A little glimpse from one of the best permaculture courses ever that only a selected few attended, Perennialen III i Fykse, Hardanger :) Rebecca J Smith warns me in this video about this old growth elm on Eirik Lillebøe Wiken and Hege Iren Aasdal Wiken‘s land on the tour up to their mountain farm.
Perennialen IV is definitely planned to happen next year and will be announced in very good time, so watch this space!!
Birch seed scales are currently falling in the garden thanks to the feeding of siskins (grønnsisik)….
Added videos of a siskin feeding on fallen birch seed next to the entrance to the garden…this one allowed me to stand only 2m away and film:
…and above the siskins were feeding in the birch trees
…joined briefly by a Robin
…and showing the proximity to the road
My visitor’s car will soon be covered in birch seed debris, thanks to the flock of siskins (grønnsisik) feeding in the garden….
Birch seed scales, a fallen leaf and reflection of the trees :)
Difficult to photograph as the siskins are mainly in the tree tops…
…and I’ve just read Thoreau’s account of the dispersion of birch seeds in the great book “Faith in a seed”
…and I discovered this picture on the same day, 5 years ago (17th July 2012), when I heard the gentle patter of birch scales falling on a rhubarb leaf outside the front door! The siskins are absolutely silent when feeding and this was the only clue to their presence :)
I’m not sure how I missed this last summer, but one of the misteltoes (Viscum album) I “planted” about 3 years ago succeeded :) It’s on a Sorbus hybridus. NB! Misteltoe isn’t edible, just fun!
Back home from my visit to south western Norway and this is probably THE autumn of all autumns I will ever experience here…..high pressure weather with clear skies for 3 weeks, record number of sun-hours in any month ever and little wind to blow the leaves off the trees…the autumn colours keep going and going, so here’s an album of leaf pictures, all taken today 25th October 2016…
My forest garden continues to be super-productive, my udo is on its way back to the soil and is preparing for next year as are my three devil’s walking sticks, Aralia elata as well as Aralia racemosa and A. californica.
There are a lot of apples to start drying soon!
Udo (Aralia cordata) collapses early autumn under its own weight….
Ostrich fern, udo, apples and devil’s walking stick (Aralia elata)
Aralia racemosa (I think) is growing next to my udo and is now quite big, with ostrich fern growing underneath it!
Aralia racemosa fruiting heads…
Aralia racemosa fruiting leaves…
Aralia elata from Honshu in Japan is the youngest of 3 trees
Aralia elata (devil’s walking stick) is in fruit for the first time here
Apples galore…producing large amounts of fruit every year without any fertiliser, growing next to it, also produces well every year on zero fuel!
In my local area, a disproportionate large area of forest has been clear-felled recently, a practice we need to stop if we are to take climate change seriously as this releases much carbon dioxide. It was sickening to see just how large an area has been felled in recent years in this series of photos taken recently on a flight to Oslo. The usual excuse given is that a lot of trees have fallen in recent extreme storms and need to be “cleared” up. And what is causing these storms? A vicious circle in other words…
See my blog post about our recent field trip to discuss these problems here: http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=6529
I live close to the deeply indented bay near the centre of the picture. Malvikodden sticks out into the fjored “below” the bay and is now mostly treeless… a couple of other areas can be seen just inland…
Fevollbergan is / was a fascinating geologic/forest area close to where I live and a high population area…we should in particular be preserving such areas so close to where people live….I’m thinking of Stanley Park in Vancouver, Canada, a remnant of old growth forest in the centre of the city….
Despite the cool weather, the leaf shoots (taranome) of the small tree Aralia elata (taranoki) are emerging…but I can’t reach them any more….I should cut it down so that young shoots come from the base. These shoots are a common sight in supermarkets in Japan. More in my book Around the World in 80 plants :)
Feeling tired but good having worked hard for several hours with my bow saw and axe coppicing this Hazel. A surprising amount of wood on a tree like this. It was probably 15 years ago I did this last… The green bush below the Hazel is a box (Buxus) which is probably 25 years old!
Added a few more pictures today, worked about an hour sorting the wood into different piles: firewood, tops for peas to climb into, long runner bean stakes and the rest which will be piled up in the garden for wildlife…. It always amazes me how little effort it is in my relatively cold climate to cut enough wood by hand for firewood…
