/p/Top-10-Green-Gift-Wrap-Ideas.html

Mother's on the tightrope again

2009-11-14T14:18:00.001-05:00

I compiled the following from several news reports (CBC, BBC) on the subject.

Chinese meteorolgists have been messing about with the weather in an attempt to even out the precipitation levels. The country’s north is prone to droughts, while the south is often flooded.

In an attempt to alleviate this the government is building a huge network of tunnels and waterways that will funnel water from the south to the north, but the project is still five years from completion.

Meanwhile according to Beijing Evening News, the Weather Modification Office seeded rain clouds by spraying them 186 times with silver iodide to ease a drought that was threatening the wheat crop.

The unexpected arrival of a cold front caused the heaviest snowfall in at least 54 years. In Beijing tens of thousands of people were stranded on highways linking the city with Shanxi, Hebei, Liaoning and Inner Mongolia. Tragically, the snow also caused a primary school cafeteria's roof to collapse in Hebei, killing three children and injuring 28 others.

One report indicates that the use of salt on the roads has resulted in the death of about ten thousand trees.

When are we going to understand that when we twang the tightrope Mother loses her balance?

Unashamed Hippy II

2009-11-06T17:03:00.005-05:00

FREE LOVE AND HAIGHT

By E. J. Brunton

At eighteen, hoping to kill two birds with one stone, I left the bosom of my family and struck out for California. I would spend the next year at California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland.

Art Colleges didn’t indulge in the hazing and frosh antics that Queen’s University did, so I could kill off that distasteful bird. The second bird was my burning desire to be an artist.

A year at the college was enough to kill that one too. I saw early on that while I loved to create I just didn’t have the dedication the other students possessed and creating what someone else told you to wasn’t - well, very creative.
It was 1961 and the Flower Child Movement was in full swing. Golden Gate Park overflowed with dreamy, long-haired hippies in their colorful garb.

Smooth-pated, saffron-robed Hari Krishnas chanted in time to their chiming bells.

Timothy Leary extolled the virtues of lysergic acid diethyl amide, commonly known as acid or LSD.

Ubiquitous coffee houses sprouted overnight in North Beach and “happenings” were staged nightly.

The City Lights Book Store had telephones on every table. Each table was numbered so you could make a discreet call to another client that caught your fancy. Ginsberg was there; and Kerouac too.

Barefoot Baez would make appearances from time to time at some local hotspot, usually shadowed by Dylan. My room-mate gained notoriety once it was learned that she had gone to high school with Bob in Brooklyn.

In the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco Free Stores abounded. You could get your dinner, a couch with no cushions, and a nearly-new pair of shoes with one quick stop.

Free love spawned lots of little Flower Children. Free Clinics looked after the venereal diseases and drug addictions that it spawned too.

Employment agencies were set up especially for these undesirable hippies, some of whom strangely wanted to work. The prospective employers would most likely be bohemians themselves who used the barter system in payment or bleeding-heart liberals who secretly admired the free and easy life style, but lived it only vicariously.

We art students made pilgrimages to this Mecca every chance we got. North Beach and Chinatown were our favorite haunts. We would buy five cents worth of bologna; then we would scavenge left-over rolls from the outdoor patio at Finnochio’s. Lunch was taken cross-legged on the grass in the park.

Thinking the fifty-cent greeting cards outrageously expensive, we copied down the verses and made our own.

And we could nurse a cup of coffee for hours listening to some of the best musicians that the jazz and folk scene had to offer.

Concha Laine, the daughter of Frankie Laine, famed for his rendition of “Ghost Riders”, was our classmate and he often visited the school.

I was in awe of my drawing teacher, Ralph Borges, who was featured in Time Magazine, the year I left.

Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, lame and blind, came to give a free concert at the school.

I learned to make silver jewelry and Found Sculpture from discarded objects, to paint with a stick instead of a brush and greatly improved my drawing skills. I learned that, unfairly, only female models took ALL their clothes off in the Life Drawing Class.

I had never had a room-mate and was not prepared for Laurie, from Brooklyn. She was short and brown with shiny-black hair and bright- blue eyes. She shaved off her eye brows and never cleaned her side of the room. Her sheets fell to tatters when the dorm mother forced her to wash them - for the first time - at the end of the year. There just wasn’t time to attend to these mundane tasks when there were poetry and songs just waiting to be written, guitars to be played and music to compose.

We dorm kids would talk for hours as we listened to Ravi Shankar, Theodore Bikel, or my favorites, The Carter Family. Folk Music was “de rigueur” and everyone had a guitar.

One night I was supposed to go to the movies with Becky and Ann, two girls from the dorm, but I begged off at the last minute.

Just down at the corner they were hailed by a man in a car and offered a ride. Anne got in but Becky wouldn’t. Before Anne could get out again the man drove off with her as Becky stood helplessly by. Anne was raped at gun point and held hostage for several hours.

Becky was able to draw a picture of the perpetrator which was broadcast nation wide and he was caught. By then Ann had escaped and next day her parents took her out of school.

It was an exciting era for a small-town girl and I have never quite recovered from it. I’m just an aging hippy and there seemed to be no cure; at least not until tonight.

Over 40 years have passed and I am looking at a television program about Haight-Ashbury in the sixties. How silly it all seems now! The make-shift weddings in the park; the wedding feast laid out on a blanket consists of a loaf of Wonder Bread in its blue and yellow plastic bag. The squalor of the drugged-out kids sitting listlessly on the street bundled in filthy quilts doesn’t look so appealing, now. The long, flowing hair looks greasy, the colorful garb, shabby.

The musical, Hair, which I watched a few days later, is Hollywood’s cleaned up eulogy to those times.
The much-touted peace and love that would save the world never came to pass. The visions of a time when everything would be free are gone forever, replaced by more sinister things like crack and cocaine, heroin, ecstasy and date-rape drugs.

It really was more innocent then in the time of Love and Haight.

Unashamed Hippy I

2009-11-06T08:14:00.003-05:00

Did you catch the rerun episode of Six Feet Under last night? The one where Claire goes to visit her aunt Sarah. Aunt Sarah has invited some of her old friends for a nostalgic weekend. One of the songs they were playing as they danced around the fire half-naked was Woodstock by Joni Mitchell.

Now I did not have the fortune to attend Woodstock and I might not even have liked being surrounded by so many people. But the song has a haunting eery quality that appeals to me. My favorite part is the chorus " We are stardust. We are golden and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden."

We are - and we do.

Here are the lyrics. Hope it brings back some memories for you too.

Woodstock
by Joni Mitchell

I came upon a child of God

He was walking along the road

And I asked him where are you going

And this he told me

I'm going on down to Yasgur's farm *

I'm going to join in a rock 'n' roll band

I'm going to camp out on the land

I'm going to try an' get my soul free

We are stardust

We are golden

And we've got to get ourselves

Back to the garden

Then can I walk beside you

I have come here to lose the smog

And I feel to be a cog in something turning

Well maybe it is just the time of year

Or maybe it's the time of man

I don't know who I am

But you know life is for learning

We are stardust

We are golden

And we've got to get ourselves

Back to the garden

By the time we got to Woodstock

We were half a million strong

And everywhere there was song and celebration

And I dreamed I saw the bombers

Riding shotgun in the sky

And they were turning into butterflies

Above our nation

We are stardust

Billion year old carbon

We are golden

Caught in the devil's bargain

And we've got to get ourselves

back to the garden

That is the lot of a bargain hunter

2009-11-05T08:47:00.000-05:00

Okay. So I couldn't resist it. I mean tulips bulbs at half price? I admit it. I lost my head. Any day now 126 tulip bulbs will arrive and have to be planted toute de suite.

I have the room but now I need the fortitude to go out there and dig in what I hope will still be unfrozen ground to plant them. Today would not be a day conducive to this. Rain and bits of snow are falling steadily.

But even worse if the ground is frozen when they arrive my purchase will turn quickly from bargain to bad decision.

Stay tuned....

