A couple of years ago (16 December 2005) I ran the above photo along with a Mary Oliver poem “Pink Pond”. What I didn’t mention then, but will do so now, is that the pink leafy Duck Weed, although beautiful in its colouring of greens and reds, is considered a pest in most ponds because of its ability to spread over the entire surface of the water and choke out any sunlight getting past this barrier to plants below.

The usual method of dealing with this is to periodically rake the pond and keep the percentage of surface area covered by the plant below about 5% because, as it grows exponentially, once it reaches 30% or more of the pond’s surface, it is only a matter of days before the whole pond is covered.

For years I have been diligent in keeping the ponds relative clear of duck weed. This year, however, in a personal attempt to do something positive in dealing with climate warming I have allowed the duck weed to run rampant on the pond. Purpose: to allow the plants to achieve as much carbon capture as possible. Once the pond is covered I rake off a portion to use as mulch and compost in my vegetable garden (a form of carbon sequestration).

Nothing fancy, mind you, but it seems to me that this approach is achieving more practical results than all the fancy talk in Bali where, once again, America, Canada, Japan and Australia balk at becoming serious in dealing with climate change. These countries are all obstructionist talk and no action. They keep worrying about “the economy” without seriously understanding the dire economic future of this world if minimal targets are not set now.

Harvesting the duck weed is symbolic of taking a negative situation and turning it into something positive and useful. The garden will certainly benefit and surprisingly, the hundreds of tadpoles feeding leisurely off the roots of the “protective” duck weed not having to worry about Mr. Snake and Miss Heron are enjoying a field day (or should I say “pond day”?)

It is generally assumed that humans are superior to chimpanzees in all cognitive functions, but a study published this week in “Current Biology” provides proof that chimpanzees are better than humans at basic numeric memory. In a simple mathematical test devised by Kyoto University cognitive scientist Tetsuro Matsuzawa, “Ayumu” (the most prodigious of the six chimps who trained for the “exam”) consistently beat three of the nine college students even after the students were themselves trained for half a year. This doesn’t prove that chimpanzees are better at all maths, but it does offer compelling, scientific proof that the human “animal” and all the other animals found on the great web of life are not all that different. Basically, we are all one. There is no human—animal divide.

Let’s take the test one step further and see if “Nature” is better at mathematics that humans.

The test is to see whether or not a human can build—quickly, easily and with no fuss—a three dimensional spiral phyllotaxis pattern that demonstrates the “golden proportion” and the Fibonacci sequence.

Just outside my kitchen window grows a “saw tooth” Banksia and it is producing—quickly, easily and with no fuss—several winning examples of the above test question. It seems to me that even plants can beat humans in the mathematics game. Proof that the notion of a human—nature divide is as fallacious as the human—animal divide.

Boy, do we humans have to learn to eat humble pie.

Now that spring is here the cute echidna has come out of hibernation and can be seen sauntering along in its hungry way looking to terrify any ant colony she finds. A walk along the “Peace?” path reveals upheaved ground where sharp claws and a pointy snout have wrecked havoc on the peaceful ants who, until the echidna’s devastating visit, were simply going about tending to their community’s needs in their highly organised and well thought out manner.

When the marauding echidna brings catastrophe to the ants, how long before they regain sufficient hope to rebuild what was lost? When an earthquake levels a village how long before the villagers find sufficient courage to pile stone upon stone again to wall out danger?

It is not possible to live forever safely out of harm’s way. One can, though, learn to appreciate the terrifying teaching beauty of earth’s awesome intricacies.

And in spring’s profusion of colour, what of the sweet lives of the bees who dart daringly and innocently from flower to flower?

Black Bear in the Orchard

It was a long winter.
But the bees were mostly awake
in their perfect house,
the workers whirling their wings
to make heat.
Then the bear woke,

too hungry not to remember
where the orchard was,
and the hives.
He was not a picklock.
He was a sledge that leaned
into their front wall and came out

the other side.
What could the bees do?
Their stings were as nothing.
They had planned everything
sufficiently
except for this: catastrophe.

They slumped under the bear’s breath.
They vanished into the curl of his tongue.
Some had just enough time
to think of how it might have been —
the cold easing,
the smell of leaves and flowers

floating in,
then the scouts going out,
then their coming back, and their dancing —
nothing different
but what happens in our own village.
What pity for the tiny souls

who are so hopeful, and work so diligently
until time brings, as it does, the slap and the claw.
Someday, of course, the bear himself
will become a bee, a honey bee, in the general mixing.
Nature, under her long green hair,
has such unbendable rules,

and a bee is not a powerful thing, even
when there are many,
as people, in a town or a village.
And what, moreover, is catastrophe?
Is it the sharp sword of God,
or just some other wild body, loving its life?

