Friday, December 19, 2008

Quick nest builders

The eastern spinebill [honeyeater] began to build it's nest in the potato vine above the arch covering the gate that leads into the shearing shed garden, and we loved the thought of this pair raising it's babies just over our head as we walked through each day to feed the free range poultry and generally did work in the garden. There is considerable movement around and through the arch and under its gate. The Eastern Spinebill is a fast nest builder and in this way misses out much of what is going on over a longer period of time as it quickly completes the construction of its nest. So when it was ready and decided to lay its eggs and sit, it was suddenly disturbed by all the things it wouldn't normally see and therefore felt threatened and left all this work and resource expended, abandoned, as it moved away

So it is a desirable thing in some instances to go slow, to be certain that we see much of what is going on before we finally decide to expend a great deal of energy and resources to do what we think might be something good. There is no reason for rush, but it appears that human beings pursue speed so that the one who does may get the benefit of whatever they have done. Maybe all we should do, is to make certain that something we are contemplating is not going to create more problems than what it solves, and then, if this is proven and certain, we can go ahead and do it; allowing it to mature for the benefit of our children and grandchildren?

So the magic of planting a tree, especially one that will grow slowly, adapt to the conditions as they change is: it will be mature for our grandchildren to enjoy. We cannot leave a greater legacy for them; a planet disturbed as little as possible and a resource they can use and replenish in turn for their children and grandchildren. Then they may also have time to contemplate what they are going to do before they attempt it?

Sunday, September 28, 2008

The mind..........

The true mind when referred to is the being, the one whom we are, the person that is. The mind is referred to in that manner as a rule. The physical mind is the brain mind, that which controls the body of which the brain is part. That which the true mind uses to make the vehicle it travels in, work as it should.

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Poddy lamb........


Last night on a hill, we found two skinny sheep belonging to we knew not who? Lying on their side to weak to move with the eye pointing up to the heavens pecked out and their heads pillowed in a pool of congealed blood. One of these was a ewe that had obviously given birth, because we found the lamb, one that had never had a chance to suckle, bleating as it tried unsuccessfully to suckle a rough tree trunk. The lamb ran to us, the only living things, moving about on the hill which it had probably seen all day. It was a strong lamb, willing to fight for the life its mother had died to produce. She was being carried home as I returned with a rifle to send her mother and the other sheep home away from the misery which engulfed them. This is the way of life, there is misfortune and luck and all manner of other factors that are the yin and yang of life.

So two grown sheep have been returned from whence they came and we now have a poddy lamb; a small animal that will be solely reliant on us for some months and then partially reliant on us for a short time after that. This is not the first baby that we have looked after and it won't be the last, and we wonder? But just keep putting on foot in front of the other. It would have made a difference had we not picked up the lamb and left it for the fox, it would not have been better or worse, just different. We did nothing marvellous or wonderful, as the fox would not have done anything wrong. We just followed our natural inclinations as they are and the feelings that moved them in the moment.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Danger Will Robinson........

The warnings continue but few people recognise them. The worry of so many diseases are happening in the livestock industries, poultry enterprises in particular, as people disrespect the food they eat looking only for anything that's cheap, rather than a product that has been farmed well, humanely and lived well. There are more and more diseases that were almost dormant under normal stocking rates and conditions of healthy space and reasonable self determination for animals and birds, which are becoming a serious problem. Not only for the production of the end product which we expect to be of good quality, but also for the people working in these intensive, disrespectful industries. The voices in the wilderness can be heard if one listens and yet no one takes any notice and people continue along what looks like the yellow brick road to plentiful food, but which is really only a sand track leading to a really horrifying, disease ridden mess for the human race.

Diseases that are becoming more prevalent in all livestock and any loss of quality in plants is not going to help us survive all the other problems that greed and carelessness is heaping upon us. Science has for far too long been treating symptoms which it thinks it has overcome, and not the actual causes which affect us and everything on this planet. All human beings have allowed themselves to be mislead by what appears to be glorious time of plenty and happiness, but never looked the mess left behind or the future for our children. Mass production is not the answer and never was, though it looked promising at the start, and should have been long recognised, but like global warming is now, will be noticed only when it's too late.

Small production and producer operations decentralised and in all areas should be encouraged. Small scale producers, and manufacturers. The lower cost of mass production has enormous costs in other areas, huge companies are the problem not the answer. To think that getting bigger is better, and that it can be never ending shows a complete disregard or lack of understanding of what life is all about.

Now it's all about money on every hand, and there is a squeeze which cannot be endured for long. People are getting pushed to the wall because they all seek to do the same thing, they follow without thinking. To make something less expensive will require something to be at a reasonable cost, but those that grow and process it to be happy with a Little less financial reward, and maintain a pride in their work and the product they produce, which should be sufficient for even the most greedy?

