Zen and Hens

Mildred, you’ll be relieved to know, is holding her own in the back garden by hiding under bushes till Judy, Mabel, Henny-Penny and Amelia have clucked off (to dig up potatoes); emerging to peck around the feeder for food and to drink rainwater—of which there is a plentiful abundance on the West Coast of Scotland.

Judy (R) & Henny-Penny (L) doing quality control of the spuds they dug up

Chooks don’t like uncooked potatoes but they do like wee beasties: when they scratch around the potato patch after tasty treats, the spuds are in the way so they dig them up—and don’t replant them! Mildred is a bit fat to flutter up the sides of the raised bed and with the nasturtiums in there too the others tend to hang out there a lot.

Hens in the front garden

Meanwhile, in the front garden, the other five hens newly-liberated from battery cages have now all got names. The wee girl whose gramps live round the corner came round this morning with her grandma and we decided we’d first have to find a way to tell them apart.

Whereas Pipsqueak is easy to identify, having fewest feathers, especially around the rump and neck, Petunia (like her namesake Mrs Weasley fond of craning her neck to see what’s going on) is more similar to the rest.

Pipsqueak

However, we noticed that, with long and short tails, and more or less floppy combs, we could distinguish them. So, designating Petunia as the one with the floppy comb and short tail, and already knowing that Pipsqueak has the fewest feathers, with Mildred now in the back garden that only left 3 hens to name.

Petunia

The wee girl, unaided by Grandma, decided that the name of the hen with a less floppy comb and short tail was Daisy. I heartily approved. Especially as I felt sure Daisy would like to eat them.

Daisy

So now we had the two long-tailed hens, distinguished by their combs: floppy or not. Floppy-combed Meela and less floppy Jessica received their names without ceremony but I picked up Daisy after Grandma said it was really time to go to the Safari Park and, after Daisy was duly patted and released, off my nice neighbours went, with thanks.

Meela

I do feel it’s important for a flock to have a mixture of traditional and up-to-date names. So I enjoyed this modern touch and am content that I have hens that are not only very Zen but also trendy!

Jessica

(Photos & videos copyright the author may be used—unconnected to commerce and without transformation—with a link to this blogpost)

Operation Chicken Run

“It’s my birthday and I can rescue hens if I want to” was my prepared excuse if any family members noticed the new coop and run that had sprung up overnight. Neither that day nor the British Hen Welfare Trust adoption day was actually my birthday but I thought it was near enough to try some emotional blackmail.

This was my second time around, as I’d already rescued 4, so I knew what to do:

• Decide definitely whether to go ahead with this madness or not
• Book the hens to be adopted and pay the fee (adding a donation to the cause)
• Hope for the best and buy a hen coop
• Pick up a new feeder & water dispenser
• Assemble the coop
• Keep the family in the dark till it’s too late to object (not what I did the first time and not recommended!)
• Acquire 2 or 3 big cardboard boxes
• Assemble the boxes, line with wood shavings and straw—then them hide in the car
• Go get the hens!

I was lucky enough to find wooden coops for sale nearby and had a lovely chat with the carpenter at his workshop about dogs, hens, coops, his home country and my painful attempts at speaking German. It almost fitted together perfectly and I think the “almost” was due to it getting dark, me getting tired and a midgie biting the same eyelid that got stung by a wasp a month ago! However, apart from the litter tray being slightly stiff to move (there’s good access from a door in the front of the coop and through the nesting box, and it does go in and out, so it’s not an issue) the coop does exactly what I wanted.

This time—avian flu hysteria over—I was able to get out of the car to talk to the lovely volunteers and could see others in the pen with the hens running around indignant at being taken out of their cages without prior warning and then being grabbed (very gently and lovingly) and put into a cardboard box! At first sight I thought they were a different breed from the Red Star hybrids I have at home. But, when I got them home, I realised the distinctive white plumage wasn’t from their large outer feather (few and fairly bare) but from the inner layer of down—and even that was missing in large patches.

Red Star chicken with sparse plumage dimly seen through blond wood & wire window of hen coop

So, at the moment, I’m not sure if they’re the same hybrid breed as my other 4 or not. Last time the days were shorter (daylight hours vary a lot at this latitude as we’re farther north than Moscow) and I’d picked them up later so—assured they’d been fed and watered—I’d just placed the boxes into the coop and only opened them up the next morning. The BHWT advise cutting a ventilation slot in each side and all good coops are well ventilated so there was no danger of suffocation. This time I was earlier and wanted to give them the opportunity to put their claws and beaks into green grass for the first time.

So, after I placed them gently onto the straw covering wood shavings inside the raised coop, I opened the door to the ramp leading down to the grass beneath—and their food and water.

No movement through open door to coop at top of the ramp—seen through wire of pen.

At first, nothing. My Mum can be heard asking “so how do they know how to get out?” Good question. They don’t, but chickens are curious and will look for food and water. Finally, Petunia (who had already shown her nosiness by sticking her head out of the box before she’d even got to the car) braved the ramp.

Like all these ex-battery hens, her comb is pale pink rather than the ruddy red of a healthy bird and Petunia’s hangs over at a rakish angle. She’s also not Mildred, the big timid bird with most of her tawny plumage intact, so hopefully I can identify her tomorrow.