Everything is grist for my mill

2009-11-05T08:41:00.001-05:00

A friend provided me with this lovely piece attributed to the Apache (see her comments on the Cree Prophesy post). Thanks S. I am going to be lazy today and include it.

May the Sun
bring you new energy by day.

May the Moon
softly restore you by night.

May the Rain
wash away your worries.

May the Breeze
blow new strength into your being.

May you Walk
gently through the world and know
its beauty all the days of your life.

Jim Conrad, Naturalist

2009-11-03T13:45:00.002-05:00

Some time ago I signed up for Jim Conrad's weekly Naturalist Newsletter. Jim is one of those lucky individuals who have the courage of their conviction. He spends every waking moment doing something he loves. He attained this freedom when he realized that some things are more important than money.

I often marvel at how Jim's views and mine are so closely aligned although my convictions seem to waver. I still heavily favor my creature comforts! But he seems to take the thoughts right out of my head and express them much more eloquently than I ever could.

This is just an excerpt from his Nov 1, 2009 edition. To see more of Jim's free newsletters go to his web site

www.backyardnature.net/n/index.htm

THE DA VINCI CODE, GLOBAL WARMING, TRUTH
by Jim Conrad, from his Newsletter

For years I've heard about Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code so when I stumbled upon a website offering it as a free text download I grabbed it. Finally I know why everyone wants to take a new look at Da Vinci's "The Last Supper." The novel has spawned a whole new generation of conspiracy theories, plus there's a spate of new books and websites either debunking The Da Vince Code's most provocative assertions, or embellishing them. It looks like most people just don't know who or what to believe.

At the same time I was reading The Da Vince Code, poll results came out reporting that despite an avalanche of scientific data documenting the effects of global warming, people believing that there is solid evidence that Earth's average temperature has increased over the past few decades has dropped from 71% last year to only 57% today.

Moreover, in the current public debate on healthcare issues, one side says one thing as the other says the opposite, and opinion seems to track with the side spending most on TV ads. Also I hear on National Public Radio that about half of North Americans believe in ghosts.

It seems that this may be yet another of those yin/yang situations: The more information we have, the less capable we are of processing it. As the information explosion continues, maybe average people will lose their ability to deal with information so completely that they'll become as superstitious, functionally ignorant and vulnerable to manipulation by truth-bearing "illuminati" as our ancient ancestors.

That doesn't have to be the case, however, for Nature offers us all the truths we really need. Moreover, if anything on Earth is trustworthy, surely it is Nature, for Nature is the Creator's most profound and immediate Creation. Nature's structure, the evolutionary trends She manifests, and the spiritual insights She inspires within each of us spontaneously, reveal truths enough to guide us through meaningful, enriched and enlightened lives.

Nature's structure reveals sacred patterns, the most obvious being those of recycling, the sanctity of diversity, and the recognition of mutual interdependency among all components of the biosphere.

Nature's Earthly evolutionary history reveals to us aspects of the "Creator's plan." Maybe the most transfixing feature of this history is the fact that throughout Earth's biological evolution species have arisen with ever more intense awareness of their own context, and with ever greater capacities for feeling creative inspiration. This trend amounts to a spiritual imperative for each of us personally: To harmonize our own lives with the flow of Earthly evolution by always struggling to know more, to understand more, to feel more...

Surely spiritual insights gained by reflecting on Nature's nature inevitably vary from person to person, because we are all programmed to interpret the input of our senses differently. Among my own most useful spiritual insights are those based on The Six Miracles of Nature, which I outline and annotate at http://www.backyardnature.net/j/6/.

Those Six Miracles, to me, reveal a Universe more mysterious, more generous and more beautiful than my little brain can grasp. Meditation on them has bestowed me with a satisfying spiritual rootedness, and a profound reverence for The Creative Impulse. And when I find myself wondering about "the meaning of it all," sometimes I glance that Meaning by imagining what form the Seventh Miracle may someday take.

*****

Poems and Stories from another life - Part IV

2009-10-30T10:05:00.062-04:00

Following are a number of prose poems or word paintings written while travelling in the Andes Mountains between Puyo and Alausi, Ecuador in 1998. Usually I travelled by bus; an experience at once humbling, intimate and uplifting. I love buses.

THE CONDOR’S BACK
by E.J.Brunton

Clouds bloom at our feet, the condors back glistens in the misted light below. We glide, he and I, through the steaming cauldron, oblivious to the cotton batten-wrapped villages far below us.

Beneath me slides his disappearing majesty. Sad, solitary one; his mate’s the victim of sacrifice. His children found in zoos. Hated enemy of the poor, whose scrawny sheep he carries off; the enveloping mists encase him like a shroud.

What an experience to actually be looking at this majestic bird from above him! It is not uncommon to be driving through or over the clouds in the Ecuadorian Andes Mountains.

Out of Alausi
An exceprt from the longer poem by E. J. Brunton

Oh Mountain! You’ve a froth of cloud pinned to your voluminous green lap like a snow-white hanky pinned to a lady’s skirt

The mountains are rounded like a giants cast off hats; here banded by straw huts; there adorned with cows.

Just out of Alausi, Indians in red ponchos are jammed into truck beds like strawberries in a crate.

The lion-mountains are clothed in yellow velvet, panting in the drought. The road is walled at places by dried mud cliffs.

Smoky Indians descend the bus at remote spots. No sign of trail nor hut, just endless crags, roiling cauldrons of trapped clouds, gorges and scrub.

Where are they going?

A ragged boy with twice-too-long sleeves flaps by like a fledgling condor.

UNION
E.J.Brunton

The man ploughs his field and sows his abundant seed into the furrow’s depth

From this union of man and earth are born their edible children

The man gives the mother nothing but dung and water

Somehow she survives and rouses her exhausted womb again and again to bring forth fruit

She feeds at times on the rotting bodies of her progeny and is satisfied

She waits

The man is old and stooped now. Soon he will die. There will be other men to plant their seed in her warm belly but all will become hers in time.

Totally and forever.

MOUNTAIN BUS
An excerpt from the longer poem by E.J. Brunton

We roll on swift rubber feet just inches from a 150 foot drop. Puertos al Cielo or Heaven’s Gate they’ve named the waterfall that splashes over the road eroding the silent curve.

From the Sangay bus we crane our necks ever upward. The mountains, like headless green lions, stretch out their paws to play with tiny huts. Waterfalls are gushing white wounds on the lions’ flanks. Manta de la Novia (Bridal Veil), Cascada San Jorge. A solitary swallow swoops by.

Where are the condors?

2009-10-28T18:07:00.002-04:00

Mother Knows Best
article and drawing by E. J. Brunton
Mother was tough but she was fair. She gave me the guidelines for living a successful life: honesty, the Do Unto Others rule; the hard work ethic, punctuality, and keeping promises were just a few. She was not lavish with praise. You had the guidelines and you were expected to follow them – or else.

Father - when he was home - was in the garden from early thaw to late freeze. He reinforced the hard work ethic as I assisted him. Lugging 50 pound bags of fertilizer and five gallon watering cans gave me muscles that no 10 year old girl ought to have.

But it was my other Mother that comforted me. No. I wasn’t adopted; unless you could call Mother Earth’s acceptance of me an adoption. When life got too much for me I would go out into the garden and lie down under a bleeding heart bush and shed my tears into her comforting bosom. It is a wonder that poor bleeding heart didn’t die from all the salt.

When my family found out, they teased me for this by singing a popular song of the day,

“Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, I think I’ll go and eat worms!” Sometimes now when I am tending to my red wiggler worm ranch I think of those words and I can smile. I haven’t been tempted to taste one of the little fellows yet though.

There were lots of rules as to what I could and could not do in the garden. I could do the weeding and dig the holes for planting. I could water. I could spray poisons on things. I could mow the lawn with the push mower. I could rake it. I could cut the hedge with the manual clippers.

What I couldn’t do I found out the hard way. Once at school we were given a packet of mixed seeds. I was so excited. Seeds of my very own! Home I rushed thinking of just the spot for them. Right at the front of the garden, near the bleeding heart was a space that would be perfect. I prepared the tiny patch and checked the seed packet for directions. I used all the lessons father taught me and was proud of my neat little patch. I put in a little stake and put the seed packet on it so I would remember what I had planted.

