I have a low powered microscope, or rather, an endoscope, that can be plugged into my hand phone, which can capture the electronic image output from the scope and save it in the phone itself.
So I decided to share some of these images here with the external world.
So how you do like my world ?
I have been growing vegetable not just in my backyard, but also on my front yard. The message and motto has been – GROW FOOD, NOT LAWNS.
So, I had a patch of the front yard that was covered by cardboard to keep the grasses from coming up, and helping it to mulch and add organic compost to the soil, and then adding a small two inch layer of fresh soil and organic mushroom compost I already had, mostly all in my backyard.
Then, I made a small rectangular partition with wooden boundary, and stuck some seeds of Swiss chard, and beet and manually watered them with my garden hose. The seeds geminated readily and started growing. Their lovely green large leaves changed the look of my front yard.
I also stuck a series of sunflower seeds… to sort of brighten up the place a bit and also to attract birds for the seeds.
Something else started happening the same time. Some tiny seeds of my vegetables, of previous harvests, somehow ended up in the transport of the soil from backyard to to the front. These included a few tiny potatoes that I did not notice while harvesting last year, an also some seeds of squash and pumpkin.
All these started sprouting when they got some splashes of water from my garden hose as I watered the Swiss chard, beet and sunflowers.
Uninvited they more or less filled out the rest of the space in my font yard, including sprouting plenty of cucubrita flowers attracting a new group of bees, and also ending up creating some squash and pumpkins, which are growing even now. The potato plants got as high as my hip and are flowering. So I guess I shall get some potato too.
And then there came this giant mushroom.
It came out of nowhere, right beside the bed of chards and beet. And it grew massive. Its stem was around two inches thick and the head was well over six inches when ball shaped. But in a day, it opened up, like unfurling of a sail, into a gigantic umbrella almost a foot wide.
I was more than surprised. I was actually curious to know if this was edible. I knew many mushrooms are toxic and can make me sick. I was no expert. So I did a few things.
At the end of all these efforts and attempt to ID it, it turned out a common, popular and edible mushroom of these parts, called Agaricus augustus.
So I uprooted it, an brought it indoor to my kitchen.
My wife was not too fond of eating mushrooms. So I decided to cook it and have it myself. I had no clue how to cook a mushroom. So I just steamed it for 15 minutes. It was way too big to fit into the steamer in one piece. So I chopped it up in pieces first. The frilled umbrella on the underside turned from off white to pitch black while steamed. The rest of the mushroom remained off white.
I added nothing more than a pinch of salt and pepper and then tried it with a fork. It tasted vaguely like a medium rare beef steak, and quite filling. In fact, this mushroom by itself filled me up like a full meal for an adult.
Well, now I know how to identify an Agaricus augustus mushroom, and at least how to cook it by steaming, and that it is a great wild food. Next time I find another, I am going to be fancy in my cooking.
One of the side effects of growing food in your backyard is that your garden becomes alive. If you are growing organic and do not use any industrial poison in way of insecticide, herbicide, fungicide or any other of the “cides”, you are helping to preserve the small creatures at the bottom of the food chain, from the soil microbes and worms to hordes of butterflies and insects that crawl, leap or fly about as your neighbours. And if you do not mow your lawn constantly to prevent wild flowers to bloom, and let the grass grow long before each mow, you allow a whole lot more of food for even larger animals such as rabbits and hares.
Along with all these creatures, come the creatures up the food chain that like to feast of these. You get a look-see and overhead flyby or perching on nearby tall trees by birds of prey like hawks and eagles that notice the frequency of rabbits and hares visiting your garden, primarily to eat the flowers and long leaves of the wild dandelions.
Meanwhile, the profusion of flowers – from large orange bright ones from the pumpkins and squash, to tiny ones on some cilantro plants that I am allowing to produce seeds for the next season growing season – attract a huge horde or insects, from crawling ants to all kinds of flying insects from multiple types of bee to various kinds of butterflies.
Then there are insects that also like to eat at the ripping fruits around the garden – from crab apples to cherries plums and figs. These fruits will also attract fruit eating birds.
