zebra gardens and chicken scrapes

I was tracing back through my notes from when I was ill and found the story about how zebras give life to the deserts they roll in. This is proper megafauna as environmental shaper stuff. If this is something you are unfamiliar with, it's the idea that megafauna manage the environment they live in for their own benefit. If that all sounds a bit gaia-suspicious, no need to worry. It can be a co-evolved emergent behaviour, with a little light evolutionary shaping. 

Rolling pits to chicken scrapes

So, the zebras have their rolling pits, and these have  their own distinct biome of zebra-tolerant plants. They also act as water reservoirs, bringing a tiny flush of rich green, fertilised by zebra scurf and soil. How did they find this out? They flew drones over the desert and saw these curious round green patches after rain. Zebra gardens.

Chickens, as any back-garden bird-keeper knows, also do a lot of scraping. I can't find any papers on their contribution to back-garden biodiversity, though. They have a tendency to see laws as to-scrape lists and scoop out dust baths in the dry shady soil under shrubs. 

This can lead to chicken fatigue.

But, in all likelihood, their scrapes do have an impact, not necessarily negative. Rich fertilisation from chickenshit deposits, foliage stripping from busy beaks. Water retention reduced as vegetation cover decreases. Chicken runs need to be moved around, of course. But the grass comes greener, as grass wants over-fertile soil.

Getting it past the ethics committee might present challenge, but a drone study of the impact of back garden chicken keeping (or animal keeping in general) on soil fertility, cover and diversity might hold revelations.

no pips in my apples?

Seedless fruits happen through a biological process called parthenocarpy - development of fruit without fertilisation. 

How this happens:

1. Sport (naturally occurring mutant) is spotted by humans and propagated through cuttings.
2. Fruit farmers make lots of crossings trying to produce more fruit and less seed .
3. Plants are kept away from pollinators and/or pollinator partners (if they need them).
4. No or low-seed branches are grafted onto rootstock.
5. Some other ways.

This post (abandoned at note stage) I barely remember. Nothing remains but the notes. I can't remember if I had an apple crop. Maybe it was the years all the apples disappeared, and we suspected our foxes?

I was very ill at the time. 

strange dreams of caffeinated bees

I was sure I had imagined and/or dreamt the story of training lazy bees with caffeine to target strawberry scented robot flowers to promote more efficient pollination. But it turns out that, although more conservatively titled online, this is clearly a story about pollinator training experiments published in the Guardian. Aspects had exaggerated, but the basics are there

These experiments, and others like them, fill me with a kind of queasiness. I see myself reflected in the lazy bee, that might pollinate the commercial strawberry crop, or might find itself drawn back into a hedgerow for a bit of forage, a bit of variety. I also feel a touch of myself in that idea of a sentient part in a machine, the more efficient because it can self-govern, but the higher risk because it might decide not to do the target task. 

A garden is a mass of variables, change, expression of plants, insects, growth. The gardener controls, to a greater or lesser extent, their expression, their position, what thrives, what dies. In the months after my stroke, there were physical considerations; exhaustion, light sensitivity, confusion. But there was also a sense of deep-seated self-mistrust.

If I were a plant, would I be out of place? Not thriving? In the green bag, the brown bin? Would I weed myself?

So, things got away from me rather. I now have a properly overgrown garden. Some things have certainly died, outcompeted by bindweed and other thugs. A few of the fences may now be rather troubled. I'll backfill the story of how I lost my allotment later.

But weeds have their own value, their own importance. Your weeds tell you what your garden wants, and what it needs, what the insects expect to find there, and what will call in the beasts and birds. Enchanters Nightshade tells me I sit at a woodland border shaded, neglected. Huge spreading clumps of Green Alkanet speak of shady, undisturbed soil, rich in parts. Hedge Woundwort, with its armpit stink and scrambling stems, murmurs about hard clay, inconsistent water availability for shallower roots. I chop, I cut, I weed, I learn.

Clearing back, taking the lessons as I go, making it better.