New paintings and regular art updates.
Even iin the cracks of windowledges or steps. This was growing at Spode last year. Not pretty, but green, seed heads developing, waiting to be dandelion clocks.
Next year there might be ten new plants, then a hundred the year after. Not exponential, but a creaping greening. A creating of new life, roots diving deep, breaking up the earth. If only we could embrace nature more? Not kill it but give it a helping hand. We know its wrong to harm the planet. Why do we persist.
World wrapped… Up
In a plastic bag,
Or bubble wrap….
World wrapped in packaging
In yards or meters of soft, slithering, veils.
Plastic permiates
Plastic stifles
Plastic swallowed
Blocking guts
Strangling
Plastic smothers
It won’t go away.
Like an infinite being
Never-ending nightmare.
Permanent
Plastic…..
Just saw something flying over the house in the night sky. Four really strange star shaped objects, glowing, shedding sparkling light as they drifted across the sky. Glittering and shimmering. Beautiful and obtuse. No signals from them, neither radio nor radiation. They are still visible on the Eastern horizon. I decided to follow them in my car. I realised how hard it is to drive and watch the sky though! Several near misses later and I was driving along a dark road into the countryside. The star shards were lower in the sky, loosing altitude..
How much further? Holographic shimmers, suddenly stopping abruptly in a dark field?
I climbed over the style, up the hill towards a high hedge, eyes accustomed to the dark, I saw….
Not UFOs but four holographic star shaped balloons, tied with ribbon, stuck in a tree!
Now to try and find my way home……
How big is Earth’s diameter? Just under 8,000 miles. How big is its circumference? Just under 25,000 miles. That’s not very big really. There are statistics saying how many Earth’s fit into Jupiter, the biggest planet in the Solar System, or even how many Earth’s would fit into the size of the Sun.
What I’m trying to say is, this is the third planet from the Sun, in the habitable region of the system (not too hot or too cold) and we need to look after it. We are using up its resources at an alarming rate, polluting our home world with plastics and toxic waste, killing off the insects including bees with insecticides and heating it up till the North and South polar icecaps are severely effected and melting rapidly. Why are we doing this? Are we, like Covid19, like a virus, impacting on our host, the Earth.
Discuss…….
The sun is starting to wake up after Solar Minimum. Apparently there was a coronal mass ejection from the sun yesterday. This means that a twisted magnetic line of energy had broken and exploded with plasma coming out of the Sun. The energy can fly out in any direction but sometimes the CME heads towards Earth, then the magnetic feild around the Earth shields us. Except at the poles. Its like when you put iron filings on a bar magnet. You can see the magnetic field lines and the way the iron filings follow them. The magnetic lines dip down towards the magnetic poles. This is what happens at the North and South poles of Earth. The energy from the sun is channelled towards the poles and excites the gasses in the atmosphere. I think Nitrogen glows green and Oxygen pink? I’m not sure.
Anyway there has been a CME from the Sun and the chance is there might be some Auroral displays in the next few days.
Bees…
Apparently they are more and more at risk. Bees pollenate the vast majority of flowering plants on the Earth, and their counterparts including hoverflies are also under threat.
What with? Insecticides, that are used to control insect pests. These include Neonicotinoids that have been found to disorientated bees (as well as killing them) so they cannot find food. Without them we would not have fruit and vegetables. But unfortunately big pharmaceutical companies keep wanting to sell insecticides. There have been court cases that stopped their use. But they fight back.
If only we could use non invasive alternatives. Biological treatments that would eat pests. Like nematode worms, for instance. The problem is humans need quick solutions to save crops from things like locusts. But I think we should use these things sparingly. There are many ecological and moral questions and problems. I hope we can sort it out.
I’d written a poem about nature and autumn. But my phone won’t save drafts of my posts. I hit the wrong key. So I’ve lost it. It no longer exists. Like summer moving into autum then onwards, the poem has gone into the aether, lost for all time. I could try rewriting it, but the sentiment is lost, the feeling has gone. I’d done some nice rhymes, but I’m not going to easily remember them.