Father came home, changed his clothes and went directly to the garden. In a minute he was back red-faced and shouting. How dare I destroy the symmetry of his perfect garden? “Get that stuff out of there right now,” he yelled. I was devastated as I tried my best to pluck out and save the tiny seeds I had planted.

Crying under the bleeding heart was not an option today since Father was out there. Instead I went to a friend’s house. My little heart was bursting with shame and rejection. When my friend’s mother asked me what was wrong it unleashed a torrent of emotion that was discouraged at home. No one had ever asked me in such a kind tone before. Right away she told me to bring my seeds up to her garden and plant them there.

She must have called my Mother too, who in turn, ripped my Dad a new one. I came home to a resentful Father who grudgingly told me that I could have a patch of earth to myself and plant my seeds there. I guess it had never occurred to him that I might want something of my own in the garden.

Gardening has not always comforted me, or lifted me up, or filled me with joy. I seldom ever had a real garden to my self. Most of my life I made-do by turning my apartments into Amazon jungles. Hanging plants provided curtains. Tall ones were room dividers and corner fillers. Small ones nestled on the windowsill and in my shower stall.

Gardening at my first home was made difficult because of the poor soil and my own work commitments. But still I managed to grow celery, eggplant, tomatoes and a few flowers in the cement-like soil.

It took me 60 years to get my very own garden. But it was worth the wait. The soil is the best I could hope for: rich, crumbly and virgin. There is plenty of room for rain barrels, compost piles, vegetables, trees and flowers. And best of all I am free to make all the decisions.

When I came here there was one small garden by the side of the house. Hollyhocks fought a life and death battle with sow thistle taller than me. The first year I didn’t do much but clear the weeds and plant my favorite flowers, peonies and of course a bleeding heart.

Five years later the garden has over taken the lawn and my life. And in my garden and my life I practice all the lessons my Mother and Father taught me but most of all the ones, my other Mother, continues to teach me.

Mother Earth has shown me the other side, the pleasures and the joys of gardening. Hard work yes, but not something I ever begrudge. My bleeding heart gets watered regularly but not by tears.

These words written by Canadian author and artist, Emily Carr are inscribed on her tombstone. They eloquently express how I feel about the great big garden that belongs to all of us.

Dear Mother Earth!

I think I have always specially belonged to you. I have loved from babyhood to roll upon you, to lie with my face pressed right down on to you in my sorrows. I love the look of you and the smell of you and the feel of you. When I die, I should like to be in you uncoffined, unshrouded, the petals of flowers against my flesh, and you covering me up.

Today's post is about recycling - I think.

2009-10-26T17:40:00.001-04:00

Now folks my real friends know that I seldom buy anything new.

Unless it is on sale.

So it was with great sacrifice that I shelled out the money for this shirt today. I did it for two reasons. The shirt was 20 % off its already deeply discounted price. And it seems to be speaking about a subject near and dear to my heart - recycling - I think.

Oh well, if it is not about recycling it is still about a subject that is near and dear to my heart. Engrish as she is spoke!

But you tell me

The back says

Making Oneself

Stating over with the used stuffs!

Customer

The front says

Stating over

Customer

with the Used Stuffs!

Cree Prophesy

2009-10-25T13:58:00.001-04:00

This has been attributed to the Cree:.

Only after the last tree has been cut down

Only after the last river has been poisoned

Only after the last fish has been caught

Only then will you find that money can't be eaten

Poems and Stories from another life - Part III - The Refuge

2009-10-22T19:34:00.005-04:00

REFUGE

article by E.J. Brunton

In 1994 I volunteered at a wild animal refuge in Mazan, Ecuador, just on the outskirts of the Cajas nature reserve about twenty minutes from Cuenca.

The road to Mazan wound up and up the mountainside through groves of shaggy eucalyptus and spiny penco cactus. Tiny white adobe houses with red tile roofs replaced the cinder-block citified houses. Early morning smoke from a twig fire curled out from under their eaves. I pictured the farmers eating their first meal of the day, probably rice and sweet black coffee. The marvelously adaptable cows that dotted the hillsides didn’t seem to mind that it was over 3,000 meters high.

The rutted dirt path to the refuge angled sharply from the highway and tilted steeply down to a stream bed. My Nissan was squeezed between the lush vegetation that tickled its roof and the rocks that scraped its poor bottom. It forded the shallow stream, only slipping a bit on the glacier-rounded rocks.

The road turned to sand and climbed higher once more. At the top was the rambling old hacienda that Steve, the man in charge, had described. Two large dogs came bounding out and launched themselves at the car, peering at me menacingly.

Alerted by their barking, Steve lumbered out with shouts and reassurances. He was a gentle giant of an Englishman with a ready smile and, I was soon to find out, some great stories. Dodging the effervescent dogs I followed him into the dark, cool of the hacienda. Its three-foot thick walls and small windows kept it well insulated from extremes of heat or cold.

As we sat at the rough plank table in the kitchen, enjoying a cup of tea from “over home”, he told me about his employers, a couple who produced BBC documentaries on endangered species. They lugged their young children all over the world with them. Right now Ecuador was their home base and Steve was their general dog’s body. He could do anything from fixing vehicles, building cages, chauffeuring, repairing leaky roofs as well as caring for the animals.

Many and varied jobs had given him this vast experience: London bus driver, zoo keeper for a Saudi Arabian prince, Carnival worker in the US and insect expert at the London zoo. Through this job he had been asked to handle the insects in the first Indiana Jones film, “The Temple of Doom”. He actually had to place all those cockroaches and stick insects on Harrison in one of the scenes.

"We're funded by various wildlife agencies but it’s never enough so I can't pay you but I can give you lunch," Steve apologized. I agreed to show up tomorrow to learn my duties.

I was so excited that I could hardly sleep. Morning found me once more outside the hacienda. Steve was already getting the food ready for the animals. He negotiated with the vendors in huge open air markets such as Arenal in Cuenca to sell him fruit and vegetables cheaply at the end of the day.

He showed me around the large property with its capacious cages complete with trees and other vegetation. The first one housed garishly colored parrots which had been given to the refuge when their owners tired of them. “Usually they come in bald or tailless. Parrots are social animals and when they get bored they pull all their feathers out,” he told me pointing to a large naked macaw.

The pair of kinkajou, being nocturnal animals, didn’t appreciate being woken at this absurd hour. Their black button eyes blinked out at me from their wooden house, as they whined peevishly. Other animals like song birds, parrots, wooly monkeys, tiny jungle squirrels and coatimundis (long-nosed cousin to our raccoons) were confiscated from street vendors. They had been ripped from their natural habitats and were paraded heartlessly about the city to be bought by people who didn't know what they were getting into. They ended up shivering, possibly starving or at the least being fed an improper diet of rice or bread as prisoners on the end of chains in a forgotten corner of the garden. "They bite, they stink, they are dirty," the people would say in defence of treating them like this.

A young falcon, whose wing had been damaged by a bullet, was making some tentative flapping motions unsure about how far the healing wing would take him. He settled back to tear at the mouse Steve proffered. At least mice were plentiful and free in this part of the world.

Most curious was a cage with a long glass aquarium sunk into the hilly ground. One side was exposed and the tank was lavishly planted with fresh-water greenery. An aerator kept the water rushing for the glittering trout.

Steve explained, “We filmed an episode about Ecuador’s fishing mouse. It was too difficult to do on location so a few of the mice and their favorite diet, trout, were brought from Cajas and put into the cage and aquarium. The mice dove in and caught the trout and we caught them on film." (Note: When looking for a picture for this article I found that they exists only in three locations in Cajas and are endangered. For more information see the link at the end of this post.)

They had succeeded in making the cages as close to the natural setting as they could. The wild guinea pig’s enclosure was planted with shrubs and various grasses to emulate the pampas - the setting for another film. Wild guinea pigs were rare now Guinea pigs are usually encountered scurrying around the walls of some farmer’s hut. Guinea pig is a delicacy in this area of Ecuador and is quite delicious when roasted whole over hot coals. We had a flock of about 200 guinea pigs for sale and personal use on our own farm when I lived there.