This profusion of insects in turn attract an unbelievable variety of eight legged spiders that make their webs in critical locations, hoping to snack on the profusion of these flying meals. Most insects have six legs and two antenna, while spiders belong to a different group of joint legged invertebrates called arachnids, and are grouped with scorpions, ticks, and mites. They all have eight legs. The thing is, many of these spider like creatures are also in loose soil, and often come appear when I dig into them with my fingers to check it. They come up, along with centipede and millipede, and immediately get busy trying to bury themselves back in dry loose soil. Worms on the other hand, will prefer wet or moist soil. All these, too, are meals for other creatures, such as birds.
And thus come the insect eating birds, who will go for both the flying insets as well as insect catchers like the spiders.
Most of us know of birds like chickadee and hummingbirds. We think chickadees eat seeds and hummingbirds feed on flower nectars. True. But these birds are also prolific insect eaters. Therefore, they are constantly on the move in the garden, often in large numbers, looking for a more mobile form of meals compared to honey.
Then there are the wrens, tiny group of perching birds that are insect eaters and known for taking a special liking to spiders. One of these shy birds, called Bewick’s wren, have been making nests in or near my garden and raising chicks successfully year upon year. That is one reason I have a few bird boxes placed in my backyard, often used by small birds to make their nests.
Two hummingbirds are common sights in British Columbia. One is the resident one that has evolved to survive the high latitude winters. This is the Anna’s hummingbird. The other, also highly visible in the warmer months, is a summer visitor from south of the border. This one is the rufous hummingbird. In many ways, they look similar. Both are same size and more or less same shape, and look greenish from the back.
The main difference by which one can distinguish one from the other, is that the Anna’s hummingbird has absolutely no rufous – brick colour – anywhere on them, while the rufous hummingbird has on its sides and even belly. There are other subtle differences that one might miss – such as spots of white around the eyes of the Anna’s and the fact that, I think, the Anna’s hummingbird’s beak has the hint of a slightly downwards droop. The rufous, in my view, has a dead straight beak, like a fencing sword.
Anyhow, both of them will take insects. Also, there are many flowers that they like to poke at and sip from. Further, most of us have a few hummingbird feeders hanging around. So hummingbirds are here. They are usually not scared of humans. At times, one comes within a food of my face, hovers in the air for a second or two, to take a close look at the red coloured emblem on my cap, just to figure out if it is a flower or not. Convinced it is not a flower, it flies away. Usually they are too close and too sudden for me to click a picture so close to me. Perhaps one day I will get one.
Hummingbirds have two kinds of coloured feathers. Some are fast colours and others have structural colour. What is fast colour and what is structural colour. Well, we all know what is fast colour. That is colour on our fabric or paper that are not water soluble and will not wash away. The colour is there to stay.
Structural colour is something else. They are largely made of feathers that have colourless transparent parts, which, when flexed at the correct fashion by the bird and the lighting is good, what happens is that sunlight refracts internally, splits up like when passing through a prism, and only some selective colours end up reaching the eyes of the observer. These are structural colours. They appear to have a hue, and in some cases the colours can even change depending on angle of view, giving the feathers appear iridescent.
The male hummingbirds, both Anna’s and Rufous, have special feathers at its throat that they can flare up in a way where they look like shimmering pink, for an Anna’s, or more brighter red for a Rufous hummingbird. These throat feathers for the males are display feathers, for impressing potential females. These are called Georgettes. The same feathers, when not flexed, and kept tucked in, appear blackish and dull. The bird can control the colours of their georgette as and when needed.
And we should not forget the swallows, such as the colourful violet green swallow, which is also an insect eater.
These are the creatures that make my garden a living garden, and part of the reason is that I grow food without poison, and let the grass grow taller and weeds make flowers instead of constantly mowing them. When the grass grows tall enough, I mow it in one shot and the huge amount of grass mulch is then used as bedding for some vegetable patch, to be composted and returned back to the soil by microbes. All this, in turn, helps to keep the garden alive.
Koo is a microblogging app for social media, an alternative to twitter, and originated in India in 2020 because of differences of opinion between the Government of India and Twitter, regarding freedom of choice. According to India, some anti-India terrorist type people from countries outside of India were assuming fake name and fake origin of being from India, in their membership of twitter, and then passing subversive or treasonous plans and recruitment drives in India to foment insurgency and terrorism. The government listed out the names of these members and wanted twitter to ban their accounts. Twitter did not agree. This started a spat that is ongoing.
