Showing posts with label earthworms. Show all posts
Showing posts with label earthworms. Show all posts

Thursday, June 26, 2014

Keep those worms breeding in the soil -- water it!

According to that highly academic site funology.com in its "facts about animals" section, baby robins eat 14 feet of earthworms every day. How do they find all these earthworms, as the weather gets hotter and the ground harder and towns all over the robin-world restrict water use among householders?

If we don't water our gardens and the grass where the worms live, they won't be there and the baby robins will starve (and the rich living soil will become mere dust). All's well in early spring when the rain is usually reliable, but the robin babies are cheeping with their mouths open in May and June, in the northern hemisphere.

How many of us have noticed that when we stand with our hoses aimed at the roots of thirsty plants, the chickadees, sparrows and hummingbirds cluster nearby and above us, dying for a drink? Raise up that hose, spray the leaves of trees and bushes, that's where the birds are hoping to find the droplets they need to drink. More city birds perish for lack of water than lack of food. Birdbaths needed too, in every garden.

What is "water conservation" conserving? Dust.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Creating Good Soil For Urban Forest and Plantscape -- Do Earthworms Like Nylon Grass?


Something disgusting on Shelbourne Street.
 
Just how artificial are we willing to let our environment become? We have been told that it's a sin to use water and to have green lawns, but brown dead yards look awful, so now we are being sold an even uglier and deader solution: nylon grass. An outdoor artificial carpet.
 
How many worms can live in nylon grass??! It is green in colour -- but not in substance. Nylon is a synthetic polymer -- lab-created plastic -- and pity the poor bug or bird that finds itself in or on this stuff. It looks and feels like what it is -- plastic -- and it cannot be recycled. It is too expensive to incinerate for disposal, but it fades and cracks (to varying degrees depending on each type) in sunlight, under sulphuric acid (as from car batteries) and dog urine. Almost all of it ends up in landfill sites, where it does not break down.
 
Why is this product even legal? What is a garden, if not a natural space, a clearing for a bit of nature and plant growth in our over-paved cities? Why do we use life-antagonists in them? Why is the CRD making a show and a fuss about recycling food scraps -- relatively benign compared to this -- and then filling landfills and oceans with products like nylon (for that, sooner or later, is where all plastics end up)? They cover whole playing fields. Are we mad??
 
 
BJ
 
 
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