Mildred in the foreground and a more bedraggled hen close behind her inside the coop

3 more bedraggled hens hiding in the far corner of the coop

Four others agreed with Mildred that discretion is the better part of valour and stayed safely inside, for quite a while. I worried that they might be dehydrated so I placed a bowl of water inside there along with some cooked potato. The bowl was on its side and the potato untouched an hour later so I removed the bowl, chucked the wet straw and potato down the ramp and hoped the chooks would follow. Eventually, they did.

4 hens pecking the cage wire, the grass, the feeder and their water dispenser

Hens peck the way a dog sniffs; it seems to be their default method of enquiry. If it moves, peck it; if it doesn’t, peck it and maybe it will. By trial and error, these four found out it’s better to peck grass than cage wire. Of course the lid didn’t stay on the feeder for long and neither did the water dispenser remain upright. I replaced both, refilling the latter and adjusting the wire that neither I nor the lady in the shop had understood in terms of function (it holds the bottle upright).

Finally, just as it was getting to that twilight time that in Scotland we call “the gloaming”, Mildred—walking like an opera singer in tight shoes—and her shy companion ventured down the ramp.

Mildred, Petunia & 2 companions peck about the pen & drink water

I let them peck about until I realised that none of the six, drawn down the ramp by a combination of hunger, thirst and curiosity, had made the connection between security and going back up it. They seemed to be settling down for a slumber party on the grass when I opened the pen gate and (rather abruptly) persuaded some of them back up the ramp and just grabbed the others and shoved them through the door. The process was quite undignified but, with the coop door and pen gate both closed, they were snug and safe for the night.

I may not be able to put the fencing up around the lawn in front of their coop until the day after tomorrow. Hopefully they won’t be too vigorous in establishing their pecking order by then. I’m thinking that I may relocate Mildred (as she’s big and fully feathered) so there’s 5 in each flock—or maybe give her to a kind neighbour who’s just lost one of hers—but it might be best to leave her to settle in for a few days at least.

The new hens (and the old) spent a quiet night and four came down the ramp—which I levelled a bit with an upturned plastic ice cream carton—fairly early. One of the 4 as yet unnamed hens (informally known as Miss Nasty) is taking it upon herself to peck everyone within reach. Establishing normal social relations is a good sign. They’re slowly getting over the shell-shock of battery cage hell followed by rehoming.

Mildred & companions in the pen with the triangular key to open the coop door at the top of the ramp

The wee girl whose grandparents live round the corner is coming round with her friends and her Mum this afternoon to name the new hens so, apart from Mildred and Petunia, the nicknames are temporary. So, when I tell you that Pipsqueak (smallest, shyest and most battered-looking, who’s spent most of the past 20 hours squeezing herself tightly into the far corner of the nesting box) laid the first egg, I think you’ll agree that’s another good sign.

Small brown egg in my hand in front of coop with hens pecking about.

(Photos & videos copyright the author may be used—unconnected to commerce and without transformation—with a link to this blogpost)

Hens Eat Pizza

My four rescued hens have been with me for over four months now and I’ve written about their established pecking order before. In the five minute video at the end, it’s very clear who’s who:

• Judy (the fat one) just eats because hardly anyone ever challenges her.
• Mabel (the one with a small squinty feather in her tail) pecks Henny-Penny.
• Henny-Penny (the long-tailed one) spends as much time trying to eat as she does trying to make sure Amelia doesn’t.
• Amelia (the darkest one) scurries around, grabs crumbs where she can and eventually makes off through the garden gate with a large piece of pizza.

I recorded ten minutes but can only upload five. Before is me calling “chookies!” to get Amelia to join us in the close where I thrown down the slice of pizza and after is her successfully scarpering with a piece of it.

The chooks have gone from arriving in two straw-lined cardboard boxes to being cooped up for hours then set free to roam their pen, to finally getting the run of the entire garden. In that time their plumage has regrown, though Mabel’s undercarriage is still a bit bare and only Henny-Penny has long tail feathers so there’s more of that to do. They’ve also fattened up (we don’t eat them only their eggs) and are much more trusting of me and more used to being stroked and picked up.

4 hens on a close-pecked lawn beside a wooden raised coop with plastic feeder underneath and bushes and hedges behind

I’ve learned a few things in these months. Firstly to interpret their cries:

• Drama squawk—something’s wrong (usually I only hear this when Amelia has laid an egg and for some reason feels she has to run about the garden announcing this)
• Hurry up squawk—every morning before I open the door to the ramp down from their wooden coop
• Contented cluck—default mode when rooting around the grass or soil
• Happy cluck—heard from inside the nesting box especially when Mabel is alone in there taking her own good time to lay an egg and sitting on everyone else’s
• Hungry squawk—similar to the hurry up squawk but not as urgent. More of a hopefully milling around the back door at breakfast and dinner time in hope of a plate coming out with leftovers.

Legally, apparently (I haven’t looked it up) only vegan households can feed their hens leftovers. So I imagine that every hen keeper is vegan then. Officially. Food is a huge issue for hens as they spend most of their awake time acquiring it. I’ve learned the wisdom of placing food either on a raised shelf—where they tend to stretch their necks up to peck at it rather than stand on it—or in a basket hanging at their eye level. This is because while other animals understand not to sh *t where they eat, hens never got that memo.

The solution to dealing with this is to either put it into a plant pot with the aid of a stick (useful for those early morning huge creamy lumps) or to sweep dirt over it, if it’s smaller and on the path, and that way it’s easier to sweep away towards the compost heap. As it dries fairly quickly, I even just sweep it off the lawn onto the dirt of the borders and the hedges.

