30 December, VIRUS 2020

‘We cannot make it without science’: Greta Thunberg says climate experts are being ignored

Climate specialists not being listened to despite Covid showing importance of following science, activist says. The Guardian

Lions on the loose in Coffs: From the archives in 1953. Armed citizens and members of the 13th Battalion roamed the Jetty area with rifles. Coffs Coast Advocate

Indigenous environmental defender killed in latest Honduras attack. Félix Vásquez, 60, shot in own home in front of family. The Guardian

Tasmanian timber industry reeling as jobs lost due to China ban. Bellingen Courier

How the Oxford-AstraZeneca Vaccine Works. NY Times[i]

I don’t like ritual, that time has passed, but try and catch the full moon lift over the blue ball of ocean, the package of cloud clearing, the full moon glares through the forest, half the sky is polished and half dirt, like earth absorbing any illumination it can. Black Cockatoos surround us, a dirty grey.

What to have for breakfast choice in a capitalist world is real, as well as limited. Wyn is on Facebook, shows me drone images by a local Nambucca photographer Adam Dederer, of the coast before and after the recent floods, from blues/green to brown/gold/black.

One of my favourite calls is swooping from the forest, White-throated Gerygones, haven’t heard for a few months.

I play Catching Flies simultaneously with Boards of Canada – such a rich sound (I love Charles Ives). Pause for an unknown call. Wyn checks her phone app, not the flycatcher she thought.

After a morning of rain, the sun is out and I start weeding, no clear plan, wander along the garden that has evolved by itself, was meant to be low maintenance, never is. But some work is good work.

Our seed house is busy.
The subterranean bureaucracy is delivering fruits.

A puffball with a pure white interior is safe to eat (the exception being Scleroderma. These Earthballs grow symbiotically with the roots of Casuarina and Eucalyptus, usually with a face more like a potato with scaly skin and more yellowy-brown than yellow. The insides start white then violet to violet black nearing maturity. They cause stomach cramps, vomiting and diarrhoea.

The sky is always licking beauty. Butterflies have had a good year. Lemon Migrants, Monarchs and Blue Triangles tangle explicit colours.

A Grating from the nearby Blackbutts, the storms birds are here. A few fly off, I get the camera ready for the last three to follow they launch themselves into the air wobbling like badly ridden bicycles (as Malcolm Lowry described a flight in Mexico).