Not caring a whit, black bear
blinks his horrible, beautiful eyes,
slicks his teeth with his fat and happy tongue,
and saunters on.

Mary Oliver

Below is a photo of the two structures I have had to build over the years to protect the vegetable seedlings so that they can reach their highest, fullest and most delicious potential.

Yes, protect them with a covering of chicken wire from munching possums, wallabies and the larger birds. Protect them from the drying effects of winds out of the north and salt laden winds from the south and west with a covering of clear plastic around the sides.

It’s interesting that “protect” comes from the latin protegere—the cover in front; the shield.

Here, though, I’m protecting more than just the front. The whole dome is covered.

And, if dome comes from domus (house), than I am protecting my house.

The treasures being protected inside this house are beans, spinach, pumpkins, parsley, rosemary, squash and six varieties of tomatoes.  At the end of the growing season I’ll harvest around $100 worth of vegetables.  The cost of the domes to date is over $1,500.

Worth it? You bet. Because I’m also protecting, besides my health, my sanity. I will remain more sane whenever I enter these two domes to water, weed and nurture. Self serving? Possibly. But I intend to share the wealth.

Just ask this little bird perched on the far right of the edge of its own swimming pool. It looks straight at me and chirps a big thank you for protecting its little life with plenty of fresh water.

I know that I’ve recently written about the struggles encountered when planting trees, but don’t get the impression that Windgrove is a barren landscape. Yes, there are former pasture areas that need replanting, but there are other areas that are pretty well full of trees. Walking around the property at any time of the year is a joyfull experience, during late August/early September it is an experience in yellow. And not just “yellow”. I’m talking about “pale yellow”, “green yellow”, “yellow yellow”, “white yellow”; you name it, it is here in abundance.

The above photographs give a hint of the blackwood tree with its masses of very soft, lightly delicate, almost deceptive yellow. I say “hint” because there are hundreds of these trees in blossom now and it is next to impossible to convey the full magic of their presence. To stand next to them or under them or within them is pure delight.

And in cahoots with the blackwood tree there is the coastal wattle. Both belong to the acacia family with distinctive prominent longitudinal veins on their leaves, but their blossoms are definitely different.

The eyes certainly have had a field day, but….

The sound.

Hundreds of little wings are busy propelling bee bodies from flower to flower.

And the fragrance.

Close your eyes and slowly fill your nostrils up with honey butter.
It is all a sensory extravaganza.

What is the natural order of things? Who or what follows whom? Is there a correct sequence to events in the world? Do things move along a prescribed path?

Take, for instance, fruit on a tree. The botany class I had as a youngster taught me that trees flower in spring, get pollinated by bees and other insects, bear fruit as a result of that pollination, and hidden within the fruit is one or more seeds to move the generations along.

Today I stood in front of the cheesewood tree (pittosporum bicolor) and something wasn’t quite jellying with my boyhood lessons because the tree’s fruit was behaving more like a flower.

Let’s go back a few months. In early spring the cheesewood brings forth an abundance of small, yellow, bell shaped flowers. Once pollinated, the mysterious workings of the world set about to transform this sexual encounter into bearing fruit. So far, so good. The laws of nature seem to be on track.

Today, hanging like luscious apricots (but much smaller), one might think that this particular cycle of the story is almost completed with some animal or bird soon to eat the fruit. Later, defecating out the fruit’s seed elsewhere, the seeds will germinate, thus, starting the process all over again.

But something magical happens with the cheesewood. The fruit, it seems, likes remembering when it was a flower and, therefore, splits itself open and turns itself into two flower petals. Presented on two plates of yellow is a sticky red secondary fruit with seeds within it. Why the extra step? Why the throwback into being a flower? Who knows?

When one begins to look closer into the workings of nature, things just get curiouser and curiouser

Many lichens are extremophiles.

Great word, isn’t it? Extremophile: lover of extreme conditions.

Whether the hottest, driest, wettest or coldest place on earth, lichens can be found living there.

Lichens maintain a symbiosis with cyanobacteria which photosynthesise for the lichen in return for safe housing and a supply of nutrients. In terms of biomass, the global weight of lichens is greater than all the biomass in the oceans.

Shows what level of protection living with a partner can provide.

Must mean that partnered living is the way to go. So why am I still single and approaching 60?

