Columbia Road’s flower market explodes into whirls of colours… mixed with voices and plastic bags, hats, hands and hair-dos.
Here come some views:
Invalid Displayed Gallery
Read MoreAuthor Archive
London in August, a vist at Roots and Shoots, located since 32 years in the council on Lambeth. Founder Linda Phillips leads me on winding paths through a wonderous maze of plots, meadows and espaliers. This biotope unfolds on just an acre of formerly contaminated industrial grounds in the mid of London. The garden started out as a community project and is now supported, next to private donors, by charitiy organisations and the council of London. Roots and Shoots offers educational training to disadvantaged youths, works with school classes and kindergardens and collaborates with international environmental organisations. It encourages neighborhood activities and is strenguously committed to green the world and our thinking.
Datscha Radio wasn’t lazy in other ways as well and therefore forthcoming on this blog:
– Audiowalk Roots & Shoots including a visit in the dragon’s den + picture gallery
– Audiowalk Flowermarket Columbia Road + picture gallery
– Talk Wild Flower Garden + picture gallery
– Views of Chelsea Physics GardensWebseite: Roots and Shoots
Photos: Garden gate, view garden, sleeping young fox at pond, guava in “Paradise Corner” (in memoriam William Blake)
A young chiffchaff fell from its nest and will soon return to his temporary cardboard box home: A visit to the National Ornithological Station, Hessia, Enkheim, Frankfort.
In a very interesting talk the director of the station, Dr. Martin Hormann, told interesting stories about the wood pidgeon’s “slovenly built nests”, the polygamous habits of the wren and the jay bird’s relevance for the endurance of oak forests. One of my favourites though was the shitty tactics of male fieldfares in combat with magpies: A true alternative to consider now as the cherries are ripening.
1. wacholderdrossel tactics - Raw audio/M.Hormann
Moreover, some views of bird homes adapted to the needs of different kinds of birds in size and nesting habits. Details on this will possibly follow when I find the time…
Invalid Displayed Gallery
Read More
If the snake had come up with a cactus pear (Opuntia ficus-indica) instead of an apple we would be covered with painful pimples but still dwell in innocence.
The sun was hot, my vision blurred, the ground in a cactus grove near Fontane Bianch was prickly weeds and strewn with cactus pears/figs. Having spent my adolescent years with cultivating cacti (instead of leafing through puberty mags) I knew these can be vicious when touched without gloves. I used a plastic bag to pick them up, handled it with utmost care… only to find that the tiny glochids that surround the spines of the opuntias and that sit as little “nests” on the pear shaped fruit are well able to puncture plastic…
Solutions for transport:
Still I ended up with some of these tiny monsters on my fingers. Wikipedia provides encouraging information:
Glochids or glochidia (singular “glochidium”) are hair-like spines or short prickles, generally barbed, found on the areoles of cacti in the sub-family Opuntioideae. Cactus glochids easily detach from the plant and lodge in the skin, causing irritation upon contact.
If the glochidia are allowed to remain in the skin, a dermatitis may ensue that will persist for months.Glochidia may be difficult to remove. Yanking out the bristles may result in leaving one or more 20-30 micrometre sized barbs in the skin, later to be manifest by granuloma formation. Attempts to suck out the glochidia are likely to result in their attachment to the tongue. Popular methods of removing glochidia have included spreading adhesive plaster over the area and ripping it off quickly or using melted wax (hot wax sometimes employed for removing hair). Martinez et al. studied various methods of removing glochidia from rabbit skin. They evaluated tweezers, glue, facial mask, adhesive tape, package-sealing tape, and tweezing followed by glue. The most effective single method was tweezing, which removed 76% of the spines. The method using a thin layer of household glue (Elmer’s Glue-All, Borden Inc) covered with gauze, allowed to dry (about 30 minutes) and then peeled off resulted in removal of 63% of the spines. Facial mask and adhesive tapes removed about 40% and 30% of the spines, respectively, and produced more retention and inflammation three days after removal than no treatment. Repeated applications of adhesive tape did not improve the results. According to Martinez, the most effective method is to first use tweezers to remove clumps of spines followed by the application and removal of household glue, resulting in removal of 95% of the spines.