Meanwhile, someone in India came up with an alternative app for Indians to consider boycotting twitter and supporting home-grown platforms.
Lot of people did join up and the platform is growing rapidly. Initially, it was presumed that the people that supported the current political party that rules India – BJP, formed the bulk of membership. This was also supported by Government officials and politicians of the party as well as the government ministers including the Prime Minister. Then came many celebrities such as actors and sportspeople, followed by journalists and self employed. In general, it was conceived to be supported by the Indian right wing, or the so called pro-Hindutwa group, or people that feel proud of their Hindu origin.
A few people from the west, wanting to stay connected with, or to gain friendship or exposure, too joined up.
It is reported that the Twitter app has over 25 million users while Koo has just under 3 million, but is rising. In some countries outside of India, Koo has apparently become highly used when their respective nations banned the use of Twitter, such as Nigeria. Some high profile ministers of the Indian Government have joined Koo and brought one million and more followers.
Lately, perhaps the platform is losing some of its pro Hindutwa distinction and attracting some of the middle-of-the-road noncommittal folks too.
I joined up partly out of knee jerk dislike of the controlling social media and IT bigwigs of Facebook, Twitter, Google, & Microsoft, and their apparent censorship when it comes to selective subjects such as covid, Donald Trump, etc. Partly, also was the concern regarding the propaganda on Covid and my desire to tell folks in India that Hindutwa and Covid should not be mixed up. Whatever is the agenda for the Indian government regarding secularism, its politicise on covid was wholly in line with the global dictatorship of promoting a fake propaganda for reasons other than safety from any viral epidemic.
My time with Koo has been for around six months, of which I have been reasonably active for say four months or so, meaning making on average perhaps one post per day. And in this time, my follower base has risen from zero to almost 500. In Comparison, on Twitter, I have less than 400 followers, after having been there for 12 years.
In the attached graph, one can see there were not much rise in membership in the months of March and April, when I did not make much posts. This is an indication that a post a day ensure steady rise of followers, even if your views are controversial, non-standard, or opposite to the current flow. People will follow you out of curiosity, if what you have to say, is curious.
Why is this important. Well, I feel covid propaganda is destroying the planet as we knew it, even if the state of affairs were horrible in many counts. Therefore, resisting the ongoing destruction of the human society becomes a primary task of any thinking human, without our own capacity and inclination, and without engaging in violence.
In that, I suspect India would play a crucial role, or it has the potential to do so. That is primarily the reason for my attraction to this app – to try and make a difference, however small.
But there are subtle differences. On Twitter, I post more often and some of my followers have the same interest, such as dislike for industrial chemicals and herbicides in food, or the fact that people are having their free speech curtailed by the social media giants.
On Koo, there is no such discernible pattern. People from differing walks of life seem to follow me at random. The only noticeable pattern is – if I do not make any posts for a few days, my followers do not increase, and in fact begins to drop off. On the other hand, if I make more posts, especially on topics off the beaten path, I gain more followers. The new followers rarely, if ever, click the “like” button or share my posts. So I guess they are more curious about what I have to say, and not necessarily agreeing with me. Neither are they disagreeing enough to voice their opinion.
When it comes to covid – almost 99.99% of the people do believe covid is a deadly virus and one needs to take all precautions possible to avoid getting infected or worse. I seem to be the only voice that spends words of caution about the reality of covid and also about possible harm from vaccine, not just on health, but also economy, freedom and democracy.
Curiously, Koo App has not yet gotten around to sanctioning me or censoring my posts that often ends up criticising the Indian government, or prime minister.
So far, it has been an interesting journey and I have been making more posts on Koo than on Twitter of late.
I distinctly remember when I first saw a hummingbird outside of a zoo. I was in Jamaica, visiting on a freighter ship where I worked as an engineer. I could barely distinguish it’s details since it was so small and fidgety, moving from flower to flower at the entrance to someone’s house. I had known about them, but was not expecting them, when a local resident pointed it out to me. It was gone in a few seconds, suddenly shooting off like a bullet. I so wished it had stuck around for a little longer. Those days, I only had an instamatic point and shoot camera, not suited to take pictures of birds that small under it was sitting on your hand. The the experience of seeing it for the first time, never left me.
