Tag: air pollution

Set like a spinnaker in a south-westerly, here’s our drought-beating chard

From this autumnal end of the telescope, the past growing season – which we’d written off as disastrous – needs a more nuanced description. Yes the bindweed had a marvellous time, and the couch grass invaded from the abandoned allotment below us; the tomatoes in the polytunnel suffered in the unbearable heat and so it goes on. We were very discouraged and even considered packing it in; but Madame held firm and, in the light of our late harvests, things don’t look so bad after all. Once we’d decided to carry on, the obvious starting point was to clear the beds and prepare them for next spring. We made the decision to leave the borlotti and the runner beans on their teepees for a week or so to see if the scattered blossoms would bear any late fruit, and that was a wise choice because both crops came to life after the rain and gave us a smaller than usual but welcome crop. The late tomatoes set a big crop of unripened green fruits which we picked as we cleared the tunnel and stored in the warmth but covered in some black plastic. It seems they don’t need light as much as they need warmth and we’ve been able to replenish most of our stores of passata. When I came to clear the potato beds they too had bided their time and although the skins were a bit tough, (a common problem across the allotment this year), we’ll have plenty for the winter. Our apples, pears and plums gave us their biggest ever pickings – they were only planted in 2021 – and the strawberries which failed miserably have come back to life and are producing many strong runners which we’ll use to make a new bed over the winter. Today, fired up with energy, I set to repairing some rotting edgings and tending to a commercial blackberry that’s repaid a great deal of TLC with some new growth. The rhubarb too has thrived so – all in all – and supplemented by our stores of frozen, pickled and bottled food we shall look forward to the winter with confidence.

But every silver lining has its cloud and two days ago we had another break-in on the site and this time they came equipped with bolt-croppers and cut through the tension wires on the fence, making it easier to pass things into the lane. However they weren’t very bright, and neither were they very lucky it seems. None of us keeps anything except mostly old hand tools in our sheds and in our case they sheared off the padlock and then went away empty handed when they discovered a second mortice lock. They may, of course have noticed the trail-cam pointing in their direction and had a moment of enlightenment before they scarpered. Over the years we’ve lost hundreds of pounds worth of equipment, had the toughened glass in the greenhouse smashed and the polytunnel slashed. Our other problem is what we call ‘shopping’. Unknown people enter the site and steal fruit on an industrial scale. Trees are stripped bare. If we see people who shouldn’t be there we ask them to leave, but I caught a well dressed local restaurateur one sunday morning with several bags stuffed with stolen figs from our neighbour’s tree. Contrary to common sense – which is all too common but not in a nice way, and not the least sensible – there’s not a shred of evidence to support the idea that lawlessness is confined to hoodie wearers, rough sleepers and foreigners. How much carbon do they emit compared with the besuited occupants of huge child killing SUV’s which ignore the 20mph speed limit outside the allotments because rules, like taxes, are for the little people. Lawlessness is a societal and cultural problem, and so is homelessness, drug and alcohol abuse and it spreads its tentacles throughout the whole of society. The malignant spread of selfishness and greed has been given free reign for fifty years and it could take fifty years to repair the damage. Criminalising environmental protest, locking up pensioners for demonstrating against genocide and extracting millions of litres of water from the Thames and replacing it by pumping (poorly) treated sewage effluent back into the river is most certainly not the answer. Jobs, education, youth clubs, training for decent jobs, proper healthcare and housing for all, the fear and financial stress of the elderly taken seriously and adequate mental health provision for the casualties of blighted childhoods all these are the vital signs of effective governance, not more Big Brother nonsense from out of touch politicians. Do I sound cross ???

Q: Which of us would dream of letting our families starve because we wanted keep all our money for ourselves?

A: The kind of person who has utterly lost any moral sense of direction.

Mending the nets

Anyway, we bought a new padlock for the shed and spent a few hours in the sunshine working on the warm earth. It was lovely and as we worked I pondered the reason why so many of our crops survived the drought and heat waves. Last week Joe (our supplier) carried half a ton of manure down to our plot at the bottom. That’s been the minimum amount every year for ten years and my guess – what with all the other compost we’ve made and scrounged – is that approaching ten tons of organic matter has been added and worked into the beds which, when we took the plot on, were nothing but couch, bindweed, old carpets (don’t even think about it!!) clay and starved looking earth. Digging the potatoes before it rained, the earth was black and crumbly, smelt like earth should and was still a bit moist six inches down. Soil regeneration by increasing organic matter is slow, expensive and hard, but it works – and with climate change increasing its grip year on year (sorry, but think SUV’s again) it’s the only show in town if we hope to grow healthy crops to feed ourselves. I’ll finish with a photo of one of the cleared bed awaiting its food for the year, a layer of cardboard from our recycling area and a cover of weed-control mat. “Tomorrow shall be our dancing day”

Stale yeast – bad news!

This could be a bit of a shaggy dog story so I’ll keep it short. On Thursday last the steam oven packed up; not just no steam but no oven at all. The engineer can’t make it until Monday afternoon, but that’s just the beginning because he’ll have to order the parts and we could be without our main oven for ten days. But all’s not lost because we have a combination oven/grill/microwave and we also have a very elderly bread machine. Over the years I’ve tried every idea in the book for ways of making steam including saucers of water and wet bricks but none come close to the real thing.

