Frauenkirchen, Austria
Rural Lives & Other Options
The reviews are in, and below is an excerpt. The book does not appear to be available through online booksellers in the USA, but I will be watching for it. The excerpt echoes my experience growing up in an equivalent place. A key difference between my youth and hers: my family’s income was modest but, due to my immigrant mother and father’s New England heritage I inherited a clear sense of mobility. I never had the oppressive sense of class boundaries that can dictate exclusion.
Instead I had the sense, and still do, that I could have chosen to earn the requisite fortune that would have afforded me the luxury of owning my own home in that town. But I chose otherwise, and for plenty of reasons I have no regrets whatsoever.
The view from the author’s bedroom window at Graythwaite. Rebecca Smith
Jane Austen’s English Countryside Is Not Mine
Often people assume I am someone I am not. My childhood was spent making dens in the hidden corners of the landscaped gardens of a grand country estate in the Lake District. I wandered woods full of baby pheasants being fattened up for the shoot. I roamed the hills listening to my Walkman like a modern Brontë sister. I had lakes to paddle in and a dinghy that we bumped down the path to a private beach.
The author playing in the garden at Graythwaite. Rebecca Smith
But they weren’t my gardens. It wasn’t my beach.
Until the age of 18, I lived on three private country estates in England. First in Yorkshire, then in Bedford, then on Graythwaite Estate, in Cumbria in the Lake District. In each of these my dad had the job of forester, working his way up until he was head forester, overseeing 500 hectares of woodland at Graythwaite, where the job came with a three-bedroom lodge on the estate. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Golden-cheeked Warbler
Gillespie County, TX
Replanting With Edibles
Your first taste of a ripe pawpaw, left, or American persimmon, right, may convince you to plant the trees, which can serve as the centerpiece of a permaculture food forest. J.B. Douglas
It is a relief, always, to read a Margaret Roach article when given the choice between her advice and any given news of the world:
Or just start by planting a few pawpaw or persimmon trees. Chances are, you’ll want more.
At a permaculture site planted by Michael Judd, an edible landscape designer, each fruit tree is underplanted with beneficial companion plants, so “you’re not leaving your poor little fruit tree in a sea of grass,” he said. Michael Judd
Your first taste of a ripe pawpaw or persimmon can leave you hungry for more. That’s why Michael Judd is confident that he can persuade you to make room for several of these trees in your front yard — or even to surrender your lawn altogether.
Turning your yard into a meadow or blanketing it in an expanse of alternative ground covers aren’t the only ecologically viable options for replacing conventional grass. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Gray-headed Nigrita
Yaoundé, Cameroon
WasteShark
Our thanks to Robert Sullivan for this attention-getting article on a new device:
A Trash-Eating Sea Monster Appears in the Hudson!
A team of scientists and environmentalists tests out the WasteShark, an unmanned watercraft that vacuums up soda cans and potato-chip bags.
WasteShark is not a shark. It is an unmanned watercraft that its creators named for a shark, owing to similarities between how WasteShark collects its prey and the feeding habits of the Rhincodon typus, or whale shark. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Brown-backed Solitaire
El Zur, Gutemala
Property Rights Versus Trespassing Rights
A wealthy couple bought an estate inside Dartmoor National Park and then successfully sued to bar campers from using their land. That ruling is now being appealed. Muir Vidler for The New York Times
Property rights, a foundational aspect of modern society, occasionally bump up against other rights. The journalist Brooke Jarvis has a new article that touches on this theme, we are happy to see:
The Fight for the Right to Trespass
A group of English activists want to legally enshrine the “right to roam” — and spread the idea that nature is a common good.
The signs on the gate at the entrance to the path and along the edge of the reservoir were clear. “No swimming,” they warned, white letters on a red background.
A protester at Kinder Reservoir. Muir Vidler for The New York Times
On a chill mid-April day in northwest England, with low, gray clouds and rain in the forecast, the signs hardly seemed necessary. But then people began arriving, by the dozens and then the hundreds. Some walked only from nearby Hayfield, while others came by train or bus or foot from many hours away. In a long, trailing line, they tramped up the hill beside the dam and around the shore of the reservoir, slipping in mud and jumping over puddles. Above them rose a long, curving hill of open moorland, its heather still winter brown. When they came to a gap between a stone wall and a metal fence, they squeezed through it, one by one, slipping under strings of barbed wire toward the water below. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Grasshopper Sparrow
If Turtles Could Talk–A Short Documentary
The film follows the perilous journey that sea turtles make to lay their eggs on their ancestral land on a beach in Kenya.