I had of course seen a somewhat similar bird of my own birthplace – the old world sunbirds. They are perhaps not directly and closely related to the new world hummingbirds, but the old world sunbirds, flowerpeckers and spider hunters sort of evolved to similar shape and size in a process known as convergent evolution. Distantly related creatures, when adapting to identical lifestyle, often evolves to similar shape and size. This is how whales, dolphins and porpoises, which are mammals and were once four legged land dwellers, begin to look like fish, which internally some of them still hold the bones of vestigial hind legs, while for some others the legs have turned into flippers or paddles.
In my home state, West Bengal of India, the sunbirds were called Moutushi (মৌটুসি). Like hummingbirds, it makes tiny nests hardly four inches or so wide, and lays marble sized tiny eggs and raises a few chicks. But unlike the hummingbirds with their straight beak, the sunbirds usually have a downward curved beak. The sunbirds are, on average, just a tad larger than the hummingbirds, and although expert flyers and some have been noted to hover motionless in the air while drinking flower nectars, they usually will perch while doing so, whereas hummingbirds at the ultimate flyers in aerial acrobatics. They can not only hover motionless in the air, but can fly vertically up, or down. They can fly sideways left or right, and even backward – something that no other bird, or even man made helicopters can do as of today.
Hummingbirds are birds of the Americas, found from Alaska down to Tierra Del Fuego. But their greatest concentration and variety are to be found in the tropical belt in south America.
Here in British Columbia, Canada, I have seen only two kinds of hummingbirds. One is more prominent and found more often than the other. This is a migratory species – the Rufous Hummingbird. It lives south of the border in USA, but ventures up north into Canada in the summer, feeds on the local flowers, makes nests, lays eggs and raises young, before heading back south for the colder months.
The other, is the only resident hummingbird of the land – Anna’s hummingbird. They are similar is size and appearance and are greenish on their back with iridescent colouring and beautiful georgette on the throats of the males. People can and do mix one up with the other. But the best way to distinguish one from the other is that the Rufous usually has brick coloured feathers on its sides while the Anna’s has no rufous colour anywhere on it, and the male has some white around the eyes.
I see a rufous hummingbird perhaps five or six times as often as I see an Anna’s. They come to our backyard, not just for the flowers or the feeders, but also for the insects. Hummingbirds, as well as sunbirds and their relative the spider hunters – will take flying insects too.
This year, out backyard is being visited by both kinds of hummingbirds and often. And some of the males are still chasing partners. And thus, I could see a glorious male looking around for a female and advertising itself on a thin branch of my plum tree. On occasion, I even got the pair, male and female on the same branch.
Contrary to the normal angle of observation, where the photographer is on the ground and the bird is above him, here the roles were reversed. I was at my window on the top floor, say the 3rd floor above ground. The bird was on a branch a floor below me, and I was watching it almost vertically down.
Also, I was wearing a baseball cap with a bit of a red marking on it in front. On occasion, the female, which was constantly moving around searching out the flowers and the feeders, and drinking from them occasionally, came close to check if that red thing on my cap was a flower. It would come to almost a food from me, while I was leaning out of the window, and hover there, intently watching that mark on my cap, before deciding it was not a flower. It would be still and hover for a second or two before flying off. It was too close for me to focus on it and take a picture, since I had a long lens on me which would not focus on anything close.
But, on the other hand, I got some great shots including normal and slow speed videos of the birds.
In a way, my day was made.
This year I seem to have a huge success in growing the general Cucubrita family of food crops. Although the season is in its early phase and the produce are not yet ripe, it appears that I shall probably have a successful harvest of pumpkins, squash, zucchini, gourd and cucumbers than any previous year.
I planted a lot of seeds in my starter pots. Most of them sprouted and were successfully transplanted outdoors. I had been careful to manually water the plants, both in raised beds and on portable fabric bags. The main difference in the raised beds were that the lower levels were fulled with wood, leaves and grass mulch, with the upper layer being soil – following the hugelkultur technique. Actually, I did not know of hugelcutur when I started doing it out of my own belief that this might work. And then, based on my pictures posted on social media, I got responses that showed that my efforts were already practiced long before and had a name – originating from Germany.