Chicken manure (let’s call it that) is highly valued by gardeners. It seems it’s a bit strong if applied directly to plants but, as it tends to get mixed up in their straw or wood shavings bedding, it can be laid near plants without touching their stalks and the rain takes the nutrients down to the roots.

So the potatoes, grown among heavily manured compost have gone absolutely mad! They were, admittedly, under plastic (from the old greenhouse) for months to stop the hens eating the shoots but now that raised bed is open to the elements and the strawberries and nasturtiums that have survived the slugs are doing well.

Hens love slugs and snails and even eat the latter’s shell. They love scratching the soil up with oblique strokes of their big claws while reversing to get a good peck around. Any worms, flies or creepy-crawlies they can get they love eating them!

They need calcium to construct their own egg shells. Occasionally either Mabel (big light-coloured eggs) or Henny-Penny (smaller, elegantly oval eggs, also light-coloured) will lay a thin-shelled egg, very occasionally so thin it breaks and (this was sad to watch) once even being laid broken.

I bought two bags of feed from the farmer who sold me the flat pack coop but now I’ve switched to another type which is apparently better. I notice an improvement in their eggshell thickness when they get green leaves in their diet so as well as kohlrabi and cauliflower leaves from the local organic grocers I also give them fresh cut grass and sometimes herd or carry one or two into the front garden—with wheelie bins and Ben the dog blocking exits to the neighbours’ garden and the pavement—to eat the grass and dandelion leaves there. That’s a bit stressful as there are lots of foxgloves which they absolutely must not eat (digitalis can be fatal) and they can be difficult to grab for the return trip!

They L.O.V.E. lettuce and, though they can just tear it up themselves, it’s easier for them if you hold the stalk and they can peck a beakful out of the leaf. What’s great fun for them is when you roll a whole iceberg lettuce down the path onto the back lawn and let them run after it in excitement, tear it to bits and gobble it all up!

In these four months I’ve relocated and finally sailed my Mirror dinghy (bought five years ago and only rowed and repaired since) on a loch easily accessible by train; I’ve published the last of the Bruno Benedetti Mystery series; and I’ve taken my former employer to court for wrongful, unfair and automatically unfair dismissal (after whistleblowing) as well as various forms of direct, indirect, and by association, discrimination, and harassment. I’ve also completed my first year of my PT law degree with the Open University and got in my tax return six months before deadline. This is on top of being a carer and proofreader. Now I’ve picked up my book on political philosophy and hope to publish it by Christmas.

Hens make you get up early (currently 7am; they’d be happier with 6am but Mr Fox might still be sneaking around then) and, once you have the fresh dewy morning air on your face, it’s easier to stay up and that means some time in the early morning to think clearly. The physical work of mucking out the coop and turning and spreading compost is good for the body—and giving away eggs is good neighbourliness and much appreciated. My family love the hens, Ben (as long as he’s well-fed, well-patted and well-assured of his special place in the family) tolerates them and visitors, from window cleaners to social workers find them charming. Hens are good for you. They improve your life when you save theirs.

Enjoy the video and if you’re inspired to rescue hens (Judy, Mabel, Henny-Penny and Amelia would have ended up as plastic-wrapped frozen carcasses if I hadn’t provided sanctuary) please contact the British Hen Welfare Trust.

5 minute video of 4 hens pecking at pizza (and sometimes each other) in a concrete closed passageway between terraced houses

Breathing Fire, Missing Scale

I’ve never watched an entire episode of Dragons’ Den. To me, when I eventually saw some footage, it smacked of the new, voyeuristic TV programmes like Big Brother, The Weakest Link or Britain’s Got Talent, that used the excuse of aspiration (a combination of Machiavellian strategy, a lust for fame, and greed) to showcase the grief and pain of failure. I found it cruel and the presenters callous, the suffering they caused the majority of the participants not incidental but rather the dirty little secret of these shows: Schadenfreude, as our Germanic cousins call it. Pleasure in the suffering of others.

The names of the presenters meant nothing to me until one of them started making waves in my small, close-knit, and (until then) generally friendly political party. I looked up this person and, coming from a long line of nurses, I immediately identified what my elderly Mum calls “a typical thyroid case”: nervous excitability; forceful, non-stop talking; mood swings; bulging eyes. It can especially hit menopausal women badly but a younger friend had it, was diagnosed with cancer—and the regime of drugs and surgery altered her body chemistry and she lost a baby. “No-one ever mentioned thyroid imbalance” her husband said to me, afterwards. I felt so guilty for not speaking up. My embarrassment about being accused of ‘mansplaining’ a female condition wasn’t an excuse. Especially when I was simply sharing the observations of wise women and my advice was no more controversial than: “maybe you should get this checked out”.

So I did, and was smacked down by the dragon lady for my trouble. My conscience is clear. I tried. I’m not a medical doctor and I don’t have proof that her psychological inability to listen to opposing points of view is at root physiological. Maybe it’s not. Perhaps she’s simply the type of rich middle aged woman from the English ‘Home Counties’ that can’t abide contrary opinions. A sort of Audrey fforbes-Hamilton, without the humour.