People are either very stupid or don't have a thought about what is happening under their noses? I repeat myself.

There is nothing gained but something is lost. The trick is trying to discover if the gain is actually that and not a greater loss than what is already in place. This takes time, but there are too many who think that racing ahead is what is required. I wonder to what end racing ahead might be required?

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Conservation....

Conservation is a term used often. The meaning of it is something like this:

[quote]

Conservation \Con`ser*va"tion\, n. [L. conservatio: cf. F. conservation.] The act of preserving, guarding, or protecting; the keeping (of a thing) in a safe or entire state; preservation. [1913 Webster]

[end quote]

So conservation doesn't appear to be desirable at all. It seems to suggest keeping things in the state of the status quo, which after all is not only impossible but capricious. All things either evolve or degrade and/or erode, this is how evolution works. Trying to keep something as it is/was is a task both futile and unwelcome to any who would like to retain species and environments for future generations.

Victoria, Australia has more than 4 million hectares, or 14 per cent of the state, which are wilderness, state, regional park and reserve areas. The state government projects itself as protector and manager of these areas and they are evolving land and seascapes. The management appears insufficient because there is just not enough staff for the task, yet some would argue that's a good outcome, allowing these areas to constantly evolve; though many would claim they are degrading, but that depends where the person making the claim stands in opinion, thought and control tendency. Nature is working in these areas, it can't be prevented from doing so and the result is change and if this is degradation by natural means, then who would gainsay this? Only those that would control every aspect of what is happening, and create things as they see them, in their imagination, if only they could. But our ancestors as transporters of plants and animals from other countries have already created opportunity for the natural evolution with these new species.

So forget conservation for a moment and look more at protection. We can only protect anything from our own species and therefore society sets out rules and laws, and each of us have rules and laws, some more stringent and others more lenient than these of society that we also obey. For protection of any environment, and that's how all protection should be viewed, not like it has been n the past, as protection of an animal, which results in the animal in captivity in zoos, because its natural habitat has been desolated. A protection of an environment means all it contains, plants, animals, insects etc., from our species. With rules and laws we inhibit our species from taking what we think is undesirable action in the protected areas, and therefore hinder the application of what we consider undesirable effects from burdening or shaping the evolution of protected areas. Because nature will do as is intended and it cannot and must not be halted.

Protection of environments is important. Because it shows we are willing to allow nature to do what it has ever done, and even though we may see things happening that our ancestors have encouraged by the importation of what are often termed feral or weed species, we should trust natures ability to change and manage this change with what it discovers. Trust that animals will adapt, and trust that those which don't will be marked as obsolete by the same force which create them in the first place. It's a hard decision, which isn't ours to make and will be made if we interfere further, or not.

People mention pristine environments, but this usually tries to show an environment where man has not been the vector for introduction of animals and plants which were not discovered when the people who took away or colonised the environment of the native peoples first arrived. Prior to that, since the world began, other vectors and opportunity were created by nature to distribute plants and animals. These environments have evolved, and they are no more, nor will they ever be again. Time cannot be turned back, and land returned to uneducated, natural and enlightened native peoples is not possible either. It's not even natural that it should be so. Nature is the controlling force. Man is arrogant enough to think that its species has some control, but humans are unable to control anything, especially themselves no matter how hard they try. Humans are and will always be controlled by nature which created them, more evident now that the knowledge of global warming has registered its presence, even to science which created much of what has caused this phenomenon in all areas of human action.

Conservation should be replaced with protection, and evolution allowed to continue without interference, even though it may result in the destruction of the human species in the end. If we as a species were as clever as we thought, we would not be destroying what is already there, tried and tested, to rebuild it as we want, but rather build and live round all which was encountered and share the space and ambiance. Since we aren't that clever, we use force to shape natures tested landscape and formula with machines and flawed science, and get into more and more trouble every minute of day and night. Natures control is supreme, but we can try to curb the excesses of human habitation, not try to conserve what we have already destroyed.

Saturday, June 7, 2008

A home rather than a house...

In search of the home one seeks a shelter, something that will keep off the rain, something that is dry, and yet when the weather is dry will be a little moist. Warmth in winter and shade in the hottest part of summer. A home can be a thing which loosely and lovingly treats us differently us from the outside the world which nature creates, it permits, possibly even encourages us to engage an environment which is mostly ours alone. A house, which is very different from a home, can be a thing that shows us boasting and by so doing build a rack upon which we may be broken. Confusing us into thinking what we want is what we also need. It can grow from us, showing who we think we are, putting up a front and becoming one who competes with others.