In more than one way, the Cucubrita family has contributed to my backyard turning into a food forest. The other major contributors are potato, tomato and the cabbage and cauliflower groups.
I am aware that the Cucubrita family of squash, gourd, zucchini and especially pumpkin are rich in vitamins, primarily vitamin-A. Also, the greens of these plants are great as food, either sautéed western style or cooked like saag Indian style.
I have not had any of these greens yet, but that is to come. As soon as a large pumpkin or two begin to grow on a vine, one can in effect cut off the remaining vine and leaves and cook them, while letting the pumpkins grow and the plant put more energy into them instead of into growing more vine.
I did not count how many plants I have put in the soil in my backyard, but there are perhaps a hundred vines, some are branches of the main, growing in all directions and are literally taking over the neighbourhood.
I can already count at least 8 pumpkin growing on the very roof of my garden shed, along with half as many squash. But these are merely preliminary figures. The vines are growing on the roof like crazy, and many more are claiming to the roof. Some are producing fruits hanging off the edge of the roof. So no telling how many will be linked to this one small garden shed roof alone. It is perhaps not an exaggerated expectation to state that I expect the total number of pumpkin, gourd and squash on my property this year might cross 50. In other words, if I was to eat one of them each week, it will cover the whole year.
At least half a dozen of the vines are happy to be climbing the red leaf cherry blossom tree nearby one of the hugelcultur raised beds.
As to the vines, there are perhaps a hundred of them growing everywhere. And this does not even include the cucumbers, which by themselves might produce almost 50 fruits.
I am kept busy daily, trying to help the vines find something to climb. I have criss cross the area is ropes and strings for these vines to climb, wrap around, or hand from.
About the pumpkins and squash, there is also a story to be told involving the front yard.
I had prepared part of the smaller front yard, removing the grass, covering the area with biodegradable cardboard to suppress the weeds, and brought some soil from my backyard, mixed with compost and placed it over the cardboards last year, to try to grow some food instead of just a toxic grass lawn that supports nothing. I wanted it to either go to weed which supports insects, bee, rabbits, birds and other wildlife, or grow food. For purpose of appearance, I chose to grow food. I had planted some beets last year.
This year, I added some wooden frames there to demarcate food zones for different crops and flowers there, and planted some Swiss chard and beets in one of the rectangles, and a dozen sunflowers on another. A large section was left for planting more food. I was thinking of putting some more turnips and perhaps carrots there.
However, a strange thing happened when I started watering the beets, Swiss chards and the sunflowers. The water droplets also fell a bit on the sup pounding area that had the good soil but where I had not yet put any seeds. Apparently, the soil transported from my backyard, from beds where I had grown stuff in previous years, carried some tiny potatoes the size of half a marble or so that often escapes attention, but are still viable, despite their small size. Also, somehow the soil contained a few pumpkin and swash seeds, no idea how.
So, in my front yard, suddenly some potato, squash and pumpkins sprouted, next to the planted beets and chard.
I was surprised, but did not uproot them. If they could be hardy enough to emerge in my front yard unplanned by me, they deserved to live, I thought.
And now they have taken over the vacant wood framed plot. One of the vines have grown on the soil and looking for something to climb. I am thinking of making them a ramp and scaffolding of wood. But I have to first do some wood work to provide support for the second tomato zone where the plants are outgrowing the bamboo support sticks.
Meanwhile, I am thrilled to watch my Cucubrita grow. This might just be the year of the Cucubrita, for me.
I have been growing potato for a while now. However, this year I noticed something different in some of my crop. For one thing, many more of the plants produced potato berries, or seed pods, than before. But that was not all.
One potato plant had a most peculiar development. IT was producing potatoes above ground, one at every segment where new leaves or a new branch come out. There, at the juncture, a fat round thing grew, almost like a tumour or something. A closer look proved it to be a sort of a potato, growing above ground and off the stalk itself. As it a tuber is being turned Ito a fruit.
Well, one could not call this a fruit since a fruit is to be the container for seed. This guy was not involved in producing seed pods. Rather, it was producing potatoes, but above ground. I had plucked a few larger ones and taken a good look at them. They showed faint signs of turning greenish on the skin – a trait that normal potato have, if they are exposed to the sun. This is the potato way to prevent animals trying to eat the exposed potato, but turning toxic. A half exposed potato will turn green on the exposed section, and remain normal for the bottom half.