Here’s an interesting fact: If all the 6 billion people on this earth were to be placed in Tasmania (about the size of Ohio or Ireland), every person would have the equivalent space around them of a small back yard in which to live. Considering how over populated the world is, this almost seems an impossibility. Just goes to show that the problem the world faces isn’t so much the numerical number of people, rather their consumption habits.

If humans were equally spread around the globe, there would be so much space between each human that they wouldn’t see each other. They would then, should they desire company, be forced to make friends with all the other “people” in the animal and plant kingdom.

Yesterday I went for a walk around the Peace Path in order to visit my nearest neighbours and said hello to around 50 wallabies, one echidna, 2 blue tongue lizards, 3 yellow crested cockatoos, 2 wedge tailed eagles, 2 kookaburras, 12 pademelons and a wombat in a burrow. And this was just the animal kingdom.

The deck (with picnic table) on the ocean side of the house looks out to Storm Bay through about 75 wind shaped silver-peppermint gum trees. These “tree people” with their dancing arms doing a mass South American salsa, are alive with individual personalities and whenever I walk among them or sit on the deck with them, it is hard not to feel a real presence.

Little wonder, then, that last evening when Australia played Uruguay in the final match for a qualifying position for soccer’s World Cup, I took my TV out of the closet and onto the deck.

I mean, really, who would want to watch such an exciting match as this all by themselves?

The game went into double overtime and finally settled with a penalty shoot out. The trees enjoyed the night in.

Nothing like a little bubbly out on the point at sunset to celebrate today’s completion of planting out 1,500 trees; around four times the norm. Visiting resident artist, Melanie, joins in with a deserving glass after having taken time out from her studio throughout the week to give a helping hand with over 300 trees. Three cheers.

This was an immense project and my body feels it. Even after four massages, countless mornings with a hot water bottle strapped to my back and 15 hot baths (outside under the eucalypt), I might not be able to walk easily again until the weary body gets a few weeks rest.

So why the obsession? Why put myself through such physical pain?

The simple answer is that I love doing it. There is a positive emotional pay back that far outweighs the wobbly walk back home pushing the empty wheelbarrow. For an obsessive six weeks I have been obsessively smiling (well, almost). I mean, how much more honest can a day’s work get?

This afternoon, when Melanie and I placed the last three trees in the ground in a special triangle configuration, we knew that something special, something of real significance had happened. The land also knew.

And the reason for the large number this year is that I want to have already planted out 6,000 trees when I celebrate my 60th birthday in 2006 in the 6th month. Something about being able to walk with authenticity as one enters the elder years.

May all the 6,000 trees now planted at Windgrove have healthy, long lived lives and may each “tree being” see many years of sunsets. Knowing that there are two she-oaks on the property that are over 300 years old as well as a few silver peppermints that are considered “pre-European”, I would guess that these young seedlings have a long life ahead of them.

May the pagan in each of us blossom.

Even though I have been planting the equivalent of a tree every day for the past 13 years (4,500 to date), there are still sections of Windgrove that bear the scars of inappropriate land management.

This is especially noticeable near the cliff face on the southern side of the property where grazing sheep and the plowing of the infertile top soil 50 years ago led to bare patches still visible today even though the last sheep were taken off the property 30 years ago. Relentless winds and literally tons of salt spray swept up over the cliffs from crashing waves below have made it particularly difficult to re-establish any sort of new growth.

Earlier attempts have failed, but I keep trying to devise new strategies to overcome the past arrogance inflicted on this fragile landscape. What was planted thirteen years ago died. Last year, boobyalla (Tasmanian coastal shrub sometimes wrongly confused with coastal wattle) had mixed results. They survived the wind in their protective plastic bags, but the wallabies learned to reach inside the bags and browse the tender leaves.

Therefore, last week, at one tiny section of the cliff top, a small, woven circle made from entwined tree branches, limbs and logs was built to form a protective barrier from both the wind and the hungry wallabies.

For two days I hauled six truck loads from one spot of the property, where I had felled three small trees, to this other location (transfer of wealth?). Besides acting as a circular wind break and small fort from marauding wallabies, the branches will help replenish the soil with nutrients as they decay and they will also act as a net to capture wind-born seed and other debris.

In a way, I sacrificed living trees in order to get something started in this more barren section of property. Whether or not I can “kick start” the regenerative process in this matter or whether or not it is bio-ethically responsible, who knows?

I can only try and do what I feel is best for the health of the whole of Windgrove. Life and death and rebirth issues are always complex.