Oct'08 - Gardening News

 

News of Interest to Gardeners by Wes Porter

Landscaping

·         Last summer at the U of T Trinity College Quadrangle an ambitious landscaping project was completed that laid out a formal pattern of flagstone paths in the lawn, complete with the repeating Greek letter “Chi” (also the sign for Christ), referencing Trinity’s Anglican heritage notes the alternative Eye Weekly, recommending it as one of the city’s secrets worth visiting.

·         The pirate ship treehouse that was violating Vancouver’s bylaws has finally been scuttled by court order. Architect Andrew Dewberry and his wife, Jayne Seagrave, were fined and given 90 days to remove it from the cedar tree on their front lawn. It was “gut-wrenching” to watch it come down, said the architect. Where was Johnny Depp when Dewberry’s two sons really needed him?

Lawns

·         “It’s amazing what a few rolls of sod and some benches can do” to spruce up the statue of Sir Winston Churchill over in the corner of Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square. When the alternate press start praising lawns, it is the scent of an entirely different grass that fills the air. Will regular readers of weekly NOW ever recover?

·         A recent NASA analysis of satellite imagery shows that nearly 50,000 square miles of turf are under cultivation in the United States, making grass the single largest irrigated crop in the country, we learn as National Geographic goes all enviro over soil.

Trees

·         When it comes to pruning trees, if you cannot reach it from the ground call in a professional. Expensive? Not at all – and how much is your health and even life worth? We’ve suggested this before but presumably a 30-year-old man from Oakville, Ontario disregards such. Alas, on the Labour Day weekend he fell 15-metres to become impaled upon a branch. Rushed to hospital, he suffered internal injuries severe as to preclude further dendrological activities.

• A study by researchers at Simon Fraser University in B.C. says leaving old growth forests standing may make more economic sense than cutting them down, reported the commuter paper 24 Hours. Nevertheless, the old-growth forests of northern Ontario’s Temgami region may fall victim to widespread clear cutting if an Ontario government plan passes unchecked, claimed environmental and tourism groups upon uncovering proposals from the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources.

·         A partnership launched today by Sun Media and Canoe.ca with Trees Ontario, Sun Media announced. North America’s largest not-for-profit tree planting partnership has a target of 10 million trees planted every year by 2015, up from 3 million this year. This may just counter the number the city of Toronto bureaucrats permit developers to destroy while bemoaning the loss of tree canopy. More at www.treesontario.on.ca.

·         Less than 5 per cent of Sierra Leone’s forests are left, and those are being reduced by the Chinese and Southeast Asian companies dominate the logging market in the West African state, reports the National Post. The Environmental Forum for Action, one of the country’s most influential activist groups wants a ban timber exports, recently lifted, reimposed.

·         “Sycamores drool, maples RULE,” suggests American humourist Gene Weingarten, whose weekly column appears in the National Post. He claims readers comments on a newspaper item about trees also ran to, “You didn’t mention motorcycles in this article at all. Just because motorcycle riders sometimes hit trees doesn’t mean we need a fascist helmet law;” “Thank you for this fine article. It made me weep. I am a published poet and your story has inspired me to write an epic poem about trees.” Now you know why we don’t solicit your comments here.

Flowers

·         The deadly ricin pellet, developed by the former Soviet Union’s KGB, Vladimir ‘Rasputin’ Putin’s former employer, was provided to Bulgaria’s notorious secret police, Darzhavria Sigurnost, and used in 1978 to assassinate dissident Georgi Markov in London, a story from Reuters reveals. Ricin poison was processed from seeds of Ricinus, the decorative castor oil plant grown as decorative foliage annual in some gardens.

·         Bouquets for Krista Erickson, who got the yo-ho heave from CBC’s Parliamentary bureau a few months ago. Removed to Toronto as punishment for allegedly writing questions for Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez to question Brian Mulroney, she appealed – and was restored. Calgary Centre MP Lee Richardson sent Krista flowers to mark her first day back on the job, reports biweekly Frank. There were three such by midweek according to Frank, which refers to something it calls “horizontal caucus meetings,’ whatever that means.