But my reverie was interrupted as we came upon the stars of the show, the spectacled bears. The two largest bears Jubal and Palmira had, until the flood in 1992, lived in a cement-floored cage at a tourist resort. I had often seen them there and my heart had gone out to them. They paced ceaselessly to the end of their short cage, and threw their heads back in a repetitious and abnormal pattern before taking the few short paces back again. Their coats were sparse and dull largely because of an unimaginative and inappropriate diet of rice and leftovers from the restaurant.

The spectacled bear gets its name from the white or cream colored ring of fur around its eyes. They are seriously endangered now due to the loss of habitat and relentless hunting. It was a passion of the owners at Mazan Wildlife Refuge to rescue and rehabilitate these creatures for eventual release into the wild again. Tours of the refuge were discouraged. They just didn’t want the animals to get any more used to human beings than was absolutely necessary.

Just prior to the flood Steve’s boss had borrowed the bears for a film shoot. He built a large enclosure on a mountain top where he released Jubal and Palmira. They must have rejoiced in their new found semi-freedom. “You see, this way we could get shots of them behaving as they would in their world without traipsing all over looking for the few remaining wild ones,” said Steve.

Luckily for Jubal and Palmira the tourist resort suffered a lot of flood damage so they remained at the refuge. “We used the wire and poles from the mountain top enclosure to build the large cages on the property,” he told me. The bear enclosure was complete with cement swimming pool and water fall. The fresh running water quenched their thirst and they had all the leaves, fruit and berries they could eat.

A second cage held two very undernourished bears that were abandoned by a traveling circus. The third inhabitant was Boogie who had been a pet until he got too strong and unruly. He still had a collar on which was constricting his throat as he grew. He would have to be anaesthetized in order to get it off.

“Here’s your state of the art equipment,” said Steve handing me the broom, dustpan and bucket. He gave me instructions on how to clean out the bear dung. I was never to enter the cage with Jubal and Palmira unless I lured them first into a smaller enclosure. They were just too big and dangerous after being teased by humans for years.

I could enter the other cage directly, keeping a watchful eye on the playful Boogie who loved to take a playful swipe at my bare leg. A loud “Hey you!” and a wave of the broom usually did the trick but I must admit I was nervous as he retreated and circled me. The dung smelled of oranges and fruit so it wasn’t too unpleasant.

When it came time for the big bears mischievous Jubal scooped up a nice little patty of mud and pee and threw it right in my face as I tried to lure him into the smaller interior enclosure. But we soon got used to one another.

I made friends with other volunteers during my several month’s tenure at Mazan and got a glimpse of how nature films are made. I hiked the nearby hills with Steve and marveled at the tiny mountain parrots and toucans so unexpected in this colder climate. I saw Jubal and Palmira become proud parents of two bouncing black cubs. I lamented with Steve over the difficulty of finding a release spot for the smaller bears and rejoiced at the falcon’s first flight and his final release.

This refuge for wild animals had become my refuge as well.

Note: I had forgotten the name of the refuge and the film makers but today I discovered this link:

http://www.travelalive.com/volunteer/animal_rescue_cuenca.asp

And for a learned dissertation on the fishing mouse link here:
http://www.rebeccashapley.com/akodon/reprint_pdfs/97ChibchanomysNaturalHistory.pdf

Uh oh!

2009-10-15T10:34:00.001-04:00

Sorry folks. You can dress me up but you can't take me anywhere. What a debut!

I very carefully published the Moi story in numerical order of its parts from one to four, only to find out that the last got published first.

Kind of biblical actually! I am sure you will figure it out.

Poems and stories from another life - Part II - Moi

2009-10-15T10:23:00.000-04:00

Moi
Part 4 of 4
story and photos by E.J. Brunton

All too soon it was time to leave. Our last night was spent lying on the plank floor of the school house in the village. But our adventure wasn’t over yet. We wanted to get an early start in the morning for the 9 hour trip by dugout canoe. Two of the men would pole us and our bulky loads downriver to a spot known only as "La Puente," - the bridge.

The morning was almost chilly as we made our way through the dripping vegetation down to the mist-shrouded Shiripuno. When the dugouts were loaded we were tucked in amongst our indispensables. My indispensables now included the shaman’s blowgun, poison darts and Moi’s spear. I couldn’t wait to get them home.

I sat quite rigidly at first, expecting to tip over at any moment. After a stiff jolt or two of the cane liquor our paddlers provided I got quite relaxed. I didn’t even mind the fact that the old milk jug they had it in looked a bit black and slimy inside. It went quite well with the turtle eggs that they dug up along the river bank at our lunch stop.

At the waters edge a crazy quilt of brilliant butterflies sucked up the moisture from the damp sand with their spring like proboscises. Cayman slid into the water as we passed and a huge anaconda dangled lazily from a tree branch. I settled back and let my fingers dabble until I remembered the piranha.

We spotted a bright-red tree, the Jesus tree. Huaoarani legend (with a liberal sprinkling of Missionary lore) says it was the first tree in the jungle from which all life had sprung.

Moi had shown us a special tree on one of our walks. He said that inside the bark was a cottony lining. A big flood came and all the animals got into a boat made out of this tree and were saved.

I found it sad that their own beliefs had become entangled with the Christian beliefs. I was angry at the arrogance of the missionaries who brought disease and shame to this Garden of Eden where there had been no word for evil.

I whiled away the hours alternately reading, glancing at the river bank vegetation or admiring the muscles of the men who unceasingly poled the dugout. We reached the bridge in the late afternoon and made our farewells. Declining our offer of a cool drink, after a 10 minute rest, the men started right back upriver. Their endurance was remarkable.

Once out on the road the coolness of the canopied river was replaced by a scorching sun. It soaked into the tarmac and waves of it reflected back to us. The smell of crude oil wrinkled our noses.

Across the road and for as far as I could see in either direction was a huge rusty pipe. Someone had stretched their laundry on it. ( The next photo is from the net and shows multiple oil pipes. There was only one large one that I sat on..briefly!)

Not wanting to stand in the hot sun I went across to take a seat on it. I lowered my well-sat-upon buttocks slowly but rebounded immediately. It was scorching hot! Crude oil direct from the bowels of the earth was being pumped through it.

Not too many trucks were passing but finally we snagged one. Even with the tailgate lowered my nine foot spear and blowgun still hung over the edge. Once our gear was all in place I looked at my fellow passengers. There were several oil workers black and shiny from the field, Fridays pay in their pockets, all liquored up and itching to get to the whore houses dotted along the road. They dropped off one by one at their favorite spots. We two were the only women on the truck and were glad we had the boys (the guide and chauffeur from the Quito tour company) accompanying us. At least they would be on our side - we hoped.

At the next stop a man got on with a chicken. He set it on the floor and the poor thing dodged feet and was thrown from one side of the truck to the other as the truck unsuccessfully swerved to avoid potholes. I picked it up and put it on my lap where it gratefully fell asleep.

It was no different in Coca. The town had an oily black sheen to it. Rainbow slicks formed on the puddles from a recent rain. We were lucky. We would only eat and catch a bus. How could anything survive here?

Moi said in his letter to Bill Clinton, then president of the United States, “The whole world must come and see how the Huaorani live well. We live with the spirit of the jaguar. We do not want to be civilized by your missionaries or killed by your oil companies. Must the jaguar die so that you can have more contamination and television?”

The end

Poems and stories from another life - Part II - Moi

2009-10-15T10:02:00.003-04:00

Moi
Part 3 of 4
story and photos by E.J. Brunton

Soon we were at the clearing where we would stay for the duration of our trip. The handsome palm frond huts stood up on stilts. Even the floors were woven palm. They were airy and surprisingly cool. There was a fresh latrine out back.

We laid out our sleeping bags and stripped for a dip in the river. Moi warned us to make lots of noise and splash to scare away the piranha and cayman. That went against everything that I had ever heard but, “When in Rome” I thought. The water was warm but still refreshing and no sign of piranha.