Also, at the top end of this thing, there were clear signs of new leaves sprouting. It was, indeed, trying to create a plant, just like a normal potato. Unlike a normal potato, it did not have roots in the ground, taking nourishment. It was taking it directly from the plant itself, through its attachment with the stalk. I did see, however, some tiny thread like extensions from the bottom, a millimetre or two in length. I wondered if those were left over traits of the normal potato, seeing down roots, looking for soil.
A few of these were already attacked by some insect and the top section partially chewed off, the best I could tell.
I wondered if this is how evolution works and if I was seeing an example of it. This is a variant of the normal potato. Somehow it came to existence. We know five kids of the same parents will not be clones but will have variations, some of which will be different from either parent or any of its ancestor. This variant trait, if proven to have some clear advantage, then in natural circumstance that offspring would do better than others and might end up producing more kids with this trait. Eventually, if circumstance remains favourable, this trait might become one of the dominant features of a new group of plants that are substantially different from its ancestors. This variant is now on the way to become a new species.
Natural selection aside, this can also happen through personal involvement of a group of creatures, such as animals that prefer a certain trait in themselves or in other plants or animals it supports and nurtures. Humans themselves have managed to bring forward plants very different today, from the earlier versions they favoured and tended for over the millennia. This involves plants as well as animals that are now domesticated and a far cry from their original wild version.
I was clearing out this bed, to prepare it for fall planting of other tubers – beet, turnip and perhaps carrots. So I was uprooting and harvesting the potato. About this particular plant, I had already pulled off a few of the above ground potato attached to it, taken a look and buried them back in the soil. I have a habit of burying back organic matter that I grew but do not consume. The plants themselves are usually crushed, balled up and reburied in the same soil. It came from nutrients off the ground, and goes back in the ground, to be composted back by micro organisms – the natural recycling that the living plant is so good at.
Thus, I pulled this plant off too and reburied it, but I remembered at the last moment to take a few pictures to preserve the occasion. I checked if it had also produced tubers underground and if so, how many. Apparently it did produce underground regular tubes too, but not too many. So it was a halfway transient variant, able to produce tubers both underground and above ground, but not too many nor too large anywhere.
It came upon me to write about it the next day. To me, this is evolution at work. This is what mutation, natural variation and random change means – as observed by early stalwarts like Charles Darwin in vast varieties of living creatures and how Gregor Mendel figured out how heredity works in green pea. If this trait in the potato, of growing tubers above ground, is to be considered an advantage, then humans could replant the produce of this plant again and again, selectively filtering out those that produced more tubers underground, and filtering in those that grew more above ground. Eventually, it might lead to potatoes that only grew above ground, and, hopefully, were good to eat too – a novelty.
I was not involved in trying to create any specific hybrids. Not in this late stage of my life, as a home gardener trying to produce my own food.
But I am an observer – with a habit of analysing what I see around me, and make sense of it. And thus, I decided to jot down my observation, while having today’s morning coffee.
thought of including Darwin’s image in the same blog. After all, I did find something of him in my own backyard garden, even if I am completely unaware of him ever finding evidence of any evolutionary change of this kind in potato.
If you wish to comment, please feel free to use the comment box below. Thank you for reading this note.
In the morning, just after the sun was out and striking the top of the tall cedar trees horizontally from the north-east, I took a mug of hot coffee and stepped out on my backyard garden for a few moments of quiet time, watching my vegetables and planning out a to-do list for the day.
But when I lifted the blinds and opened the glass door to the back patio, I knew I had to take my camera. Backyard was full of birds. As the sun had started warming the air, the insect population comes to life, and along with it, the insect eating birds and spider. Also, as the seed eating finches were about, since many of the wild and not so wild flowers were dropping mature seeds on the ground or floating in the air. A flash of yellow streaked by and I notice gold finches flitting about – not so common a site in my backyard.
By the time I got a camera with a long lens on it, the gold finch was nowhere to be found. However, there were a few hummingbirds flying wildly about, often chasing each other and even zipping my me, where I could hear the whirring of their wings. These experts of aerial acrobatics have been a daily and near constant visitor to my backyard, not just for the flowers, including some fuchsia in pots kept specifically for these birds.
