Just a leisurely stroll around the orchard produced….
Bunches of ladybug larvae
Bunches of ladybug pupa
6 little California toad juveniles
I was walking along and noticed something move thought it was a big bug and it was a little toad these guys are not the spadefoot that I am so fond of but they’re still great!
And 6 of them! It is like shaking a haystack and having six needles fall out. There certainly are a lot more of them running (hopping) around. :-)
I repeatedly tell all my clients that a pool conversion is going to take some time. Pesticides, chlorine, and other chemical toxins are instant gratification, and natural systems are not.
In just a couple of months I can transition a pool from a chemical moonscape to a beautiful green woodland meadow.
There are thousands of different species of algae.
These different species exhibit different colors, different growth habits, different nutrient requirements, different temperature and lighting requirements.
The algae and microorganisms I put in at the start, are the grass and small plants of a woodland meadow.
I will then introduce “rabbits and deer”, “snails and insects”, encourage “Oaks and elderberries” and, turn it into a beautiful old growth forest.
I believe that we seriously need to reevaluate what we think is clean in our environment. Clear, odorless, toxic, chemical carcinogens, or pesticides are not clean. While none of the dozen pond systems that I maintain have remained murky for over a year, I would ask that we all start to think about the truth that green is clean. If the pool is now able to support algal life then it is no longer toxic to you, your pets, and the wildlife.
The little Pacific chorus frogs are no longer “drowning” in the pool above. Native aquatic organisms such as Pacific chorus frogs and slender salamanders do _not_ drown in a swimming pool. They are aquatic! They are poisoned by chlorine. A little Pacific chorus frog can float all day in a natural pond but “drowns” in a swimming pool ? ? ? _It’s the chlorine_
As the pools become green and clean I will turn it into a beautiful old growth forest. But this does not generally happen until after all modules are installed and running.
I install about a module a month but how frequently is also somewhat up to the client. In _some_ cases when a client pays me for the modules early, I can start the next module before I normally would. This provides all my clients flexibility in their payment schedule.
We will put in plants for all of the modules and we will guarantee both the modules and plants while we are doing the maintenance, period. I will not install plants in new modules until the plants will benefit the system. I believe that I am being paid for what I know and what I can do, not for some pieces of wood, metal, and tubing.
Thank you to all the early adapters for converting their backyard into a non-toxic aquatic Wonderland :-)
This morning I poured a bucket of gooo down a gopher hole that was heading for my Asian pear and had already gotten a bit too close for my comfort. A little while ago I went out, and stopped to see if there had been any repair work done. There had been, it had been worked on and there was a little mound of dirt. I cleared the dirt away and found a new tunnel so I gathered up some more gooo and poured it down the hole.
And up pops a big bubble followed by a small gopher.
Wish I had my phone on me to take pictures.
So I dip it out of the stuff. Poor wet, slimy, scared gopher was not happy. So I rinsed it off and just then I heard my name called.
The woman from across the street wants to talk ponds. Here I am all muddy myself with a gopher in a tray. And it keeps trying to crawl out or bite my fingers I don’t know which. If I was in its place I would definitely be trying to bite those fingers. I couldn’t pay attention to that many things at one time especially when one of the things had teeth, was wet, and really, really pissed off. So I let the gopher go in a bush way on the other side of my trees, and tried to find out what kind of pond she wants.
Well she’s already looking at me like I’m crazy and it turns out that she only wanted me to agree with her decision to put a little plastic Home Depot pond in her backyard for her red ear slider. She was not at all interested in the advantages of rain catchment and a larger pond :-)
She’s probably wondering about that lunatic neighbor she’s got.
The gopher is probably thinking that Asian pear trees are not to be trifled with.
:-)
Best to all.
Bob
A dragonfly larvae Maybe a month or two away from a dragonfly this summer.
But Grandma what big teeth you have.
The whitish triangle underneath its head is a hinged arm that can shoot forward and grab pray. This little guy alone represents probably thousands of mosquito larvae.
Best
Tiny ball-shaped noggins may aid research on Zika, autism, new drugs etc.
Source: With a few skin cells, scientists can make mini, thinking version of your brain
Hey very cool! Well it’s not as perfect as it sounds but it will get better as it goes. If we had cultures of different kinds of brain cells, we could test some of the insecticides and other pesticides on specific types of cells. There still would be a lot of potential toxicity that could not be studied because of the complex interaction between the cells. But it’s a start, and in twenty years, if we could develope a model of the human brain itself, we could test some of these other higher level interactions as well.
How big is a dragonfly _egg_? How big is the baby dragonfly larvae that hatches from that egg? The dragonfly larvae in my palm above looks as though it should have come out of the movie Aliens. But when it started life it was smaller than a grain of sand. It has gone through several molts to get to the size it is. How big is a damselfly larvae?
If one adds any type of fish to a pond without providing habitat for the baby dragonflies and damselflies you will be removing the mosquito predators instead of the mosquitoes from the environment.
Vector control, by encouraging mosquito fish practically guarantees themselves a perpetual job. Did you know that the Pacific chorus frog _tadpoles_ actually eat a lot of mosquito larvae? And the adult frogs eat a lot of mosquitoes too, but…
Female hummingbirds need an extra source of protein in the spring for producing their eggs. They eat insects. Lots of flying insects. I have seen many a hummingbird flying back and forth over a pond eating the midge flies hatching from the main pool. Non-insecticide poisoned midge flies for the hummers :-)
The majority of mosquitoes in the environment are not coming from ponds. They are coming from trays of water under pots in people’s backyards. Mosquitoes can fly 8 miles in an evening.