From the body to the body politic: my party will survive. She’s calling us all shills for throwing her out when we’d all had enough of her abusive publicity. What concerns me more, having informed myself now, is what she may do next. I’m a keen conservationist and, unfortunately, her sights are set on ‘developing’ one of the most beautiful areas of woodland and meadow in England.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for grow-your-own and organic vegetables. I don’t mind meditation, chanting doesn’t bother me at all and I can even put up with a certain amount of circle dancing. I’m not keen on drugs, I must say, and my objections to aged hippies congregating on unspoiled land in order to consume quantities of magic mushrooms is not only medical (just because I’m unqualified doesn’t mean I don’t care, and they can cause severe heart palpitations, apparently) but also because such gatherings are often marked by ecological irresponsibility. Take Glastonbury, post-festival, as an example.

A member of my party told me that, when this fire-breathing businesswomen (whose own company went into arbitration, it seems) stood for us last year, concerned villagers made the trip from the Peak District to warn us to have nothing to do with her, as they feared the destruction she was planning to wreak on their beloved acres of Merrie England. He confessed that he’d declined their invitation to visit their beautiful village, set in Cressbrook Dale, out of loyalty to our candidate. Surely, he may have considered, these people were exaggerating.

Unfortunately, it appears that they’re not. Human waste, stone chips strewn in a forest glade by people clearly more accustomed to facilitating access to a suburban double garage than contemplating and reverencing the intricacies of ecological networks (and only taking action in order to better support them), plastic tents pitched and looking abandoned over winter, publicised plans to uproot the highest category of protected land in a national park…in order to grow massive amounts of vegetables. While everyone’s on drugs? And their (non-hierarchical) muse is off round the country, or perhaps the planet, leading, somehow by the aid of a perfectly flat structure, the movement against…well, anything that stands in her way really. The wheel must be broken, and all that sort of thing.

The New Age often attracts the precise middle of the English class system. The “chattering classes”. Middle managers, chartered accountants, those who’ve clawed their way up HR, board members of quangos. Places like Findhorn are full of them. The superwomen of the 90s are among them. You can have it all, they were told. To give them their due, they really tried to. The yuppie revolution. Thatcher’s children. Keeping the faith in monetarism—until the emptiness set in. They may have tried creative writing, or pottery. Some women, desperate, even went to the extreme of bringing up their own kids. At least when they were back from boarding school.

Tragically, I think that’s why these people can’t listen. They share that characteristic with the Woke. To admit doubt is to allow the possibility of meaninglessness. To look in the mirror and see youthful charm (if ever possessed) fade. New seekers age. “Dreams have lost their grandeur, coming true.” That’s if there were any, in the first place. Very few people, JK Rowling perhaps an exception, can find magic in suburbia.

So I can’t blame these bland people for wanting more. England is famous, worldwide, for having lost its culture. Abstract the Celtic Twilight, cut off the Moorish dancing learned from the Crusades, omit everything that actually belongs to someone else and what’s left? Only one element remains, the liminal location of Shakespearean dreamland: the Greenwood.

This is why nothing else will do for the breaker of chains and her merry band. If they were truly ecological, they’d buy up brownfield sites and reclaim them. Now that would be magical. Instead, cut off from rural wisdom for generations, these self-indulgent townies, unable to limit the gratification of their desires, must have this virgin soil in order to despoil it in search of their souls.

The capacity of self-reflection of such people may be so limited that, once they’ve made a Glastonbury out of the Greenwood, with only themselves to blame, their final act—before being thrown off the ravaged land by court order—is likely to be an internal witch-hunt to identify the source of the karmic forces acting against them.

In the hell of their own creation, a hall of mirrors where fame reflects ever more monstrously the distorted features of their inability to contemplate the impact of their unchecked desires, they may forget the basic tenant of even the watered-down version of Buddhism which they claim to practice: responsibility.

Colourful Carnival Dragon Head

Thanks to Linnaea Mallette for releasing her image Dragon Carnival Head into the Public Domain.

God’s Green Earth

The potatoes I dug up for dinner last night aren’t perfect. They range in size from huge to tiny, a couple got a bit green and one or two had beasties inside them, happily munching. But they’re all homegrown, organic and—when washed in rainwater, peeled (their occupied territory consigned to the compost heap along with the occupants) and boiled—they were the fluffiest tatties I’ve ever tasted. Mum loved them.

The wee ones I wrapped in brown paper and dated—to plant next spring. This lot, as is traditional, I’d planted on Good Friday but some sprung up from tiny tubers I’d missed in the soil the year before. So it goes to show that what matters isn’t size: it’s potential.

As we face a winter of artificially inflated cost-of-living (which, as a friend in the Scots Libertarian party points out, is actually cost-of-government) we may feel demoralised by the scale of the gargantuan forces oppressing us. Yes, they are individually and collectively powerful—but we are many and they are few.

Many of us in the Freedom Alliance party have been warning of the current crisis for years. I started posting about it in March 2020, because my previous research into the lies of Big Pharma and its censorship of experts had already opened my eyes.

Gardening is a major strategy of defence in the resistance movement: we don’t need their frankenfoods if we’re growing our own. It’s also incredibly good for your physical and mental health. Out in the fresh air, maybe chatting across the fence to neighbours, getting some natural light (maybe even some sunlight where the chemtrails are less frequent) so our skin manufacturers vitamin D. Just touching soil calms us. We’re literally grounded. Watching the busy bees and beautiful butterflies as we work reminds us that there’s another order, natural, ancient, harmonious, productive and yes truly “sustainable”—rather than this poisonous bureaucracy of surveillance and anxiety.