Clicking on these birds were not easy since they were so fidgety. But I had gotten a few pictures of it hovering under a feeder a few days ago. It reminded me of the slow motion video I got of an Anna’s hummingbird weathering out a gentle snow fall, which looked even more gentle in the slow motion video.
Hummingbird during snowfall
Back to the present, I had a northern flicker sitting on a wooden power line post on my neighbour’s property. This guy, apart from drumming on wood and bark to pry out grubs inside the wood, had taken to drumming on metallic objects. It was not looking fr food, but rather, advertising itself for a potential mate. Since drumming on metal produced a far louder and ominous noise racket, it hope t convince a potential partner, that this was a male that would be more than able to provide for the family and should be considered a good catch.
Meanwhile, above me, a violet green swallow sat on a wire and pruned itself leisurely. Looking at it from its underside, it is not easy to figure out what kind of a swallow it is, or why it is called violet green. However, the bird was constantly moving and twisting around, trying to clean out and rearrange its feathers, so I could spend time on on clicking it from different views. This bird has both violet on its rump and brilliant green on its back.
The swallow and hummingbirds were of course not the only visitors. I had the more reliable jackrabbit that was a near constant visitor to my backyard.
Then there were the constant whirring of bee population visiting the numerous yellow flowers of the Cucubrita family – that is pumpkin, various squash, gourd and cucumber.
Apart from the perennial chickadees, we also were having another bunch that had appeared of late – a few of the siskin family. I could see them sitting on a pine tree or even the roof of my garden shed. American robins kept watching out for early worms. House finches roamed by deck occasionally.
A collared dove sat on another part of the overhead wire, and watched me serenely while all this was going on.
Come to think of it, I had lost my bird watching group on account of covid vaccine. But thankfully, the birds had not abandoned me, In fact, they were coming home, right in my own backyard. Fancy that.
I finished my coffee, set the camera down on a chair, and opened the water to water the plants. Today I was going to sow late season seeds – turnips and beet, on a new bed that got a fresh layer of wood, twigs and mowed lawn grass and then a top layer of soil and compost. Some of the home made fertiliser came from powdered egg shells, while others came from worm compost castings and worm compost tea, as well as recycled organic matter.
Talking about worm composting, I lost my stock when I was in India for two years till 2019. Upon return back to Canada, I had to purchase a small batch for $20. That small batch, numbering abut a hundred or so two years ago, has now had a huge population explosion, expanding from my first bin to a second bin and numbering several thousand. These fast compost producing red wiggler worms are outnumbering themselves beyond my needs. So, should anyone wish to buy some of these wonder creatures at half price, let me know. I do not need the small cash, but giving it free often results in insincere people grabbing some and letting them go to waste.
Anyhow, time to head back indoor, watch the final soccer match between Italy and England for the Euro2020 cup, and then fish out my turnip and beet seeds, and perhaps a bit of the carrots too, and head back out again once the sun has passed its hottest daily phase and begun to lose some of its sting.
That was my todays story, of backyard visitors, mostly birds. Like I said – grow food, not lawns. You will be amazed how the life around you begins to change. It is good for the soul and for the health. Good for the pocket too. Growing your own food is like printing your own money. Think about that.
I had been away from the local birdwatching group I used to hang out with. Firstly, the leader, a good friend, died suddenly. He was suffering from cancer, but somehow I did not know, and during the covid restrictions, going out together had been restricted. That Tom died suddenly, came as a big shock to me. I really liked the guy, and had dropped him off a time or two at his place when he did not bring his own big vehicle. He had been the leader for as long as I was with them, which is almost ten years. It felt as it the heart had gone out of the group.
Meanwhile, time went by under the gathering clouds of covid. I did not get the feel that the flu was dangerous enough for the world to stand on its head, and smelled a rat – but I had no idea how large this rodent was going to be.
Anyhow, getting together was now a chore with social distancing and restrictions to numbers and many other more or less outlandish requirements that had no basis to scientific facts far as I could see. Unfortunately, the public bought it hook like and sinker. Even the guy at the auto service centre where I went to tune up my car, told me if I did not believe in covid, I must not be watching the TV. Well, I did by then believed that the best way to rid yourself of covid was to throw the damned tv out of the window, after unplugging it first.