When we got back, there was a fire going and the smell of singed hair assaulted my nostrils. A whole small deer, complete with fur and hoofs was draped over the coals. Only the intestines had been removed.

We weren’t supposed to partake of their food. Already there was a dilemma. Well, we reasoned, we could share some of our food with them. It was just too tempting to taste what to us were delicacies, perhaps never to be savored again.

During that week we were treated to monkey, capybara (the world’s largest rodent) and turtle eggs as the Huaorani smacked their lips over our tinned sardines and ham, cereal with cartons of milk, cookies and granola bars.

Moi took us two girls out cayman hunting by the light of the full moon in a dugout. We didn’t see any caymans but it was a wonderful evening. We beached the canoe on the silky-white sand, leaned up against a log and just soaked in the awesome jungle night. Frogs boomed and night birds called. I was exhilarated and as we talked I found myself impressed by the intelligence of this young man.

Moi is a radical. An activist who was well known to the oil companies for his vigorous campaigns against them. He wore a tee shirt that said “Get the $hell out of Ecuador” and sported the familiar scallop shell emblem of Shell oil. Through his contact with Joe Kane and the auspices of the Sierra Club he had even managed to go to Washington D.C. in 1993.

In his book “Savages” Joe Kane quotes Moi as he stared in awe at the Washington traffic “There are so many cars,” he said. “How long have they been here? A million years?”

“Much less.”

"A thousand years?”
“No. Eighty perhaps.”
He was silent then, and after a while he asked, “What will you do in ten more years? In ten years, your world will be pure metal. Did your god do this?”

When Moi took a shower in the hotel bathroom Joe says, “I heard the water go on and off several times. Finally he emerged wearing only his shorts, his skin red as a boiled lobster.

“Tomorrow I would like a new hotel room,” Moi said.
“Why?”

“I would like a room that also has cold water.”

He dressed himself completely and had me tie his tie. Then, fully clothed he got into bed. Like many Huaorani he drew no hard distinction between day and night."

Next day we went for a 5 hour hike up hill under the steamy canopy. Moi walked barefoot, encumbered only by his gleaming machete. We guinea pigs were laden down with all the trappings of civilization that we couldn’t be separated from: rubber boots, back packs filled with water bottles, toilet paper, cellophane- wrapped snacks, movie and still cameras.

I looked and felt ridiculous. I also looked apoplectic. My face purple, my shirt soaked, I stumbled over roots, vines slapped me in the face, my rubber boots, sucked off in mud holes, deserted me.

We crawled under logs, skipped dizzily across fat fallen trees that forded streams and thankfully plunged up to our armpits in cool jungle rivers holding our burdens over our heads. I loved it!

Finally we were back at the Shiripuno River. A tribesman was putting the finishing touches on a balsa wood raft. He had hacked down the small trees and lashed them with vines to form our craft. We climbed aboard, or rather astraddle. They were only 2 logs wide and our legs hung down into the water on either side. My rubber boots were now full of water and my shorts soaked as the raft rode low in the water with our weight. Thus we made the ½ hour trip down river to our settlement. I had been damp for so long that diaper rash was imminent.

Our days were filled with hikes where Moi identified the flora and fauna and told us fascinating stories. He pointed out toucans and monkeys and undergrowth-rustling jaguars but our city eyes could rarely see what he was pointing at. He politely never mentioned our exceeding stupidity.

We came upon a naked hunter. He carried a 10 foot blow gun made of “chonta”, and a bamboo case of poisoned darts. Moi negotiated rapidly with him for some meat which he had cached in the undergrowth when he heard us coming. There was a large black bird called a “paucar” about the size of a small child. There was also a spaniel-sized deer.

Moi told us that the Huaorani language only has numbers up to 5. He gave me a book in Huaorani that some Missionaries had printed up for the school children. He taught me some Huaorani words and constantly asked me how to say and write things in English. He already spoke Spanish and Quichua (the Quechua are the largest jungle tribe and most other tribes speak their language) and was learning French. He had a voracious curiosity and rapier intelligence. In addition Moi gave me lessons in blowgun wizardry.

Back home at the hut one of the women was making a basket out of palm leaves. It was done in a flash and was handy for carrying any fruits or grubs you might find as you traveled. My friends looked on from their double wide hammocks.

In the afternoon he took me by canoe over to his father’s compound on the other side of the river. I expected to see his father the shaman on some sort of throne but he was squatting over two lengths of chonta gouging out a trough in the middle of each. These two halves would be lashed together and glued with tree resin to form the blow gun. His long pierced ear lobes dangled flaccidly without the aid of the wooden plugs worn for dress up occasions.

Moi dug out a bag full of colorful feathers that he used to make ceremonial head dresses. He gave me some as we enjoyed more chicha, made this time from fermented bananas. Pet monkeys and parrots performed acrobatics on the ceiling beams.

Continued in part 4 of 4

Poems and stories from another life - Part II - Moi

2009-10-15T09:28:00.002-04:00

Moi

Part 2 of 4

Story and photos by E.J.Brunton

After we chatted with them a few moments, with Moi interpreting from Spanish to Huaorani and back, an elder told us something about the origins of the tribe. “The others call us Aucas” he said. “This means savages in jungle Quichua. Our language, Huaorani, is only spoken by the 1,500 remaining tribes’ people”. I had read that it is unrelated to any other language on earth.

He continued, “Our totem animal is the jaguar. We were once headhunters and feared throughout the Amazon. A branch of our tribe, the Tagueri, is still fiercely independent and avoided by the sensible. Recently they killed a Catholic bishop and 6 nuns who had managed to reach them and live among them for several months. The Tagueri mark out their territory with crossed spears and if you cross that boundary you are a dead man.”

After the informative speech we were taken on a half hour trek through the jungle to our huts. We were part of an experiment; the first group of tourists to visit the Huoarani. There had been missionaries and scientists but no tourists before.

We had been given certain rules. We were not to live with the tribe and pollute them with our outsider’s ways. Anything we took in must leave with us. The exception to this rule was pencils (not pens) and paper for the children. We brought our own food so that we would not put additional stress on the environment. We would take our garbage back out with us.

Moi, like the rest of the tribe, spoke in a quiet voice barely audible to our city ears but useful when hunting in the jungle. I strained to hear as he recounted how the oil companies had built roads in the jungle and settlers (colonistas) had moved in. As a result of the these interlopers he said “We are starving because the animals are moving farther away. They dynamite the rivers and kill too many fish they can’t even eat. They slash and burn the jungle for their crops and for grazing their cattle. What they don’t scare, kill or burn, they pollute. Some of our men are going to work for them to feed their families. That is why I am working with an ecotourism company to find another way to preserve our environment and our way of life.”

I had heard from another friend that the eternal flames of the oil wells attracted billions of moths and their singed hulls were mounded 6 feet high around each flame. The effect this had on the night birds is as yet unknown. Tiny Ecuador was, at that time, home to 33% of all the known species of birds in the world.
I saw for myself that many rivers had a black oily scum at the edges. The people were dying of cancers heretofore unheard of. The Shiripuno where we were visiting was still pristine, but for how long?

This experiment we were involved in hoped to prove that the Huaorani and other tribes could make a decent living by sharing their home with eco tourists without contributing to their own destruction. Their harmony with and deep respect for all forms of life is exemplary.

As we walked through the jungle Moi pointed out various plants to us. As the son of the Shaman he had a vast knowledge and would be next in line for the throne.

The Shaman fills a vital role in the life of a tribe. He (and sometimes she) is their religious and secular leader as well as their doctor. They look to him for their very existence. By the aid of certain plants such as the hallucinogenic Huando (Datura or Angel’s Trumpet) he communes with the spirits of the animals and plants and advises the tribe what animals to hunt, where and when. He performs healing rituals to drive out the spirits that cause disease but his.her arts are no match for the measles and sexually transmitted diseases brought by the white man in the guise of missionaries, rubber workers, oil workers and colonists.