So grow your own! It’s worth it—and it might just save your life and your sanity!

Black plastic tray on long green grass with about 20 potatoes ranging in size & colour—2 with small holes.

7 Tips for Supporting Someone with Dementia

My last post on caring focused on the overwhelming burden and (lack of) social recognition for carers, especially men. This one’s about solutions. Because there are ways to make it easier. I’ve worked as a carer for many types of people (or “client groups” as the social work lingo is now) but in terms of family, apart from some mostly very happy time as a babysitter, my experience is of looking after someone with dementia. So these 7 tips are about that.

1. Get organised. Getting up half an hour earlier than they do or preparing the night before means you can head them off at the pass—before things start going downhill.
2. Establish a routine and stick to it. Change may be as good as a rest but habits are one of the last things to go when the mind shuts down and they provide a series of guiding snow poles in the mental blizzard and therefore security. Bed time especially is important as you need time to relax when your charge is in bed, and for you to get enough sleep too.
3. Have someone sane you can moan to, at least briefly, on a regular basis, who won’t judge you (for caring or for moaning) and won’t try to fix you or the situation.
4. Make lists and get things done. It’s tempting to use caring as a karma dump: “if only I was free to do that but I’m not” but reminding yourself that you chose this helps. You can still get on with your own life. Somehow and to some extent.
5. Eat healthily and exercise. That goes for both of you, as keeping yourself and your charge as healthy and lithe as possible is best—as the alternative brings a whole load of problems!
6. Be realistic about your time and energy. There’s only so much you can do in one day. Try to avoid what Robert M. Pirsig* calls “gumption traps”: the things that sap your will. I especially hate finding unwashed dishes stacked away (a common occurrence in a household with an elderly person with good intentions and bad eyesight) and hygiene in general is a basic necessity so keep up with the dishes, the laundry and the essential cleaning. The dusting can mostly wait—but not forever!
7. Accept help. Grab anything the social services will give you for free and pay for whatever else is essential (taxis, day care, items for personal care or adapting their bedroom or the bathroom). Work patiently with state or private carers. A good working relationship with mutual trust and respect for boundaries is a tremendous support.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, caring for someone who lives in the moment can be a Zen-like experience as it forces you to slow down and appreciate simple joys like the bees busy among the flowers during the day or a wee sherry and an old film in the evening.

All things pass and this will too. Inasmuch as you’re able, try to cherish this time. It is building your character (patience, perseverance, long suffering, compassion) in a way few things could—and it won’t come again.

Photo by author of completed ActiveMinds jigsaw puzzle Monet’s Garden.

*(you can read about this American philosopher in my book on his work)

The Real Greens

The trouble with the terms “greenwashing” and “pinkwashing” is that those using them may (perhaps) inadvertently do what they accuse others of doing: painting over structural issues that need to be addressed.

Pinkwashing is often used to denigrate the success of the LGBT community in Israel and there have been several aspects to this accusation:

• Denying the issues faced by LGBT people in majority Muslim countries in general and in Palestine in particular.
• Denying the freedoms won by the LGBT community in Israel.
• Denying the possibility of a people under oppression to simultaneously oppress a community of their own.

Countering the first denial, Mark Segal of NY Daily News is quoted as stating:

If you have a need to prove your “wokeness” by assimilating with those who support the rape and death of LGBT people, you don’t know the meaning of LGBT liberation.

Countering the third denial, Al-Qaws, a group dedicated to gender and sexual diversity in Palestinian society, has a more nuanced statement:

Singling out incidents of homophobia in Palestinian society ignores the complexities of Israel’s colonisation and military occupation being a contributing factor to Palestinian LGBTQ oppression

My point is not to reduce the socio-political complexities to which the latter quote alludes to some kind of catchy soundbite but rather to emphasise that key word. Some issues aren’t simple—but that doesn’t mean they should be painted over in pink.

Or green. Cory Morningstar, on the blog Wrong Kind of Green, has written a detailed take-down of current media environmentalism entitled The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg. (For those who prefer listening to reading, there’s a beautifully-read podcast version.)

The reaction to greenwashing can also be rather simplistic and, similarly, has various aspects:

• Denying the ecological issues of the planet
• Denying the benevolent motivations of environmental protestors
• Ignoring the possibility of both of the above co-existing with invented (or exaggerated) issues and with malevolent motivations

To stop communicating in double negatives, let me state clearly what I mean. While climatologists are divided on the question of there being a planetary temperature crisis caused by human (or animal) agency, no-one sane denies the obvious issues of air, land and water pollution by pesticides and other poisons and by plastics. Electromagnetic (high or low) frequency pollution is another source of concern.

Related issues are those of the cost-effectiveness of supposedly environmental alternative sources of energy and fuel—as well as the social impact of the market for conflict minerals (used in phones, laptops, solar panels and electric cars).

About all these issues my point is simple:

• Unless supposedly progressive groups are prepared to grapple with the complexities of real intersectional oppression and liberation, they aren’t really progressive.

It’s not enough to pay attention to the wake-up calls of green celebrities; we also need to see beyond—to the marketisation of Africa and other repressive goals of the Great Reset.

It’s not enough to acknowledge the latter and ignore the very real problems of pollution.

