Dear friends,
Hi! Good morning. It's 2:30 am and most of you are asleep, and it is already tomorrow for you. Here it is still the day before, and nearly noon.
I see that some people here where I live have taken to scattering flaxseed on rough roadsides and wild land, and also, of course, into some areas of their own gardens. Flax has heavenly blue flowers in the morning. They fall each day, and new ones open again the next morning. I imagine they are using food flax seed which is cheap and easily obtained. When Ben and I went to buy some little white flowering plants (annuals) to edge some flower beds yesterday I saw flax growing here and there in wooded areas and roadsides where it didn't grow before.
There is a tall, beautiful plant here called "Purple Loosestrife." It was introduced by plant nurseries as a wonderful garden flower, and so it is, --as long as it can be confined to gardens. It isn't native to Canada, and having escaped from gardens is now choking up many of our streams and wetlands all across the country. Purple Loosestrife has been almost impossible to eradicate, because even a tiny bit of a root will flourish, and it sets millions of seads from each plant. Finally, a little black beetle has been found that doesn't eat anything else but Purple Loosestrife, and it is being tested on Loosestrife growing in the wetlands of a bird sanctuary here on Okanagan Lake. I hope it works on that plant only, and won't have any other unexpected effects. There are so many birds in this wild place set aside for them, that it is feared they will eat the beetles before they can propagate themselves and do their vital job.
Looking out my back window and up the hillside, as I write to you this morning, I see a lilac bush in full mid-mauve bloom with a yellow and black butterfuly drifting around, and landing once in a while. Far above, at the roadside edge, I see drifts of the heavenly blue of flax flowers. I love them, and have them in our garden, but I didn't put them up there. Guerilla gardeners have been at work, I'd say! :-))
More and more people here in Canada are interested in gardens that don't require much water, as water may soon be metered and sold by volume here. It already is metered in the city near us. We expect a a greater shortage of water here in this Okanagan semi-desert area soon, due to climate change. So we are preparing. Many gardeners are using plants, trees and flowers native to the Okanagan in their gardens. I have been doing that for a long time now, I'm happy to say. :-)
Another thing is changing. Some people refuse to put pesticides or herbicides on their lawns. This has even been tested in court by a woman who was legall challenged by neighbours who detested her natural lawn area, full of weeds, wild flowers and taller grasses. There are many who love their "golf-course-like" smooth lawns, kept that way by chemicals, much watering and close mowing. They don't want weed seeds drifting into their manicured lawns, or a different look spoiling the manicured look of their neighbourhood. The lady with the meadow-like front lawn (I think this happened in our national capital city of Ottawa), won the legal challenge. Now there are a number of cities across Canada making it illegal to use "Killex" and "Weed and Feed" within city limits, and the cities themselves don't use such chemicals on roadside edges or parks or any other municipally tended areas. "Weed and Feed" is a product that kills broad-leafed plants and leaves the narrow-leafed grasses alone. The fertilizer in it is good for lawns. It is now believed by many that children in particular, may be harmed by such chemicals.
Did you know that Holland was so expert at getting rid of all their weeds that their environment suffered because of damage to the web of life? They discovered that the reason they were having so much trouble with their environment was because the insects and birds that used the weeds were in trouble due to no weeds. Holland has replanted weeds!
Some years ago, mysis shrimp,(very tiny shrimp), were put into Okanagan Lake as fish food, but they multiplied too rapidly, ate up small things that other fish used to eat, and caused loss of other fish stocks. The solution may be to harvest the mysis shripm as commercial fish food for people who keep aquariums. This is now being tried and we often see a shrimp trawler out trawling in the lake.
Now that we are all growing into a global civilization we need to be wise and watchful for the health of our planet. I expect, just as SARS can rapidly hop by plane from place to place, so will many other plants, animals and organisms. The Zebra Mussels clogging everything up in the Great Lakes were brought into that water by ships from other parts of the world dumping their bilge.
I think flax is OK here. :-)
With fondness,
Mary