Wildflowers

·         New islands have popped up all over the globe, notes the journal Nature. Iceland’s Surtsey Island formed 1963-37 by volcanic eruptions, now boasts 60 species of vascular plants, 24 fungi, 89 birds and 335 invertebrates.

·         The discovery brought tears to the eyes of paleontologist Paul Sereno and his team, reports Science. Some 5300 years ago, a woman and her two small children died in what is now Niger, West Africa. Cuddled in a last embrace, they were laid to rest on a bed of flowers, collected when the Sahara was a lush savanna. Excavation has revealed an entire cemetery – the Sahara’s largest.

·         Bladderworts, carnivorous plants of the genus Utricularia, also appear to consume green algae, reports Marianne Peroutka of the University of Vienna in the journal Plant Ecology, leading to the suggestion that perhaps we should commence calling them omnivores, suggests Ashok Prasad in Natural History.

·         Current Newsletter of Toronto Field Naturalists features a magnificent display of Gaillardia photographed at the end of last July and that has been thriving on the Leslie Street Spit for decades, having been “likely planted” there in the early days of the new spit; for more information on this very active 85-year-old organization, check out www.torontofieldnaturalists.org

Vegetables

·         Nothing like an election to raise issues dear to the heart – or stomach. Roger Doiron of Scarborough, Maine wants the U.S. candidates to pledge they’ll turn piece of the 18-acre White House terrain into an edible garden, Ellen Goodman reports in the International Herald Tribune.

·         “We urgently need more investment in hardier varieties of such secondary crops and potatoes, yams, peas and beans where companies see little profit opportunity,” say Alex A. Avery & Dennis T. Avery of the Hudson Institute.

·         Quebec potato farmers eye the future with trepidation. Despite forming the basic ingredient in poutine, sales of the basic white spud are falling in la belle province, so spud growers there are turning to yellow-fleshed, red skin, even the so-called blue potato in an efforts to raise purchases and, not coincidentally, prices, according to CanWest News’s David Johnston.

·         Meanwhile, potato farmers on Prince Edward Island are blaming wet weather on their inability to harvest much of this season’s crop.

Fruit & Nuts

·         Reduce sodium intake by flavouring foods with fresh lemon- or lime-juice and herbs instead of salt, suggests Alive Magazine.

·         The ‘Over the Fence’ feature of Harrowsmith magazine is always a delight to read. In the current issue, for example, Margy LeClair of Brantford, Ontario advises how her pet beagle romping on his plastic-covered chain beneath the walnut trees gathers the harvest into neat piles by dragging his chain through the fallen nuts.

Beverages, Herbs & Spices

·         A burgeoning cider industry is giving Vancouver Island orchards new life, saving them from the chain saw, writes Christina Burridge in Vancouver Magazine. And real English, French and German cider apple tree varieties are being planted also including Kingston Black, Porter’s Perfection, Harry Masters Jersey, Bill’s Red Flesh, Muscadet de Dieppe, Yellow Newton Pippins.

·         A study of 340 people visiting the dentist found that those exposed to lavender oil scent were less anxious about the treatment ahead, researchers at Kings College London, U.K., reported to a conference of the British Psychological Society. A spokeswoman for the British Dental Association said she hadn’t heard of such a practice. Last April, the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology reported research that denied the supposed stress-relieving and healing properties of lavender.

·         Chocolate Popsicles? Two sisters in Los Angeles, inspired by Mexican frozen desserts called paletas, are turning out sophisticated Popsicle-style treats, among then alfalfa and hibiscus, according to Maclean’s magazine. Best of all, says Maclean’s, depending on your intentions, are the cocoa-flavoured ones, which capitalize on cocoa’s purported aphrodisiac properties.