It’s not enough to be aware of the dangers of Frankenfood and the sinister appropriation of the means of global food production by a very small group of plutocrats; we also need to acknowledge the unnatural and inhumane treatment of farmed animals—if not for their own sake then at least for the effect that their confinement, torture, forced assimilation of toxins and barbaric slaughter has on our own bodies and on our souls.

The so-called Green parties are allied with inhuman forces indifferent to the fate of most of the planet and its population—apart from some ecological pleasure parks strictly set aside for the elite. Let’s not pretend that meanwhile these plutocrats are all ethical vegans: they’re all guzzling meat pizza, fatty hamburgers and high sugar Coca-Cola.

In contrast, the resistance to global tyranny is full of people who eat healthily, exercise daily, participate voluntarily in various community projects and grow our own food.

We’re the real greens.

Cress growing out of soil held in a White male hand in front of the mesh cover of a plastic greenhouse.

Composting

Spring has sprung and there’s lots to do in the garden, with the main task being preparing the raised beds for planting. My last plant-related post was about pumpkins 🎃 and how they did unexpectedly well. The strips of carrot seed, unfortunately, yielded nothing and (as detailed in a previous post) although it was a good year for onions & garlic, tiny sweet strawberries, nasturtiums for salad and the bees, chilli peppers, chives, cleavers, basil, peppermint, thyme, sage and even some potatoes, planted or not, the Chinese cabbage and carrots weren’t a success.

Flowers, always important in and around a vegetable patch, also did well, with Calendula adorning the bottom bed and blue alliums in a corner beside the (failed) tomatoes. Two out of the four fruit bush saplings grew and honesty in a big pot was a lovely addition to the rather wild circular flower bed nearer the back door.

This year I’ve benefited from having written down a plan in a notebook in autumn and buying seeds to sow. So yesterday, having raised the other half of the side bed and reinforced the organic underlay of the big green box, I was pleased to discover, tucked into cloth pockets at the back of the cupboard under the stairs, packets of both broccoli and cabbage seed.

Raising a bed is hard work. First you have to dig out all the soil.

Top of side bed with soil dug out

Soil piled up beside the raised bed

Then lay twigs, small branches and leaves, to provide drainage.

Twigs and branches at the bottom of the raised bed

Old flower stems on top of the twigs & branches

Then fill it back in! Forking the soil in gets air into it and breaks up clumps. This soil is clay and otherwise tends to form endless airless mud only good for potatoes so, if you want more variety, you have to work for it.

Side bed with soil replaced

After all this I flung compost on top. The idea is to let it lie for a week or so – to give the birds a chance to eat up all the slugs. They’re useful in compost heaps and if I find any that’s where I put them but if the birds find then first – it’s the circle of life!

Meanwhile the bottom bed isn’t doing much apart from pushing up chives, some of which I plan to relocate to the big green box. The calendula has survived the winter and will need restaked.

Chives and calendula in the bottom bed

This was the first bed I raised and did well with Brussels and cabbage that year. Since then the wicker fence has been rather damaged by Ben 🐕 jumping over it so at some point I’ll need to spend an afternoon weaving more supple twigs into it.

The top bed is full of foxgloves, spring onions and garlic. I thought I’d lifted everything last year so the alliums are a nice surprise. It does complicate composting though.

Foxgloves, onions & garlic shoots in the top bed

I faced the same problem in the big green box and, though tempted to call it a day at this point, decided to take advantage of the rare sunshine and my good mood. First I potted all the saplings, about 60 of them, mostly apple trees from pips in the compost that had seeded due to the combination of temperate weather and good drainage.

6 pots of saplings surround a wooden box

I put the pots around the wooden box (held together with screws and a spare bike tyre) which had held the struggling rhubarb that eventually gave up. Last week I planted some irises inside and other flowering bulbs around the garden.

10 saplings in a pot

Now it was time to lift all the spring onions with their surrounding soil from the green box and temporarily put them in a tray in the greenhouse.

Onion sets planted in tray in the greenhouse

I also put the foxgloves in a trays.

Foxgloves in trays sitting on the trampoline

Then scooped the soil from one side of the green box into the lid of the compost bin in preparation to reinforce the woody organic layer below – some of which had got quite patchy. With soil falling through, the level had gone down and I also found some gladioli bulbs attempting to grow six inches under! I removed these as it struck me that they could possibly be mistaken for edible alliums.

Patchy soil covering of woody layer in green box

You’d have to be pretty stupid to confuse foxglove and cabbage leaves (which is why Miss Marple allocates that task to particularly muddled housemaids) and they are great for the bees so in the top bed those can grow together and here they and the nasturtiums should help keep the pests off the pumpkins.

Twigs and branches on one side of the green box with soil inside the compost bin lid

I replanted the foxgloves in the green box after adding more branches, twigs and leaves, replacing the soil then composting.

I’ll probably replace those central foxgloves with chives but they can stay there for now.

The rest of the compost from the plastic bin (the compost in the wooden box is less broken down) I removed from the bottom of the bin placed in the riddle set atop, in order to give it a good airing.

Compost airing on top of the plastic bin

Tomorrow I plan to compost the top and bottom beds and the greenhouse but that’s enough for today. Hands scratched from bending and breaking branches, muscles tired but mind relaxed, I took off my wellies and went indoors for tea.

(All photos copyright the author, may be reproduced, but not altered, with link to this post.)