Moi pointed at various plants and trees as we walked. “This one is the shampoo tree. We use the sap from its bark to wash our hair.” Pulling off a spiny brown pod from another plant he added “And this we use as a comb.”

Stopping at a small bush he pulled a twig off and peeled back the bark. There were dozens of small black ants scurrying for cover. He caught a few, squished them with his brown fingers and handed them to me saying, “Taste these.” I popped them into my mouth, some still kicking and squirming. They were just like scratchy lemons!

“Don’t go near these ones,” he pointed at the 3 inch black Conga ants marching over a rotting log. “They have a fierce bite that will make you feel like you are on fire.”

Other ants were busily at work harvesting tiny bites of leaf. They carried them umbrella-like over their shiny black heads and marched in a wavering line back to their nest. I knew that they used the leaves as a mulch in which to grow miniscule fungi which they dined on. The intelligence and diversity of ants has always been fascinating to me. I was thrilled to be up close and personal with creatures I had only read about.

Iridescent blue Morpho butterflies, the size of bread and butter plates, floated lazily by. Others had transparent wings and Moi patiently pointed those out to us. “There, No, there, right in front of you”. He would say as we peered and peered in vain. Flocks of parrots clattered overhead. Monkeys were heard but not seen. Toucans clacked their oversized bills. Red and yellow Heliconium flowers hung upside down forming handy watering troughs for the birds and insects. Tiny frog orchestras were tuning up. My senses were overloaded.

Continued in part 3 of 4

Poems and stories from another life - Part II - Moi

2009-10-15T09:02:00.005-04:00

MOI

Part 1 of 4
Story and photos by E.J Brunton

I had heard a lot about Moi (pronounced MOY) before I ever met him. Finally the day came when I found myself face to face with this young legend. We had just alighted from the 4 passenger bush plane and there he was, standing on the grassy air strip.

Below I am standing with the pilot before take off from Shell Mera airstrip.

I was disappointed to see that Moi had cut the flowing black hair he sported in his picture on the cover of Joe Kane’s book “Savages”. His brown body was still perfectly muscled and smooth. He had a wide smile and shy brown eyes. His name, Moi, (pronounced MOY) is the Huaorani word for dream or vision.

Some of the Huaorani, Moi’s tribe, were unloading supplies from the belly of the plane. Then they pushed it back from the precipice we had narrowly missed, turning it around for its return flight.

The tiny craft would glide once more over the serpentine brown rivers that writhed through the sea of greenery. Sudden winds would buffet it and torrential downpours batter its silver skin on its 45 minute flight back to Shell Mera from this outpost deep in the interior, near the north east border of Peru.

We would spend several days here in the rainforest of the Amazon basin on the Shiripuno River in this settlement called Qu’Hueri Ono. This day was sunny and humid; the vegetation lush. Vines, dripping with bright flowers, crawled everywhere.

Moi led us up the dirt path past the latrines and the yucca patch to the communal palm frond hut in the center of the village. A small group was inside enjoying a lazy afternoon chat or making implements for their homes.

Several women rolled white palm fibers on their thighs; preparing string for knitting into bags, fish nets and hammocks. Others were already engaged in knitting the fibre, which they did with their fingers only.

In spite of the heat a small cook fire glowed in the center surrounded by log benches. Wide hammocks decorated with monkey bones hung haphazardly. Whole Huaorani families sleep crosswise on these knitted palm fibre hammocks. Sun-bleached skulls of jaguar and peccary decorated the walls. Thick black curare dripped slowly into a gourd in a corner.

One woman prepared a welcoming drink of chicha (mildly alcoholic beverage) for us. She stirred the contents of a large clay pot with her hand and then pulled out some white fibers which she squeezed and threw to one side. They were hungrily devoured by the dogs. A lumpy white concoction filled the bowl that was passed to me.

I knew how this was prepared. The women boiled up manioc root (yucca) and then chewed it and spit it into a clay pot. They added water from the river and then let this ferment for several days. It resulted in a cloudy, mildly alcoholic beverage. I also knew that if we refused it would be a grave insult. It went against the grain of every thing that I knew but I swallowed it down and passed the pot to my friends.

This drink, along with boiled manioc, plantain, grubs and whatever meat in the form of monkey, deer, peccary or fish they procured formed their staple diet.

For an updated view of where we stayed check out this slideshow circa 2010. We never had it so good but I am glad to see them prosper. I liked it the way it was! Here is the link below

Huaorani Ecolodge Slideshow & Video

tripwow.tripadvisor.com

www.huaorani.com

Continued in part 2 of 4

Jungles

2009-10-15T08:58:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I fooled around for hours with a story I wrote about my trip of a lifetime to the Amazon jungle. Jungles and all their inhabitants have always been important to me. It is only recently that we are learning how important they should be to all of us.

My jungle love affair is prominently evident when you visit my home. Since I can't always be in the jungle I have brought it to me.

First time visitors are struck by the variety of flora in my outside garden but some are astounded when they come inside.

Every available window is crowded with plants craning upwards from their windowsill perch or dangling downwards from swivel hooks. The living room is reserved for the tall guys like hibiscus, jasmine and bouganvillea. The dining room is crawling with spiders! About 20 of them in three pots curtain a window and more swing from the door frame in a painted gourd pot (pictured below)....a thrift store find! Obsessed? Who, me?

In Cuenca Ecuador a lady once told me that spider plants are called "Mala Madre". That means bad

mother....why?...because they kick their children out of the pot she said!

But, as usual I digress. See? I warned you I was a chatterbox. I broke up the Amazon Jungle story into four bite-sized parts. I will publish them all today so you can either carry on to the next part immediately or come back tomorrow. Your choice.

As always, your feedback is food for my soul. Thanks for visiting me.

Poems and stories from another life - Part I

2009-10-14T13:08:00.005-04:00

During the 1990's I lived in Ecuador. I guess I will always have one foot here and one foot there and long to go back and see my dear family there. I know we are not blood relatives but you are all special to me.

My last year in Ecuador was one of turmoil. Leaving a twenty year relationship, leaving a home I designed, leaving family and precious pets. I did a lot of travelling in those last few tumultuous years...saying goodbye to a country and people I had come to love. No matter how fast I ran I couldn't escape the heartache that always kept pace with me.

In the long hours on the bus fleeting, sometimes blurry images engraved my brain and I just had to write them down.

In keeping with the theme of this blog here is one I wrote about Paccha Mama ...our Mother Earth, and how we have treated her. And as I read it today and prepare to share it with you I see for perhaps the first time that it is tinged with my own feelings of betrayal and loss, of fighting for survival.

Oh and by the way I survived and even thrived!!!

RAPE
by E.J. Brunton
Andes Mountains between Puyo and Alausi, 1998

The valley, green and flat as a pool table, stretches in the protective embrace of a jealous mountain. Like a ripe young woman she is too beautiful to last. Even the craggy arms of her mountain lover cannot stay the ravages of man.

He will slice through those arms and rape her flower-filled womb. From the rape will issue the children, Rock, Sand and Mud who betray her.

The giant spiders of communication and light will string their unsightly webs from prickly poles. Deep cuts of asphalt and cement will scar her face like a razor wielded by a mad man.

Her eye-like pools will become dry sockets unable even to weep. Her mouth will belch poisons and her nostrils become encrusted with grime. Her hairline of silky trees will recede, torn from the very roots. Her ears will long for birdsong but hear only buzz saw.

When they’ve stolen her beauty they will tire of her, as all men do, and leave her dying alone and forgotten.

But in her darkest night, gentle rains will wash her clean. Dawn will see the tender vines begin their climb across her bruised face, smoothing sharp edges, healing her scars.

She, Mother, will survive us all.

Here is one of my short poems to make up for the last two days

2009-10-13T09:39:00.001-04:00

TREES
By E.J. Brunton
Trees dressed for

F
A
L
L

Laughing at the wind; they‘re going out in style

2009-10-13T06:36:00.007-04:00

Better Worms and Gardens - Part II - The Living Cities

article by E. Jane Brunton

My "kids" are off to school! I am as nervous as any mother must be when she sends her progeny out into the world. I have dithered over what future awaited my little fellows and how to "dress" them for the event.