A home is a shelter to our being, it should cosset and succour us, but more would make it a monster that will drive us all our living days. A house is not important, though in modern society it has taken on another dimension, and people strive to have a house which is better than the one which keeps their neighbour dry. We need to take care with our home, because it is supposed to be an extension of our true selves, an environment of our own, not a status symbol to impress others. A home is supposed to be a place to go, or come too. It is a place to enjoy things that might not exist in the natural world, and yet it should allow the natural world to come in, join us and find itself welcome and comfortable. It should be a place within the natural world, a micro-climate for our personal needs.

Simply Living with Cats...

When living simply, there are as ever the problems with wants and needs and the conflicts which arise. One of these is a cat. Do you want a cat and if you do, how do you justify it eating the wildlife that would otherwise abound around the cottage? Nothing is easy. Most people just turn a blind eye to the fact that any cat is a great destroyer, and the myth that only hungry cats kill wildlife is a general stupidity that is touted by people who know nothing of cats, and kidding themselves so they can sleep at night, or people who just don't care what happens, and how they affect their environment and the world in general.

So a cat in the wild where it was never before is not an option, but anyone who knows something about cats and animals in general, will know that they are very adaptable, no less so than human beings. That a cat which is fed by humans and kept indoors is a very different animal than one who lives and survives in the wild. Therefore the domestic cat can be changed, its habitat altered, and be quite happy to live inside a house all day, every day. It thrives on this no less than when it lives another lifestyle, stays alive longer and is healthier without the problems of accident, parasites and predation from other animals.

In our experience of keeping cats, they love being indoors, and have no desire to go out. It is wise though that they have a great deal to entertain them when they are active with many places to hide and sleep. Cardboard boxes are good. Toys of various kinds should be available, and two cats are better than one if the house is otherwise empty for long periods. Time should be spent playing with cats inside the house when the human resident comes home, the shopping and any clothes they wore out that day could be placed on the bed or where the cat can smell them. Thus be entertained if only for a moment trying to identify the scents, which is like any experience of what was outside. This time of play with a cat is not anything that should be looked down on in a way as taking from life. It will in fact be a great contributor than life and if you can't be bothered playing with your cat, then don't even consider a dog. Even with room to run, a dog requires some playtime as well and any caring pet owner has that pet to enjoy and to share their time with, otherwise they are better just buying a decoration.

That's part of living simply, being aware and being responsible, discovering what will happen by your actions.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Tao and Religion........

Listening to a program about the Jehovah's Witnesses was interesting and showed up how religion is very different from philosophy. To compare the Tao with religion is a bit unfair, because the Tao is a philosophy, but not western philosophy.

The religions have a banner to which to flock, rules to obey. These are often rigid, and can be right or wrong, depending from which position a person is viewing them. The Tao is not like that, it has a centre, and the centre is the self, each individuals self. Knowing the self by investigation is so important in the philosophy of the Tao. If you know yourself it is with love for all other things that you can move out from that position and embrace the world and all it contains.

The hub of life is the self, the being that uses the body as transport. Moving out from that centre, all the being touches and imagines is done with love, and an acceptance of all things right to also be the centre of life. When a Taoist mentions god, it is the god of the whole, everything that is and could be and is imagined. Everything from the centre, self, to the outer reaches of the universe, life in its entirety, which is also death, destruction and disease.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Not worship........ simply respect

There are some who find themselves seeing a gradual change in people, and the religions pulling together, because they have noted differences are not the answer, and only do as they have always done, tear our species apart. In fact there is no need for worship at all, just respect.

I am not certain that worship is a good word because it places ourselves below something else and therefore gives us the feeling of both powerlessness as well as thinking something else will come along and fix the problems we make. I think respect is better. Respect for self, because that is what we know, respect for others of our species because they can be mostly presumed to be like ourselves, respect at the same level for all other things; even though we have a lesser knowledge of same. Assuming that any mother, a mother rat or a mother emu, even though the latter leaves her eggs and when they hatch, her chicks to be tended by their father, feels the things of motherhood. That is why the latter picked the male with whom she would mate; her responsibility and care was no less, though she made it for the very moment and hoped it would move into the future as she saw it. A bit different in humans probably, where women pick the male they admire/love, and know they will themselves look after their children as best they can. Then all the different scenarios that orbit round those feelings and habits.

The same can be said for sating hunger, feeding our children, making the most of opportunity and so on. All species have this in some degree, but humans have the power to change things in a huge way in our quest for these natural drives because of our numbers and our technology. Humans are not more clever, because if we were that, we could have all our species living well, and interfere hardly at all with other species on the planet for which we should show the same respect we do to ourselves and our own.

