Sunday, January 17, 2010

It's stinkin' hot. It's Perth summer.

In these stupidly hot days of Perth summer, especially days over 35 C, it's really not a great idea to prune plants. If you promote new growth by pruning, the new growth may get burnt off by a hot day or even just singed by the strong hot easterlies we get.
If you have already had parts of plants burnt by the sun I believe its a bad idea to prune off the damaged parts. Leave them there to protect the other foliage below. I don't think its a great idea to fertilise in early summer for similar reasons, to prevent new soft growth that may not cope with the heat.
Some vege gardens can even benefit from having a sheet or piece of shade cloth thrown over it if it's gonna be really hot for a few days.

Monday, January 4, 2010

Reusable water bottles are go!


A friend gave me this book for Christmas, an excellent choice, about pollutants in our daily lives. One of my main sources of possible pollutants (apart from what I eat and the air I breathe) is from plastic bottles. Occasionally I buy a large plastic bottle to reuse as my water bottle, but I have just bought a 1.2 litre reusable stainless steel bottle.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Here we come 2010.

Another year begins and we look to the future again and wonder what will happen this year. Will the people in charge do anything about fixing the problems of the world? Is it left again to the people to try and do the hard work, without the support of the government's money and infrastructure.
The general public can try and do the right thing, those of us that do, or do a little, but there needs to be a genuine large scale effort to do anything about stopping runaway climate change. It may be too late already. There are long lags in how the atmosphere works.
Industries need to pull their heads in and make further anti-pollution measures, and chemical companies should stop adding poisons to so many everyday items. It's a huge job but I refuse to believe there isn't still al little chance something good will happen.
Because, if I do stop thinking we can do something, then I don't want to have to be around to watch it. I need to believe that there are enough positive actions going on for us to not wipe out the human race with our greed and misguided use of technology. I love technology but its not all working out for the best, really now, is it? If the amount of pollutants created during its production outweighs the lifetime of the item and the humans using it, then its not really making much sense to me.