Writing this I can still feel some on my fingers… There are no tweezers in the household! Nonetheless, they have a nice taste and indeed look like figs inside.
Invalid Displayed Gallery
It’s a very modest sign that announces the “Piccolo Zoo” just across the road behind Syracusa’s archeological park. A papyrus [Cyperus papyrus] lined gravel road leads to a gate that opens into a garden-like picknick zone operated by Angelo (and his family) who is in charge of a multitude of hens, roosters (permanently crowing), ducks and more ducks, geese, parakeets, canaries, pheasants, two swans (at least) plus a wire confinement lived in by guinea pigs, rabbits, goats and probably still something else. The garden design is enhanced by glass balloons, vases, broken plaster remants and white enamelled chairs and tables. Apart from tending the picknick area and gardening, he might even be the creator of the two giant paper-maché heads towering behind the bushes.
The “Piccolo Zoo” is at the same time one of the places where the art of making paper from the papyrus plant is explained and administered. A wooden hut in the middle of the premises serves as a semi-touristy but very charming selling point of the fabricated sheets. The town of Syracuse has its own paper museum which certainly gives ALL information about the history and the process of paper creation. But the “Little Zoo” has something “airy-fairy” about it that is hard to grasp. Last but not least the wooden hut is wonderfully climatized– an absoute blessing today!
Invalid Displayed Gallery
Read More
“Hejo, spann den Wagen an”, a very traditional canon in German language. Sung at the table on occasion of Mme Stoering’s “Salon”. Topic of the evening war “music”.
1. Hejo, Spann den Wagen an!
If you want to sing along, this is the German text:
Hejo, spann den Wagen an,
Sieh, der Wind treibt Regen übers Land
Hol die goldnen Garben,
Hol die goldnen Garben.
translates into:
Heigh ho! Hitch up the cart,
See, the wind drives rain across the land.
Fetch the golden sheaves,
Fetch the golden sheaves.
The English traditional is much less garden orientated:
Heigh-ho! Anybody home.
Food and drink and money have I none.
Still I will be merry, still I will be merry.
And then there is still a strange Low-German-English(?) dialect version:
Hey-o spun den wagon uns,
Set der ven tribt regen ubers lands,
Olde folin gabin,
Olde folin gabin.
The Gardens of Yesterday. 54 min. Language: German. A dystopic fairytale on the future of gardening…. after the LSD riots of 2090. By Gabi Schaffner. More information: HR2 Info.
The sound material stems from field recordings made during the project “Compost and Poesis. 100 Days of Datscharadio” in Giessen, Hessia, 2014. Datscharadio expresses once again its greatest thanks to Ingke Günther and Jörg Wagner of “gärtnerpflichten Giessen”, Herrn Holzapfel (Office of Hessian literature) and all participating guests and artists.
“Gärten von Gestern” was prompted by Pit Schultz. For their untiring encouragement, use of work space and important help I would like to thank Mathias Deutsch, Nathalie Grenzhaueser and Dirk Hülstrunk. Special cheers to Mathias Scheliga for all those test readings and to all other friends who supported me through their talks, councel, literature and their voices!
Read More
Australian Beauties reconnects to the work of German botanists travelling Australia since the 50s of the 19th century. Namely the work of Ferninand von Müller was vital for the botanic culture of Australia: Not only did he discover a great number of plants and became the renowned director of the Melborne Botanic Gardens in 1857. Even before that he started on the most extensive collection of pressed plants in Australia for a herbarium that still forms the core of the present “plant library” of the Botanic Gardens.
Australian Beauties is a “roadside herbarium” currently featuring 23 pressed plants from Australia, provided with reinvented names, but real situational descriptions and observations on the nature of the specific plant. The work draws on the spirit of discovery which forms such a great part of Western culture – and defies it at the same time in counteracting the “laws” of taxonomy, scientific soberness and order. The grit of the road still sticks to the pressed specimens. Some look ravished, some are just blossoms without stems or leaves, others have faded, unrecognizable colours… with the discoverer occasionally failing to remember the exact location (a gravelled parking lot on the A3, Tasmania). Australian Beauties hovers on the brink between the factual and the imaginary and between irony and wonder. The images are commented in text in English and German and will form a printed publication presented probably in 2017.
Invalid Displayed Gallery
Read More