White Mischief

There’s a lot of research being done on Ugandan fisherfolk and their “emerging understandings of Covid-19” right now. As well as copper, cobalt and gold, Uganda has a fairly high birth rate and one of the youngest populations of Africa and, as Neville Hodgkinson tirelessly points out, whenever the media want to portray Africans as clueless about a new deadly disease, they head off there or to Tanzania its southern neighbour (which also has uranium). Right now the medical media is leading the way, as we have Frontiers in Public Health declaring confidently that:

Africa is vulnerable to being overwhelmed by COVID-19. The World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, stated that the greatest concern was COVID-19 transmission in countries with weaker health systems than in developed nations.

As The Nation reports, WHO is now largely funded, and led, by the Gates Foundation:

…multilateral institutions like the World Health Organization have ceded leadership to a group of public-private partnerships where Gates provides key funding.

This medical media confidence is apparently based on 2 sources: firstly, an article purporting to be research that predicts a future for Africa that’s extremely lucrative for miraculously prescient investors in PPE, test kits and vaccines (Gates, Jan 2019!!!) by celebrating that the “long anticipated and inevitable and detection of the introduction of SARS-CoV-2 into Africa was announced on 14 February 2020” (a Valentine’s greeting for Gates?) and which uses as evidence a total of 7 “cases” in all Africa (pop. c. 1,341,000,000, then).

Coincidentally, all the researchers, while declaring no Conflict of Interest, are funded by Big Pharma:

Secondly, it’s based on an Al-Jazeera article (based on the perennially incorrect modelling from Imperial College, London). So the current obsession of White Europeans (and descendants and allies) to record and correct the “misconceptions” of Black Africans, that interfere with the profits of their funders, is not a coincidence. The UN is especially fond of this. Here’s a typical telling-off.

The Ugandan “research” isn’t focussing on Lake Victoria, as you might expect, but on Lake Albert and Lake Edward. Those, of course, aren’t their names in any of the many African languages spoken on their shores. Not that there isn’t anything going on in Lake Victoria, where fish are dying. Mysteriously. They’re blaming the rain “mixing the water”. (Maybe that’s why all those crustaceans are dying off the N.E. of England.) The same article does casually mention another explanation:

Industries, farms and settlements near Lake Victoria have also been blamed for polluting its waters.

Hmmm…the Lake Edward article explains why that might happen in lakeshore settlements:

The heavy rains and a very low water table means that several latrines in the community have since collapsed. In addition, the households cannot dig new latrines so they requested support in the form of eco-san latrines to help in the meantime. The health assistant based at the health centre concurs with this request.

Low water table means the soil can’t absorb the rain, causing flooding. The Lake Albert article details the impact of lack of clean water:

…the landing sites are known to have a high prevalence of water-related diseases, including bilharzia, cholera, malaria and diarrheal diseases.

Lakes Kivu and Tanganyika are also being targeted. Oh, and Lake Mwueru (showing exactly how the same panic narrative is recycled). They’re in Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania and Zambia. So what have these 5 lakes under study got in common? The shores of the Democratic Republic of Congo. With its vast mineral wealth and, unsurprisingly, decades of conflict. Especially on the east. Which is where all these lakes are.

Part of that mineral wealth is lithium and another is coltan. “The Great Reset” (which everyone in the fake Green Who’s Who is currently promoting in Glasgow) can’t take place without vast amounts of these key minerals. Known as “conflict minerals”, their extraction is linked to child labour and recruitment into mercenary militias paid (through a spiderweb of shell companies) by multinationals in the Global North.

Two descriptions always come up when White people report on Black African problems: people on the move and population growth. African birth rates are not only a political football, skilfully played by Big Pharma, but also widely misreported. The constant displacement of people and crisis disruption of normal structures of community decision-making mean that it’s fairly easy for multinational companies to move in, grease some palms (“partnership deals overcoming the resistance of vested interests”) strategically, and clean up.

Big Pharma is throwing money at research that justifies their continued extremely lucrative marketing in Africa. Presenting their policy as humanitarian and data-led, when in fact it is exploitative and profitable narrative-led, they use the conclusions of their paid researchers to convince conniving officials to disrupt local economies and deprive already-struggling communities of basic hygiene and healthcare. No-one is throwing money at the three continual pleas of local communities:

• Clean water
• Hygienic latrines
• To be left in peace to exercise their human rights to freedom of movement and dignified labour.

White mischief has not left Africa. If Black lives really matter to my fellow White people, why are we supporting useless research that does nothing but further the careers of the White researchers and destroy the lives of the Black communities it preys upon?

Rosy dawn reflected in lake with hilly shore in shadow.

Thanks to Lynn Greyling for releasing her image Rosy Dawn Over Lake Kivu into the Public Domain.

A Fairytale

Once upon a time in a land far, far away, there was a very purple potato and an exceedingly twisted paperclip.

The potato was very vain and he wasn’t content to stay underground, like all the humble spuds. Instead, he threw his weight about and levered himself up through the soil until he managed to get a place in the sun. There he lazed, belly up in the back garden, and occasionally flopped over and lazed some more. As the sun grew warmer, the potato grew lazier until his flip-flops from lying on his frontside to lying on his backside got longer and longer apart…and his potato skin got more and more purple!