But I had to give myself a shake. I was talking about little red wiggler worms not little red-cheeked children. I have been caring for these critters for the past three years. Six months ago I had a population explosion and didn't know how to handle the overflow. I just didn't have room for more bins.

I could have sold them to the store on the corner for bait but somehow it didn't seem fair to see my faithful helpers end their lives on the end of a hook. Nor would releasing them into my zone 5 garden solve the problem. Sure they would enjoy their summer of freedom but when the icy temperatures set in, unlike their hardier cousins that are acclimated to this zone, these little surface dwellers would be faced with death. Not something you do to friends.

Enter Nathan Putnam. Nathan is a student in Biology and Chemistry at Queen's University in Kingston Ontario. Last week I heard him speak of his vision on CBC Radio One. He and a group of eco-conscious friends are providing enough worms to clean up the compostable garbage output of the entire University, residences and kitchens alike. This inspired me to find his web site www.livingcitiescompany.ca/home.html and then contact him by phone.

Nathan's vision goes far beyond vermicompost to encompass urban farming and sustainable city living. Visit his web site for how this ingenious young man and his friends are taking Kingston by storm.

Since that day we have been in contact about the wheres and whens of the Great Worm Transfer. And today is the big day. But what am I doing sitting here writing about it? I should be up to my elbows in wigglers about now. Time's awasting.

Hours later...........

I managed to gather 4 pounds of worms from two of the three bins. I tucked them and about a pound of bedding snugly into a couple of brown paper bags and hustled off to meet Nathan at the Living Cities' "urban farm." There, several varieties of healthy lettuce, and peppers were threatening to burst out of their carefully tended raised beds. Last night's frost had convinced Nathan that this might be the tomato's last hurrah although he figured he could make the Swiss chard and lettuce last another few weeks.

The exchange was made. I had toyed with the idea of trading my worms for Living Cities'own design of stackable wooden worm bins. But in the end I settled on two terra cotta colored rain barrels with overflow hoses and screw on, mosquito proof tops. My fears that they would not fit in my car were unfounded. How I love my amazing ten year old Hyundai Tiburon with its just over 90,000 kilometres of service. Yeah, I know it looks like a sport's car but it acts like a small truck when there are things you need to transport. And at least I am keeping it out of land fill for awhile yet.
As we chatted Nathan cleared up some concerns I had about misconceptions and well, lets face it, downright incorrect information that is circulating on the internet.

I asked whether worms require powdered eggshells to aid in their digestion of the refuse we provide. As I suspected, this is not so. It is merely to sweeten the compost produced and even out the pH by neutralizing acid in the bins.

Nathan also clarified the fact that worms don't process the refuse on their own. They are aided by a host of bacteria and fungi that first break down the refuse into a liquid form. Then the toothless worms slither up to the soup plate and slurp it all up. This allows the bacteria access to the deeper layers of fruits and veggies. The worms do their part by aerating the bedding and refuse, speeding up the process for the bacteria. Because the worms are always eating the "mushy" compost as soon as the bacteria soften it, it never has a chance to putrefy, which is why vermicomposting is essentially odourless.

I smiled ruefully at the thought of how those who were already squeamish about worms would feel about cohabiting with fungi and billions of bacteria! If they only knew that our homes are full of these creatures already. Worm bins do harbor a lot of other helpful critters like spring tails and fungus gnats but neither they, the bacteria nor the fungi are harmful to humans.

Given the repugnance that a lot of people feel towards things they don't understand, overcoming this reluctance is an uphill battle. Thank goodness for groups like Living Cities who are making progress one convert at a time.

As for my homeschooled worms, raised on a diet of the Napanee Guide, they skipped right over the lower grades of education and have taken up residence at Queen's University . There they will dwell and work in several of the upscale wooden worm bins designed and built by The Living Cities crew.

If you are like me you might have wondered how tiny, soft bodied worms would defend themselves against large and generous students who might want to share a drinky-poo with them. Or others who might want to take the goldfish-swallowing trend (so popular in my parent's day) a step further by downing a few wigglers. Nathan assured me that the boxes will be locked and under the protection of the Dons of each residence.

It was a pleasure meeting Nathan. I have always believed that this battered old gal, who has been called by many names, such as Paccha Mama, Gaia, and Mother Earth, will survive in spite of us. But with help from groups like Living Cities she and the creatures that call her home will do more than that - they may actually thrive once again.

2009-10-12T18:11:00.007-04:00

Better Worms and Gardens - Part I - Vermicomposting

Article and photos by E. J. Brunton. Previously published in the Napanee Guide and on line at Helium

A reliable source informed me that newspaper not only makes good reading but it makes good eating too. My source is one of the thousands of red wiggler worms inhabiting a couple of plastic bins in my laundry room. This tiny spokesman told me they preferred the pithy editorials and juicy articles contained in our local newspaper not only for their taste but for their comfort as a bedding material.

I thought back to my initiation into worm ranching and remembered that they would sometimes "run away" if I substituted other paper sources. This may have been due to several factors: the inferiority of the publications, the subject matter (once it was an article on baiting fishing hooks) or my own lack of expertise in the fine art of creating a proper habitat.

The habits of red wigglers may not appeal to all of us. I mean who wants a guest that eats your bedding? But during their almost three year sojourn with me I find they can eat half their weight in kitchen waste and newspaper each day and turn it into the most glorious of fertilizers - worm compost.

Red wigglers make wonderful little companions - in some cases superior to family members or pets. They don't turn up their noses at leftovers. You don't have to wash the sheets and there are no extra dishes. You don't have to walk them or buy them clothes. They don't keep you up with wild partying all night long. In fact they prefer coffee grounds and tea leaves to left over wine or drugs.

Are you still here? That must mean that you have some interest in composting with worms or at the very least are not repulsed by a squirm (a ball of worms.)

But worms do have some simple needs: darkness, dampness, warmth, air and food. The trick lies in getting the balance just right. There are many ways to accomplish this; some are very expensive and largely unnecessary.

The following works for me:

Find a container at least 12 inches deep with a lid. I use plastic storage bins but you could use wood
Drill holes in container and lid for air circulation
Tear or shred newspaper into thin strips
Soak strips in water and squeeze out till just damp
Mix damp strips with sterilized potting soil and place in container to a depth of at least 8 inches
Locate the container in an area that where there is a steady heat source between 12 and 21 C (55 to 70 F)
Find a source for red wiggler worms (eisenia fetida are most common), NOT ordinary garden worms
Your source for worms could be a friend, neighbor or the Internet
Bring them directly home, without taking a detour to have a cold beer with friends
Dig a little pocket at one side, put some of the kitchen refuse you have been saving into the hole, add some powdered egg shell that you whizzed up in your coffee grinder
Spritz with water and BURY at least two inches deep
Add worms
Replace the lid to keep it dark and damp
Feed the worms your kitchen refuse once a week

Several words about this refuse: The smaller the pieces the quicker the composting so chop into small piece. the addition of powdered egg shells aids in maintaining a less acid environment. These can be ground up in your coffee grinder and a tablespoon or so sprinkled over the weekly meal.

Now worms will eat just about anything, given time, but for your own convenience, there are things that you should NOT put in your worm bin: meat, bones, eggs, dairy products, oily or fatty things, smelly vegetables like broccoli, onion or garlic, very hot or very cold things, and -duh - chemicals.

Things that DO belong in the worm bin include: white paper products such as used napkins, paper towels, rice or cereal that the kids didn't like, vegetable and fruit peelings and cuttings, coffee grounds and filters and tea bags. I keep a small plastic bucket under the kitchen counter where I collect these until I am ready to feed the worms. It is not recommended that you just throw the garbage in on top of the worm bin as it can get smelly and also allow fruit flies to hatch and hover annoyingly.

Another no-no is overfeeding as the heat generated from fermentation can make the worms want to leave home. You will know within a week whether you have fed your worms too much or too little. If all is going well, most of the food will be gone and there will be no unpleasant odor.