For the Birds

·         The first robin sighting of spring may not be best indicator of climate warming, notes the journal Nature, citing a paper appearing in Global Change Biology. As bird numbers decline, there are fewer early outliers, making the first birds hard to spot. By extension, growing populations are expected to distort results in the opposite direction. However, revised data show robins are arriving 2½ days earlier than 33 years ago – at least in Massachusetts.

·         A new bird species has been identified by the Smithsonian Institution in Gabon, West Africa. The olive-backed forest robin (Stiphromis pyrrholaemus) was first found Gabon in 2001, but was thought to be a juvenile of a known species. Researchers now say it is a distinct species.

·         A new species of extinct giant marabou has been identified from the Indonesian island of Flores, reports the journal Science. The scientists say the 1.8-metre-tall bird was a carnivore and top predator on the island, which it shared with the metre-high “hobbit” people (Homo floresiensis). Adds Science: “Whether hobbits were among its fare is open to speculation.”

·         The original 1934 edition Peterson Field Guide to the Birds has been reissued in a revised version by Lee Allen Peterson, son of author Roger Tory Peterson. Some question though if the Peterson Field Guide to the Birds of North America is a “field guide” – it takes over 500 pages to cover 800 species.

·         Rival gangs of certain South African birds behave like football fans, shouting chants at each other and commiserating after a loss, according to Dr. Andy Radford of the University of Bristol. The study appears in Proceedings of the Royal Society, Series B. Radford suggests birds act like football fans, commiserating with their friends in the pub after their team loses a match, explains News in Science a feature of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

·         Project Pigeon was the brainchild of American B. F. Skinner who demonstrated early in World War II that pigeons could be trained to pilot missiles against enemy installations. Skinner called the result an “organic homing device.” Thankfully Steve Mirsky, who wrote on this in Scientific American, does not dwell on the fact that the troika of pigeons in each OHD would have self-destructed upon impact. Some sufferers of the imported avian pests might be encouraged to resurrect the idea.

The Good, the Bad and the Bugly

·         The Butterfly Garden is the latest attraction at Terminal 3 of Changi International Airport, Singapore, where they know how to make travel a pleasure.

·         Invasions of the aggressive European fire ant, Myrmica rubra, have been reported from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, and the town of Richmond Hill in Ontario north of Toronto. The five-millimetre-long ant swarms invaders of its territory, whether wildlife, humans, even pets, inflicting a long-lasting and painful sting. No pesticide has proven effective against the invaders.

·         Even commuter tabloids are picking up on entomophagy, though they spare their plebian readers the term. “With the price of food escalating every year and the world running out of land for farming, insects – which are a rich source of protein – can no longer be ignored,” Celia Milne for Metro Canada tells us. Given the prices asked for banquets of bugs doubtlessly here at least yet more elitist fare. As Celia says, “Bon appetit!” Burp.

·         Entomophagy has its downside. Too many Anaphe processionary caterpillars, a tasty treat to West Africans, can lead to difficulty in speaking, impaired consciousness, rolling eyes, staggering, and tremors as an enzyme on the caterpillar’s body, destroys the victim’s vitamin B1, reports Terrence D. Fitzgerald in the current issue of Natural History magazine. The most dangerous processionary caterpillars, though, are the South American genus Lonomia – as an unfortunate Canadian woman tourist recently discovered. She died after squishing three of them under her bare foot.

• Monarch butterfly populations are in decline, according the commuter paper 24 Hours. Illegal logging in the Mexican mountains where they overwinter is one explanation. Closer to home, it is the use of herbicide against milkweed, the sole source of sustenance for the caterpillars.

·         There’s no question that the emerald ash borer has found a nice niche here in North America, reports Jen Llewellyn in Horticulture Review. Scientists are taking multi-prong approaches to combat the invader, however. Pest-resistant hybrid ash trees are being trialed, Chinese minute parasitic wasps have been released for field-testing, pathogenic fungi are being screened and both bio- and conventional-pesticides are being evaluated.