So no sourdough for maybe ten days and yesterday I fetched out the jar of dried yeast and made a quick machine loaf – the resultant brick on the right was the clearest sign that the yeast had effectively died – it doesn’t last forever and I bought a kilo of the only yeast available in the panic days of the first lockdown. This morning I bought new yeast and the difference is clear – which doesn’t mean the bread machine is anything other than a quick work around in an emergency. I know without even cutting a slice that it will be fluffy and tasteless, but it makes half decent toast. The shame is that we’re right in the middle of processing tomatoes and this will limit our capacity.

Our neighbour on the allotment has just lost much of her tomato crop to blight. When we get a wet spell like the one we’ve been enduring here, it’s only a matter of days before blight appears and it’s a tragedy. This has been a truly weird season and it’s impossible to believe that the cause is anything but the oncoming climate catastrophe. Food security is one aspect of the crisis that’s not mentioned nearly enough.

But I’m also more directly affected by air pollution than most because I’m asthmatic. It was never a problem until we moved to Bath, but the air here can be so poor that I could barely walk to the surgery. One of the health factors that is affected particularly by microscopic particles is atrial fibrillation which, for me has intensified from occasional to continuous, and the polluting particles aren’t just from the burning of diesel fuel. Very heavy vehicles like diesel SUV’s obviously emit copious amounts, but it’s also been demonstrated that because electric vehicles are so much heavier they emit more particles from tyres and brakes. Children are ten times more likely to be killed or seriously injured if struck by SUV’s as opposed to smaller cars. When children – more often poor children are exposed to pollution their lungs never grow properly. I mention this because Bath is infested with these giant vehicles, often carrying just one driver. So the argument that ULEZ and 20mph speed limits are restricting some kind of human right is so obviously wrong that continuing to advance it is the exact equivalent to promoting cigarette smoking among children. Who stands to gain from this? Big oil, and car manufacturers, that’s who.

I remember the headline from a column in the Daily Mirror when I was a child, written by William Connor whose ferocious articles appeared under his pen name Cassandra. It was “This Septic Isle”. What goes around comes around!

Rewilding the pavement

North Somerset is a very wildlife rich county. We can easily walk to half a dozen outstandingly diverse habitats which – because we have both a river and a canal – reach like green fingers to the centre of the city. Otters are often seen within a quarter of a mile of our flat, and in summer we can lean over the riverside and see Dace swimming in the shallows. It’s a joy. The tourist guide writers love to swoon over the honey coloured stone at sunset and we not only have parks but also a botanical garden, riverside walks and a cycle path linking us with Bristol and into the National Network that could take you to London on a bike or in a kayak. I don’t want to oversell the beauties because we’re already stuffed with tourists but living in a beautiful city with a local authority which has declared the environmental emergency feels like a step in the right direction.

This year – finally – the City Council took the brave decision to stop spraying our streets and pavements with Glyphosate. The policy seems to have met with less resistance than the clean air zone – or CAZ -which has provoked venomous opposition from those who think parking their SUV’s outside on the pavement next to their favourite shop is some kind of human right. The pollution here has not only been persistent, it’s been illegal and the Council have struggled to impose a policy that would actually work. Exempting all private cars including the Range Rovers and Discoveries was a sop to the most vocal opponents but the policy is working – although much more slowly than it might have done. The providential closure of a major HGV route through the centre of Bath during bridge repairs may have had a lot to do with the results so far.

The routine spraying of pavements was a different issue. Through traffic has been a problem for more than fifty years, but the removal of any plants from the pavements seems to be a hangover from another age; an age in which weeds were treated as an enemy that needed to be vanquished every year – as if the pavements were a war zone. The consequences of weeds were never clearly specified but unknown horrors such as pensioners tripping over were gravely hinted at. In truth, generations of municipal grounds people (I was one of them) were raised within the ancient hostilities and killing weeds gave a kind of atavistic pleasure.

So this is the first year of the new policy and we’re just beginning to see the results. Truth to tell, Glyphosate is a rubbish weedkiller in any case because more and more so-called weeds are developing resistance to it. The plants just died back and played possum for a month or two and then sprang into new life as if nothing had happened. The consequences for the rest of us were less benign, and rivers and their associated water tables have been saturated with poison which has been finding its way into our water supplies and into us. Bayer/Monsanto will claim it’s all a myth but then – they would, wouldn’t they?

The photos at the top could not have been taken on the same day and month in any year within the last decades because by now they would have gone. So it’s a complete joy to report all of these modest beauties growing within fifteen paces of our front door. There are many more, but the street is lined with Mexican Fleabane – that’s the pretty daisy looking plant. Then there’s Canadian Fleabane growing rapidly, Ivy Leaved Toadflax, Broad Leaved Plantain, Cat’s Ear, Smooth Sows’ Ear, Prickly Sows’ Ear, Dandelion, Wall Lettuce, Nipplewort, and Pineapple Weed. There’s Annual Meadow Grass and Wall Barley. At the back there’s Herb Robert, Great Lettuce and many other species. I suppose it was a matter of mindset rather than moral deficiency that kept us killing them off every year – culture eats strategy for breakfast after all and in time, I hope, more and more people will come to appreciate these miniature nature reserves on our doorsteps – after all it’s faintly miraculous that anything can survive in this hot, dry, waterless and polluted hostile environment. It’s a tribute to the persistence and adaptability of nature that these ancient residents and relative newcomers can emerge, seemingly from nowhere, miles from their natural habitats in fields and hedgerows.