Zika drives me crazy. Columbia has just as much zika virus as Brazil and just as many pregnant woman but had just 2 cases of micro encephaly… just 2… Venezuela, Uruguay, Paraguay — all have zika virus and mosquitoes but no micro encephalitis– think about that!
The picture below is from the European Centre for disease prevention and control in 2015.
The red circles are micro encephalitis cases the bigger the circle the more cases.
Now if zika and micro encephaly were actually linked wouldn’t the cases show up where there are mosquitoes zika and pregnant women? Anyone care to guess where there are mosquitoes? (Everywhere) Where there is zika? (Orange) OK, now a really tough one: where are there pregnant women? (Just a guess but in my opinion probably pretty much everywhere) and where were they adding an insecticide to the water supply? (probably just a coincidence but it’s right under the biggest red dot). But the scientific link is not to insecticides it is to zika. Go figure.
Brazil now has thousands of micro encephaly cases and just happened to be adding a mosquitocide to their tapwater/drinking water supply until they suddenly stopped.
Many insecticides are neurotoxins. Adding them to the water supply certainly couldn’t poison developing human nerve systems. Eye roll.
But you don’t hear much of this in the news, or from most scientists, or the CDC. I would just hate to say that this is because there is no money in doing research to prove that it was stupid to add insecticide to the entire water supply in Brazil. The few cases of microcephaly in Columbia probably came from people visiting relatives in Brazil and drinking the water!
And for Americans: other than the fact that the brain damage in Brazil probably doesn’t have anything to do with zika, there are as of this date _no_ instances of mosquito-borne zika transmission in the US.
Maybe we should worry about stuff that’s actually hurting us. Like the vector control departments that now want to do aerial spraying of insecticides to combat (nonexistant) zika.
https://m.facebook.com/groups/982959398459301
Wow how intelligent! Instead of putting neurotoxins in our drinking water like Brazil we will put it into our air. Hummingbirds, or any birds for that matter, won’t be getting toxin free bugs for their babies anymore. Nor will the dragonflies and damselflies be happy. More *destroy the mosquito predators and guarantee yourself a job* by the vector control agencies. Shaking my head and laughing. Crying too.
A chemical-free pond has habitat for mosquito predators. So instead of spraying toxins over your environment, and your neighbors as well, you will be producing lots of mosquito eating organisms that are simply fun to watch too.
A swimming pool generally has a fantastic glide path for a bat. Bats, fantastic mosquito predators, need to drink but do not stop and sit on the side like a bird. They drink on the wing and need to swoop in and grab a mouthful of water. So they need a 20-30 foot glide path, no obstacles, and no chlorine.
With a non-chlorine pond ecology established in a pool you will have a multi-tiered mosquito defense in your backyard. Pesticides are instant gratification, natural systems are not. But natural systems are so much better on so many levels in my opinion.
Best
—- Monsanto vs the EPA —-
:-)
Source: http://www.agprofessional.com/news/request-support-dicamba-use-monsanto-crops
Indications are that Monsanto is worried that farmers will be using dicamba herbicide products over the top of Bollgard II XtendFlex cotton and Roundup Ready 2 Xtend soybeans illegally, and that wouldn’t make the Environmental Protection Agency happy. To completely avoid such a situation, Monsanto needs EPA approval of this dicamba postemerge in-crop use.
OMG
TransCanada announced on Monday it’s shut down part of the Keystone pipeline due to a possible oil spill.
Source: Part of Keystone pipeline shut down over oil leak
And I’ll bet you that you thought the pipeline had not been approved yet :-) but that is only for the new and improved XL version there is already a pipeline moving oil from Canada 2 Texas
A portion of the Keystone pipeline that transports oil from Alberta, Canada to Cushing, Oklahoma will be shut down until at least Friday. The section that connects Cushing to Texas remains in operation.
They found oil on top of the ground over a buried pipeline oh my but TransCanada said “no significant impact to the environment has been observed.”
Oh My
A Thurston County judge has ruled the Washington, D.C.-based Grocery Manufacturers Association violated Washington state’s public disclosure laws in a massive money laundering effort.
Source: Judge rules food lobby laundered millions in state campaign
Story is about the money the grocery industry put into fighting GMO labeling. Yeaaa, one finally goes the other way. All the money spent fighting GMO labeling has to be hidden somehow.
Well another way of thinking about it is that when there is just too much money, it gets dirty, and you have to launder it :-)
https://m.facebook.com/groups/982959398459301
Group of concerned San Clemente residence trying to get some of the toxins out of their world! Good for them!
The Public Relations Specialists and salesmen for these insecticide manufacturers have targeted city council and vector control staff. The city council and vector control divisions didn’t decide to take up spraying projects for a lark. It costs a lot of money and some “salesman” has threatened them that they run the risk of being “zika” news headlines if they don’t act.
Horsehockey
It’s likely that insecticides are the cause of the “zika problems” even the news media chooses its words for the chemical manufacturers benefit. Why didn’t that headline say Brazilian State stops adding insecticide to their drinking water??? :-(
Click on this change.org link to sign the petition to get at least one city council to reconsider aerial spraying of insecti-(cide) you know something with those last four letters that means it was deliberately created to kill things.