Above is a screenshot from the film by Juma Adero, with text by Natalie Meade, that will likely interest anyone who has been exposed to turtle conservation initiatives:
On a Tropical Beach, Conservationists and Poachers Collide
Juma Adero’s short documentary “If Turtles Could Talk” chronicles the effort to save endangered sea turtles near Mombasa, Kenya.
The shoreline where a green sea turtle hatches from her egg is often the same place she’ll return to nest for the first time. One such inlet is Jumba beach, which abuts the site of an old Swahili village near the bustling city of Mombasa, in southern Kenya. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Glossy Ibis
juvenile – Leander Khil Photography
Parque Natural El Hondo, Spain
New Roots Garden, Urban Oasis
Sheryll Durrant has managed the New Roots Garden, which sits between the Grand Concourse and the Metro North railroad tracks in the Bronx, with volunteers for eight years.
We have linked out to stories about urban farming plenty of times; it never gets old:
Vital Places of Refuge in the Bronx, Community Gardens Gain Recognition
Lawmakers in Albany voted to designate community gardens statewide as crucial to the urban environment, especially in the fight against climate change. The bill awaits the governor’s signature but the role of these gardens stretches back decades.
The Morning Glory garden in the West Farms section of the Bronx is among more than 500 community gardens in New York City.
Sheryll Durrant left her family farm in Jamaica in 1989 and embarked on a career in corporate marketing. But after the 2008 financial meltdown, she reconsidered her life.
She returned to her roots.
Now she runs a thriving urban farm wedged into a triangular plot in the Bronx, between the Grand Concourse and the Metro North railroad tracks. At her farm, New Roots Garden, membership consists of refugees and migrants, resettled by the International Rescue Committee, whose herbs and vegetables sustain their memories of home.
“Just putting your hands in soil is a form of healing,” Ms. Durrant, 63, said. Continue reading
African Pied Wagtail
Sanaga River, Cameroon
Niemann On Earth
We have referenced Françoise Mouly once before, but the art of Christoph Niemann many more times. This one is not fun, more of a gut punch; but at the source scroll down and see all the other covers on the same theme:
Christoph Niemann’s “Recipe for Disaster”
The artist expresses his sense of urgency about the emergency unfolding all around us.
News cycles, by nature, tend to document crises as discrete events. Suffusive emergencies—like the climate crisis—are captured mostly in the accelerating pace and frequency of such coverage. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Cedar Waxwing
Santa Rosalia, Guatemala
Starbucks Flexing Its Muscle
Jordan Baumgarten for The New York Times
In the coffee business, we look up to the big players for inspiration. Sometimes we find something else. Starbucks can be a very admirable corporate citizen. It can also be rotten, as we are reminded in this op-ed by Megan K. Stack:
Inside Starbucks’ Dirty War Against Organized Labor
NOTTINGHAM, Md. — Agnes Torregoza came to this country when she was a toddler, brought from the Philippines by her parents. Her mother found a teaching job in the Baltimore County Public School District, and the family set about cobbling together a new life. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Tickell’s Blue Flycatcher
Bangalore, Karnataka
Bears In Our Midst
Bear populations are plummeting in most of the world. But in North America “human-bear conflicts” have been on the rise. Photograph by Alex Majoli / Parc de la Villette / Magnum
On the rare occasions when the historian and elegant writer Jill Lepore has essays whose topics overlap with our interests on this platform, we say hoorah:
Throughout North America, they’re showing up in unexpected places. Can we coexist?
I keep a cannister of bear spray on a shelf by the mudroom door, next to a cakey-capped tube of sunscreen and two mostly empty and partly rusty green aerosol cans of OFF! Deep Woods insect repellent. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: American Goldfinch
St. Louis, Missouri
To Dye For Author Interviews
None of us wants yet one more environmental hazard to worry about. But ignorance is not bliss. Wired offers an interview with Alden Wicker about the book to the right, and the Fresh Air podcast with her is also worth the listen, especially if you have sensitive skin and/or have ever wondered if your clothing was the cause of certain kinds of discomfort. Women of reproductive age, especially, listen to both:
Your Clothes Are Making You Sick
This week, we talk to the author of To Dye For, a new book about toxic fashion and the abundance of harmful chemicals in our clothing.
HOTOGRAPH: ALFIAN WIDIANTONO/GETTY IMAGES
HAVE YOU EVER put on a new shirt and discovered that it makes you feel itchy? Or taken off a new pair of pants at the end of the day to find that the fabric has given you a rash? This problem is increasingly common as more chemicals are added to our clothing when they’re dyed or treated with additives that make them resistant to stains, wrinkles, and odors. Some of these chemicals are irritants that can cause breathing problems or skin issues. Others are toxic enough to trigger life-altering autoimmune diseases. Since the fashion industry operates within loose regulations, the problem of toxic apparel isn’t going away anytime soon.
Organikos 