At feeding time I also check on bedding, temperature and moisture and adjust as needed. You don't need fancy monitors - just practice to know if it is right.

As regards harvesting your worm castings (digested refuse excreted by the worms and known as vermicompost) there are labor intensive ways to trick the worms into leaving the pile of compost that you covet (like building conical piles and shining strong lights on them to get the worms to move downward) but I don't indulge in subterfuge.

I take the direct approach by checking first near a food source. The majority will be gathered here but others will be scattered throughout as will the egg casings (small spherical shiny brown things) that hold your future as a worm rancher.

Get yourself a large container and, if you are squeamish, put on a pair of rubber gloves. You are going to gently separate the worms from their castings/bedding. Shake the castings (worm doo doo) over the empty container. If any worms or egg casings fall in, return them to the original container. Top up the bedding with more damp newspaper and potting soil when you are finished.

Unlike other fertilizers, worm castings can be put directly on house plants or outside on your vegetables and flowers without fear of burning them. They are best used fresh. You can dry them for future use by spreading them on a tray but they will not be as effective as when damp and alive with bacteria.

You can add a lump of them to some water for a liquid fertilizer called worm tea but again this is not as effective as using the unadulterated product.

This stuff is worth its weight in gold. Just think! You and the worms accomplished all of this with things that otherwise would have just added to the land fill problem - some newspaper, some egg shells and some garbage. Could anything be sweeter?
Coming Soon Better Worms and Gardens - Part II - The Living Cities

2009-10-10T12:05:00.000-04:00

Make Room for the Snake

Article,illustration and photos by E.J.Brunton

I come from a long line of gardeners who taught me about hard work. They waged a mortal battle against the creatures that resided in the garden: snakes, toads, insects and of course weeds. The gentler stuff, the take-your-breath away stuff, was left for the Garden herself to teach me.

I will admit gardening is not for the faint-hearted. Someone once said you don’t garden to get in shape; you have to be in shape to garden. You can get all the weight-bearing exercises you need right outside the door without paying a membership fee. The price of admission is a willing heart and a strong back - and vice-versa.

Just lifting those 40 pound bags of manure and top soil out of the trunk of the car is one thing. Getting it to where it will do the most good is a whole other thing. Then there’s the digging in; all good aerobic exercise, both for the soil and yourself.

Promise you won’t let me loose with a credit card in a nursery. It is an interesting term - nursery. I never thought of myself as the nurturing kind; but present me with an orphan end-of-the season plant and I go all soft and gooey.

In spring when those trusting little sprouts blink up at you from their bed of fallen brown leaves can you resist pulling aside the blanket for a better look? It is like welcoming old friends who you feared might have died. But here they are, safe, sound, renewed from their long nap; bursting to show you what they can do.

I know each leaf, I know each stem and I know all their names, their likes and dislikes. Give this one a little more water, that one some lime. The kid in the corner; she likes to cool her heels so insulate her roots from the sun.

In summer the warm soft belly of my garden is so welcoming that I can’t keep my hands off her. Barehanded I rid her of weeds, dig in more compost, and quench her thirst with rain from my barrels.

But it’s more. It is the feel of doing something forbidden, being a naughty kid again, wallowing in the dirt, and digging right in there barehanded. It’s daring. Get some dirt in your hair and on your face and don’t give a damn who sees you licking the salt off your upper lip.

And I like the mystery of it. If I am pretty sure I didn’t plant something in that spot, if I can’t identify this little bit of green as any particular weed, I let it grow. I give it time to strut its stuff before I make any rash decisions. Thanks to the winds, the birds and the squirrels, (not to mention my failing memory) I have been the recipient of some very surprising floral gifts.

The healing garden is still under construction. I can feel my face going a little pink as I admit to you that many of the tender plantlets I drove several hours to find, buy, bring home and tend to, have grown up to closely resemble some that I spent years eradicating!

This year I am venturing into the wonderful world of vegetables. As I go on my morning walkabout I marvel at how my worm compost has turned the uncertain teenaged tomatoes into blossoming young adults. Carrots, peppers, hot peppers, lettuce, Brussels sprouts, cabbage and cucumber round out the fare.

Do you share my sense of wonder that for the price of dropping a tiny seed into a hole in the earth, feeding and watering it, a few weeks later we are rewarded with a lusty vigorous plant that can feed US? I am concentrating on heritage plants, as frankly the genetically improved ones scare the be jeepers out of me.

I give free reign to my creative side in the garden. Just by putting my shoulder to the wheel barrow and my back into the shoveling I can change my little world. Maybe I want it flat, maybe I want a hill, a waterfall, a pond, a Japanese garden. All it takes is a drop of inspiration and buckets of perspiration.

The Garden and I are party planners; hosts with the most. I provide the venue, and the drinks. She does her part with vegetable snacks and flowers dressed in their best. They splash on some perfume and put on a great show for the visitors. We bask in the glow of the compliments we harvest.

To me, gardens are mirrors reflecting the people who tend them. Is the gardener bold and fun-loving? That harlequin mix of purples and yellows and oranges tells me yes. Does a pastel palette reflect a reserved and contemplative gardener? Are they well-organized, dare I say anal, with everything marching in precise rows and pruned into matching shapes? Or are they wild and crazy with flowers and grasses and green peppers all making an exuberant stew? That weedy, neglected one has a gardener who may be depressed, unwell, or reaching the end of their life cycle.

Me? I am the one with the exuberant stew. But I am also a thoughtful guardian of our earth and our fellow travelers: one who makes room for the snake as well as the snapdragon, the wasp as well as the wildflower.

Did She Scream As She Fell

2009-10-10T09:29:00.001-04:00

Here is a prose poem I wrote several years ago. Fall always seems to inspire dark thoughts for me.

DID SHE SCREAM AS SHE FELL?

Cocoon-like, she clings to the very tip of life. She clings through the gentle spring rain that swells her tender body till it bursts its crisp confine. Then she opens like a tiny green fist and blinks in the spring sunshine.

She gathers strength and toughness and when the autumn comes, unafraid, she turns her ruddy face into the wind, proud of her new clothes. Buffeted, she clings stubbornly to life, refusing to be torn away by the whim of the wind, but her strength is sapped as the tree draws into itself. Rain and hail and savage winds tatter her gaudy raiment but still she clings, hanging by a filament till one day her tenuous grip gives way.

Did she scream as she fell?

The newly fallen are still enjoying the adventure. Children gather them in heaps and burrow their faces into them, drinking in their musky scent. The fallen do not seem to notice the fate of those who have gone before. As the days cool her companions curl in on themselves for protection from the chill wind.

Ah the Wind. She gathers handfuls of their crisp bodies and tosses them about like toys. They are powerless in the face of her playfulness or rage.

Some come to rest in quiet corners where they sleep, slowly fermenting. Others land on thoroughfares and are trampled by boots and wheels. They are grey now and brown. They are soggy from the rain. Worse yet, some are combed from the earth where they lay, methodically gathered into piles and relegated to the fires of hell.

Did she scream as she burned?

Buried!

2009-10-10T09:15:00.001-04:00

I have been "Down to Earth" for so long that I somehow got buried. Thank the gods my friend's new blog ( One Plant At A Time" inspired me to resurrect this old blog and begin again.

It is fall here. The leaves are yellowing and falling. Life is winding down for the winter. I find this a sad time of the year. And even sadder this year with a kind neighbour, ravaged by cancer, winding down for the long sleep. Not too much older than me, this will be her last fall.

How would I feel if this were my last fall. Would I be as brave and gracious? What would I do in my last days or weeks? Would I go to Africa as I have wanted to do since I was six years old? Would I buy that new sport's car and race around town, one step ahead of the Grim Reaper.

No. I think I would stay right here, in this little place of my own where I have found the peace I sought for so long. I will go outside and breathe in the sweet acrid smell of burning leaves and look around at the damp piles of colorful leaves stirring as they snuggle down on the garden. I will take a deep breath, as if it were my last.

What would you do?