The new autumn

Welcome to the new autumn, plus 30 C predicted for the next few days and we're into the second month of autumn.. apparently. It's rained twice. It's less stressful than plus 35C, sure, but the garden still needs watering. At least the capsicums seem happier.

 Yesterday we planted a bunch of seedlings in the aquaponics and the ground, hoping the cooler weather will allow some veg to grow. Didn't bother with any brassica seedlings just yet; we've killed a few rodents lately but I'm still not prepared to buy brocolli seedlings for the little bugggers to disappear overnight.

Basil has been the most successful thing we've grown in the aquaponics through summer. 

The brown honey eaters are hanging about in the trees, perhaps thinking of nesting behind the Grevillea  Winpara Gem again. I reckon the loquat tree looks like a good spot, too, myself.

Yakon, almost ready to harvest, I guess.. potential bird nesting site in scruffy Grevillea (behind).

Hopefully soon, we will get oour next batch of trout to grow on during the cooler season. It would appear the season will be shorter, but perhaps, given the climate creep, the cooler times will extend equally on the far side of winter. The trout tank could maybe be better insulated by then too, to help it keep cool.

Dragon fruit flower. Look at the outrageous amount of pollen that is sitting there. Shame the bats aren't onto it. We need more people to grow them so microbats learn to use them and we'll all get bigger, happier dragon fruit.

Resilience.

There is a certain amount of resilience to change in ecosystems. There is a point, though, where 
too many biological connections have been broken for the ecosystem  to continue to function.

After this point it is much more difficult to fix than it would have been had we stopped to let the system recover instead of removing more and more resources.

Tough plants for Perth sun - cactus and roses!

I love to grow food plants but I also love other types of tough plants like succulents and cactus, and since I have worked at a garden centre for so long that sells roses I have also ended up with a couple of roses...just so I can learn how to look after them. One I bought on purpose and the other two I adopted.

This has been the hottest Australian summer since 1978. The sun has been intense and there's been very little rain in Perth, if any, for many areas. However, out there in the hot afternoon sun, the roses and the cactus both look quite happy! Sure I need to water them but the roses are pretty, smell good and do the important job of flowering during summer, when not many other things do.

Tough guys in the garden. 

Flowers provide somewhere for beneficial insects to feed and survive over the summer months. The leaf cutter bees love to cut semi-circles out of the leaf and use it make a nest for her babies.

Leaf cutter 'damage' on rose. I think it look sbetter, myself.

We have one that has passed on using rose petals as well as leaves for their nest linings.We watched leafcutter bees in previous years doing the same thing.

Leaf cutter nest made of rose petals. We had to remove this from a rolled up tent we left out for a couple of days.

Other summer flowering plants include calendula, marigolds, daisies, some Grevilleas, Salvia, dahlias and others. Vegetables with flowers that are good for the beneficial insects and of course bees are all the summer vegetables. Cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplants, strawberries and lots of the herbs, such as thyme, oregano, and chives have plenty of flowers, too. Petals from roses, calendula, Allysum, cucumbers and chives can be added to salads, too.

Do this NOW!

Black cockatoos need saving.

Stop logging our forests.

Giblett Block was saved by the persitance of forest blockaders stopping logging by living in the forset for many months. 

Keep big trees.

Old growth karri forest in the south-west of WA,

Plant more black cockatoo food plants.

Banksia grandis could easily be grown in gardens. Tough, local and adapted to the soil type.

This is a comprehensive list of black cockatoo food plants.

Increase urban forests.

Old Melaleuca tree at Uni of WA.

Grow some fruit and veg.

Endangered Carnaby's cockatoos eating pecans from a tree near  Fremantle, Western Australia.

Science is complicated - that's why not many people do it

Trees provide many things, including oxygen, carbon storage
 and happy dogs.

Science is complicated; that's why not many people do it and it doesn't always make sense to people that aren't educated about it. Science is also an incredibly varied field. I suspect that not everyone in the science of Sustainable Agriculture would agree with the scientists who create genetically-modified organisms. Many great disoverers had to battle for their theory to be seen and tested and proven true.
However there are times when lots of different sorts of scientists agree on things. One of those things is climate change.
Change is the word...things will change..A LOT. Some areas will be drier and hotter. Some areas will have devastating rains. There will be a lot of displaced people. These are simple observations, based on some really complicated science. Scientists don't know the exact details of whats going to happen because it is a really complicated system that has many variables. But overall, it looks like we've messed up bigtime and we may not get much of a chance to do anything about it (though I am still hopeful, otherwise I get sad and freak out!)

There are numerous links in an ecosystem between many different species. One tree, for example, can have hundreds of organisms living within its leaves, branches, bark and roots. Many of the smaller organisms may not even have scientific names but they could be really important. Without all the little decomposer beasties working for us, for free, there would be an awful lot of waste built up around us. The tree will also provide shade thereby cooling the air, and dirt and dust are also removed from the air as it passes through the leaves. Trees allow rain to soak into the ground, where the water is recycled through the tree, produces oxygen as a by-product (lucky for us) and releases moisture back into the atmosphere. Given enough trees that moisture forms clouds. One simple cycle among many millions of interactions that go on in nature , many that ecologists haven't had a chance to learn about yet.
Unfortunately many people think of trees simply as wood or paper, killing the tree and stopping it from doing it's many ecosystem services that it would provide for free. What are ecosystem services you may ask?

Ecosystem services.
Ecosystem services are the many 'resources' and processes that we get for free from nature.
These free services of nature fall into four categories: Provisioning, regulating, supporting and cultural.
Let me show some examples:
Provisioning: foods (plants, animals), water (rivers, lakes, dams), medicines (largely plant based), energy (hydropower, solar, wind).
Regulating: climate, carbon sequestration (forests, ocean), air quality (forests), pest control (beneficial insects), flood control (coral reefs, mangroves).
Supporting: Primary production (mining, agriculture, soils), nutrient cycles (fertilisation, decomposition), seed dispersal and soil building.
Cultural: Aesthetics, recreational, scientific discovery (medicines), spiritual.
There are many more things that we often take for granted, but there's a good chance it comes from nature.

This magnificent spot in the Helena-Aurora Range is in danger of destruction through mining. We shouldn't tale all that nature has to give us. We need to leave some for nature.

We have been using and abusing these free services for some time, without giving most of them a chance to recover. Not all of them are renewable either. Crude oil will run out, only so many minerals can be dug out of the ground before they run out too. Yet we continue to pollute and destroy large areas. Hasn't anyone noticed we're running out of habitable area? As cities expand they are build onto the very soils that enabled the city to be based there in the first place. How are we going to keep feeding people when the arable land is being over used and built upon?

An abandoned house in an abandoned town in the Goldfields.