Life was not going to be the same again, I gathered. As it is, the bird population in North America was plummeting in a free fall. Many of the birds we saw would not be around for the next generation. Everything was going up in smoke, and not just from covid.
Local birding trips with the old gang came to an abrupt halt for now. I went birding alone, or with neutral friends. I managed to meet up a few of the old gang here and there, often pairing up in small groups that I would meet up by chance. I would on occasion go birding with my wife, who took the morning walks along the Boundary Bay dyke by the 72nd St, next to the Boundary Bay airport. We would sometimes come across new folks in the lonely dyke road, like a couple riding their horse. It used to be nice.
We did see the usual birds. A short eared owl sitting on a fence post would be a treat. This was one of the few owls found in these lands that hunted in the day. Although never too numerous and usually hard to find, the dyke was a good place to find one, especially in the winter and early in the morning. You might even chance upon an even more rare barn owl, at the fringe of its range up north hereabouts in British Columbia.
My time and interest incrementally shifted to the ongoing covid drama across the planet, as well as on the need to grow much of my food in my own backyard. These two, in my mind, were not unconnected. From a bird watcher, I was turning into a lockdown protester on the streets on Surrey and Vancouver, as well as a dogged home gardener with the message – Grow Food, Not Lawns.
I would occasionally meet up with some of the people from the old birding group, but without Tom and without a good crowd, it was not the same.
Thankfully, his Highness Bill gates had not yet declared that an unvaccinated person without a mask trying to take a picture of an equally unvaccinated and maskless wild bird would trigger and end of all existence. So I could still click at birds without fear of triggering a reversal of the big bang.
But the dark clouds of covid, getting darker by the day, much preoccupied me. I was slowly waking up to the conclusion that life as we knew it before covid, was never going to come back again. Also, protesting on the streets were symbolic but not producing much meaningful result. The vast majority of the population either wholly believed the propaganda, or were mortally afraid of losing their jobs, or influenced by peer pressure, and simply replaced their prophet by the TV. It came to me that when the chips are down, the only people that might survive, for a bit, might be those that can grow their own food.
Thus, I turned from a long term anti-glyphosate food security activist and a lifelong birder, to a lockdown and c-vaccine protester, freedom fighter, to a more focussed backyard organic farmer.
Time went by, and I am fast forwarding to the present. I had lapsed in my annual membership payment for the birding group, mainly because I used to pay cash by hand earlier during meetings. But since physical meeting was more or less shelved and I was not seeing these guys, payment in person could not be made.
And then, just today, I got an email posted to their group email – in which I was still a recipient. It talked about birding trips in the next few days. That brought back memories.
My gardening was now stable and I could spare a few hours in the morning after watering my plants, to go birding and return back in the afternoon. So I sent a reply, explaining my situation, that I had not kept my membership valid was was wiling to pay up if there was a convenient way to do so, and that I did not want to wear a mask during birding and if that was OK.
The person in charge called back. I could pay online. Mask was unnecessary. But, I must be vaccinated.
That was a mega shocker. No vaccine had yet been approved by FDA. They were merely released under emergency and people could voluntarily take them if they liked, taking the risk that should they be harmed, they alone were to blame. I knew enough about the messenger RNA and DNA vaccines not to ever offer to take then voluntarily. I knew the reason behind the vaccines were goals other than safety of health. I had not taken any vaccine in sixty years and I had not gotten sick with any infective disease in that period. I was horrified that the group would even consider making vaccination a mandatory requirement.
I told the person the same thing, and informed him that there was no way I was going to take a vaccine just to join this birding group. Birds will be there, and I will be there, without vaccine. That is all there is to it.
And thus, it was farewell to my birding group, drawing curtains over a long association. I wished Tom Bearss was still alive. But, what happened to me, is a small snapshot of what is happening around the world. Looting of public funds and destruction of liberty using the pretext of public safety.
Goodbye friends. Nice knowing you.
Question was raised by a friend on Facebook post, about older people in India more or less confining themselves indoor, separated from their world, and just counting days doing nothing – was this a worthwhile mode of existence?
This prompted a response from me, as follows:
And on a follow up message, I wrote further –