Meanwhile, upstairs in the office space at the front of the house, the paperclip was busy at the computer — tapping out a poison pen letter to herself. (She hadn’t always been a paperclip and had actually started out as a long straight crocodile clip. However she hadn’t liked just being in a box with all the other small stationary items as she felt herself destined for greater things. So she’d started to cry crocodile tears, to get attention, but all that had happened was that they’d rusted her snapping jaws…until they’d broken right off! All she’d been left with was her long steel stalk and, when she’d thought about how unjust her fate was, she’d started twisting sideways and had bent herself so much out of shape that she’d become a paperclip!)

Just as the exceedingly twisted paperclip finished the email to herself, and tapped “SEND”, a movement outside the window caught her eye. She twisted around and looked out.

There she saw a beautiful snow white songbird, with wings flecked with vivid green and purple. The paperclip saw how the songbird soared and swooped around the house and sang — and she envied and hated her. She had to find a way to bring that beautiful free bird down!

As she twisted herself off the desk and out of the door, along the landing and down the stairs, a plan started to form in her twisted steel brain. Twisting into the kitchen and out the back door (picking locks was very easy for a clip of her talents) she headed right up the garden path, ignoring all the lovely green and white and purple flowers around her, until she arrived at the potato patch.

The fat potato, presently sunning his big purple belly, was very surprised indeed to see a mangled item of office stationary twisting up the garden path. “Not In My Potato Patch!” he thought, starchly. He was even more surprised when she ignored him completely and instead bent back to peer up at the netting covering the strawberries in the wooden cold frame. “Well!” thought the purple potato, “what about ME?” And he flipped and flopped his big belly and his backside until he was balanced, precariously, on top of the wee wooden posts that made up the low fence around the vegetable patch. “She’ll have to see me NOW!”

But the exceedingly twisted paperclip had a plan and she was sticking to it. Twisting herself past the potato patch and up one side of the cold frame, she poked and twisted and tore…and pulled the netting right off the strawberries! Twisting back down the side, pulling the netting behind her, she paused when she got back to the potato patch.

A huge, discoloured, fleshy potato was lounging on top of the low wooden fence, obviously trying to pretend he was comfortable and that he wasn’t looking for attention! She eyed him for a moment and then stared down at the netting. A gleam came into her eye. She twisted round to glance up at the songbird, still flying freely and singing sweetly, then twisted right round again.

“Hello spud! Want to help me bring down that bird?”

The fat potato opened one eye, and then shut it. Not pleased at all at this blatant lack of respect for a potato in his position! However, suddenly he realised that she might go away and he’d get no attention at all — and that was the worst thing ever! So he tried to sit himself up, but potatoes of that age and size aren’t very flexible so all he succeeded in doing was to fall off his perch. Right on top of the paperclip!!!

“Je suis pomme de terre!” He said, in what he hoped was a passable French accent. Then added. “I will help with your scheme. That bird has been annoying me all morning! Flapping about and squawking! I hate attention seekers!” But the paperclip, deciding on action rather than talk, stabbed her steel point up into his abundant flesh, scuttled sideways to entangle his bulk in the netting then twisted as she had never twisted before and threw the purple potato up, up into the air towards the songbird, with the netting trailing behind like the tail of a comet!

The potato was horrified at the thought of being stabbed through the heart but, fortunately, he didn’t have one so it was only a flesh wound. Hurtling through the air he looked below to see if the flowers were looking up at him. But they weren’t. They were giving all their attention to the bees and the butterflies.

Then, the potato struck the side of the guttering, flopped over and rolled in, just as the netting flipped over the songbird, who had just alighted on the roof to sing from there.

Startled, the songbird suddenly found herself entangled, her wings pinned to her side and her feet caught in the netting! She let out a trill of terror…and all the green and white and purple flowers lifted up their pretty heads and saw her plight!

“Help me! Help me!” sang out the songbird. “This could happen to any of us! Flower fairies come to my aid!” The songbird was a great friend of the flower fairies, and she often sang songs for them while they danced in the sun or the dew or the moonlight.

The potato couldn’t understand the language of birds and flowers because he only understood selfishness and cruelty. Beauty and compassion were beyond his ken. So, while he was huffing and puffing and humpfing his great discoloured bulk along the gutter to try and see what was going on, he didn’t know that three great bands of flower fairies had risen up from the green and white and purple flowers to fly to the aid of their friend.

Suddenly he saw them all! The sky full of whirring wings and colour as the clever fairies, used to helping each other, lifted the netting right off the struggling songbird — and flew it back down to the cold frame. But then they saw that it wouldn’t stay in place as it had been ripped away from the little tacks that held it. One sharp-eyed fairy spotted the paperclip and joyfully caught it up in her agile hands, using it to lever up the tacks so that the netting could once again be stretched over the strawberries. There was only one place left where the net was too torn, so the fairy drove the point of the paperclip deep into the wood and that pinned down the netting safely.

Meanwhile, up on the roof, the fat potato was outraged that once again he wasn’t getting the attention he deserved! Rolling over in indignation, he almost went over the edge of the guttering and flopped sideways to save himself from falling off the roof! But, so intent on the beautiful songbird and her helpful friends, he didn’t see the downpipe beside him and fell right into it! Down and down and…right down into the drain below than washed down into the sewer!

The exceedingly twisted paperclip is still stuck in place, finally doing something useful, but what became of the fat vain purple potato no-one knows. (Or cares.)

However, the songbird is free to fly and to delight the flower fairies with her songs as they do her with their dancing. After all, they sport the same three colours — and they know that, with love and freedom and mutual aid, good fairy magic will always triumph over the evil plans of the envious…and beautiful songbirds will keep singing!