Maybe not in our lifetime, but eventually it will all come back to simple centre, because that is the last refuge for our race and the world while we live in it. Because the world, the universe will continue after our species has ceased to survive. We either respect all things, even those we don't understand or our species will perish, be exterminated the same way we have exterminated other species, without aforethought or consideration. Nothing is more certain. We have lived by the destruction of the environment sword which satisfies our greed and wield it still, and with that knowledge our end can be foretold.

Saturday, May 17, 2008

The Woodpile Hen



The woodpile hen is a black Pekin bantam. She has learned and adapted to the area to which she and her partner Spike have been exiled. Spike is her partner for the times being and gets underfoot sometimes, causing the lady of this cottage to say, ``lookout Spike'', to move him on and ensure he is not where he might get hurt. This pair live where the wood for the fire is stacked rather haphazardly and handy for splitting, and appears that insects are attracted to places where a lot of wood is kept, and of course there are the insects that are already under the bark which help to lift it from the sap wood. This woodpile is the hunting ground and foraging area of the woodpile hen. This is an area she discovered when bullied by others if she was where they could see her and here she is out of sight and out of mind of those who would otherwise have caused her some grief if not bodily harm don't go.


Spike, a birchen Pekin bantam rooster was the same, all the roosters and the guinea fowl would chase him about without allowing him any rest, and he hid behind the rainwater tank and amongst the wood pile, where he couldn't be seen and where he met the woodpile hen and they teamed up. Two souls whose circumstances and possibly preferences were similar and they made this their home and each other their companion. The splash rooster and his gentle hen live in the ark closest to the woodpile and already had some of this area marked out as their territory, but they were happy enough to share, and were never as interested in the food source which was the woodpile as much as they loved the shade house grotto where they spend most of their time. The grotto is where they spent most of their day during the warmer months, in the cool moist shade on the ground beneath the shelves of trays and pots high enough above them to be of no real concern or interest.

But the little black woodpile hen is a worry when she forages to get the first insects as the wood is split, because pieces of wood flying through the air are of little concern to her single minded intent upon capturing and eating any insect that are found in the separation of the bark. An insect exposed by the violence of the action of splitting is certainly lost. On several occasions the split wood, flying through the air has landed near her and given her a fright, but nothing deters her quest for the tasty morsels that lay exposed to her careful scrutiny and quick beak as the wood is prepared for the fire.

Sunday, May 11, 2008

No thanks.....

Google warns me that my browser doesn't support web presentations. It seems to think that this might be a drawback, but it is an advantage in fact. I don't really want to watch web presentations, especially if they just are when I go somewhere, and don't offer me the opportunity to refuse to see them.

I am well pleased not being assaulted by video, and if I want to have that experience, I will be able to enable it.

Thanks Google, but no thanks.

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Autumn

As the leaves of the oak turn yellow, and the Manchurian pear foliage turns that bright red in accompaniment with the Japanese maples, it becomes obvious this is the season of the large birds. The satin bower birds, currawongs, sulphur crested cockatoos, magpies and Choughs who are plundering the apples, walnuts and just generally busy round the place have take over for the time being. The wrens, flycatchers honey eaters, have gone though the ever present crimson Rosella's are here still, enjoying the continued feed on poultry seed and apples of various varieties. The smaller birds have probably gone to spend winter in the forest, the bushland where it's a bit warmer and will return close to spring as always. The falcon streams through the air here at a rate of knots and doesn't make a kill because it's getting too difficult to be unseen to alight in a handy tree on a hill, to chose a quarry. There are too many eyes about, and though she has come along the water race and through the open space of the cottage forecourt then out the other end and into the forest on the hill and not been observed. It was because of her speed and feeding time for the poultry. She didn't attempt to grab and kill something on her way through because her speed was such that it would have killed her as well to make any sort of contact with her prey at such a pace, so close to the ground.

There is never a time when it's not beautiful here, though I am aware beauty is in the eye of the beholder and that actually living in a place day to day rather than just passing through might tarnish its attraction because of the effort required to survive there. We enjoy living simply, which doesn't mean living easily. Nature is a great landlord, but has no care for her tenants, they must look after their own needs and leave the place better than they found it. To do otherwise will mean a forfeit of a kind that no one can afford.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Thought......

The tao is often called the way, the gate or the path, and yet what is it? Not a great deal has been written about the tao, because it is not for the telling, as it can't be told. It is rather how people live, look at life, the string of questions which life is. So being in the flow of the tao is simple and can be easily achieved if nothing is special or everything is special. The tao is a matter of appreciation, of being constantly questioning. I have written the tao in small letters, because it is as special as any other word and most words are written in small letters. A capital is used is to point out a significance, and that is not the way of the tao. Being and finding everything special and everything just as it should be. Not that it can't be improved, but first it must be questioned.