And when we get to this time next year? The world will have moved on through space and time. We never come back to the same place. The Earth turns, spiralling around the sun, which in turn moves around the galaxy…..
Bye words, take care xxx
A spiky plant in our garden, a bit like the shape of a virus.
This virus though? I was just thinking this is like a zombie apocalypse movie- except there are no zombies (and no apocalypse)! I didn’t think the survivalists were right, and I still don’t. This is not the end of ‘Independence day’, or ‘Deep Impact’, or even ‘The Day after Tomorrow’ No president ‘hero’ is going to save the day. No bulldog like prime minister will defeat the army of viruses, its just not like that,
Blame them, if you need to, for that old cliche, of shutting the door after the horse has bolted. All of us, the whole world, is affected by this. But there are no zombie dead walking the streets, but a mass of our loved ones, gone before their time.
I hope I don’t sound flippant. I don’t want to. I DO NOT think this is the end of the world, although some people will be wishing it is. There are too many things that can destroy this world, with bombs and bullets, starvation and lack of clean water. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think mans damage of the Earth is going away, we have had a brief respite, but that does not solve climate change.
So there you are, that is what I think the real problem is, mans inhumanity to man and our planet. Scientists are calling this era the ‘Anthropocene’ where the impact of billions of humans on the Earth is visibly changing things. Remember the hole in the ozone layer? The massive oil spills over the last century, glaciers and Ice floes melting. Oceans full of plastic, the air so polluted in some places that their populations have been in their own lock-downs to survive them.
Mankind fights wars over so many things, religion, resources, rights to water and food. There is no ‘sharing’ with the other people on the other side of the mountain. Mankind ( and womankind) would rather be selfish and keep everything for themselves. Survival of the fittest? or greediest? Maybe we can’t work together?
But we can TRY. When people say we are all in this together, they need to realise we actually are.
When I was a child, there were probably about four billion people on the Earth, I learnt a fact that if you took every person alive they would fit on the Isle of Wight. (Look it up, its a small island off the south coast of Britain, separated from the mainland by the Solent). Even now you could probably fit most of them on the island when the tide is out….
I often think that the Earth is the host and we ( the human race) are the virus or bacteria attacking it, making its glaciers run, clogging up its pores with plastic, making it cough with pollution and greenhouse gases. Its time for us all to be the good, health giving bacteria, the pro and prebiotics that add health to the world, not something that is trying to kill it off.
No doubt that when this is over there will be calls to push ahead with growth, to make up for lost time. But can we in all conscience accept that? Maybe we should choose our leaders wisely, give them the task of sorting it out? But I think it is in our own hands. We have to say something, not accept the status quo.
A poppy painting I did a while ago.
This recent warm sunshine is bringing all the poppies out into flower. We walked into town, and where the pathways have not been sprayed with weed killer, all sorts of plants, including oriental poppies, are springing up. Mother nature is taking over.
But… In places where people have been allowed to meet up, the beaches, and parks, the main growth is in litter. People do not take their rubbish home with them. Why are humans such a filthy, messy, species. I thought we were giving the earth breathing space. But people’s ethos seems to be having what they want, and ignoring the damage they create.
I don’t think humans deserve this wonderful world. Really.
Yet when they looked back, the gods saw the world was beautiful.
They flew on into space, leaving the blue planet, its fascinating surface, watery and dry, cold and hot.
They had seeded it with bacteria and viruses. They had given it a satellite, called Selene. So the water flowed back and forth, and would eventually encourage life to flow onto the land.
They knew billions of years would pass and agreed to return when, and if, a major species grew up and made efforts to fly beyond the world.
They called the planet Earith, home, Gaia, and waited to see if their seed bed grew.
In May 2020 they returned.
They saw the oceans polluted, the mountains denuded of snow. They saw the glaciers melting and the oceans rising. They could see all the problems.
But they were gods, they could will things to change, eradicate the major species, allow the wilderness to return.
They agreed that this was not possible. Man must learn from its mistakes. Let us return in two millenia and see what has happened they said.
They left, wondering what they would find on their return.
X
Mallaband-Brown