·         The Asian harlequin ladybug has invaded England from continental Europe, where it was introduced in the 1990s to control crop pests, Catherine L. Barker reports in National Geographic. It is busy not only noshing on aphids but also the native ladybugs. The hope? “That a population crash occurs as a result of natural enemies or disease.” Sounds like a job for lady luck, writes Barker.

Buzz on Bees

• Chinese and Australian scientists collaborated to produce the first mixed-species bee colonies, made up of European honeybees, Apia mellifera, and Asiatic honeybees, A. carana. Normally bees kill intruders but these not only overcame their mutual repulsions, the Asian bees learnt the European species’ dance dialect well enough to translate where the food they were signalling was.

·         “There are no field guides to bees; about 500 of the 4,000 estimated species do not even have scientific names; there are no published lists except for small study areas; and research on wild populations is skimpy,” biologist Sam Droege told the current issue of American Scientist. The answer in part is sunflowers and a citizen science survey(www.greatsunflower.org), organized with the enthusiasm so wonderful in our American neighbours.

• European honeybees can count up to four, demonstrated researchers Marie Dacke and Mandyan V. Srinivasan at the Australian National University in Canberra. Notes Graciela Flores in Natural History: This is achieved with a brain the size of a sand grain.

Weeds

·         Where do invasive species come from? “A vast amount of material is dumped by gardeners,” Denis Underhill, 84, of Vancouver’s Holly Haulers told Vancouver Magazine’s Anne Casselman. In the Pacific Spirit Park, he and his companions target holly trees, Scotch broom, European mountain ash, laurel, English ivy, and Himalayan blackberry that have taken hold there.

·         Wet weather this past summer also hit the U.K. As a consequence, the Cerne Abbas Giant, carved into the side of a chalk hill in Dorset, southwest England, was nearly obliterated by weeds. National Trust workers and volunteers restored the 55-metre fertility symbol to his well-endowed state.

Mushrooms

·         Best-selling author Nicholas Evans, his wife, brother- and sister-in-law were all hospitalized after eating mushrooms of the species Cortinarius speciosissimus at a Scottish estate. Evans is celebrated for his novel The Horse Whisperer, not presumably for mycological knowledge.

Tools & Equipment

·         Gasoline-powered lawnmowers need to be more eco-friendly, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. New requirements for emission reductions will go into effect beginning 2011 south of the border. But up here so strong and free? Environment Canada is tight-lipped.

Pesticides

• The last several years has seen a serious resurgence of bedbugs, writes NOW’s “ecoholic” Adria Vasil. “Now that DDT is a big no-no (thank friggin’ god), our chemical defences against the nibblers are, well, limited,” says Vasil. Well, yes, but could this be because DDT was banned?

·         The list of chemicals people use is vast, but environmentalists continue to strive against their use to protect people, against insect or rodent pests or use to protect thousands of dollars worth property against termites and other wood-destroying insects, notes Al Caruba in Canada Free Press.

Fertilizer

·         What is fertilizer worth these days? Maclean’s Jason Kirby looked at Canada’s giant Potash Corp. early last month. One scenario had shares rising to $175 or double the going rate at the time. “To put that in perspective,” Kirby notes, “if the company’s shares reach that level, Potash Corp. would be more valuable than Royal Bank and TD Bank combined.”

·         As commercial potash fertilizer prices soar to dizzy heights, Alex Roslin notes a natural source in the current issue of Harrowsmith. Comfrey, he says, is “the Superman of the herb world.” It makes a “mean green fertilizer” Roslin also writes and is considered two or three times better source for potassium than barnyard manure. The catch? It needs to be kept strictly under control less it take over the garden.

Gardeners

·         Charles Darwin has received a belated apology from the Church of England for resistance to his theories just as a new book attracts attention. Michael Boulter’s Darwin’s Garden: Down House and the Origin of the Species (Constable & Robinson/Counterpoint) recounts the influence of the garden and greenhouses that, along with the house, was purchased by the great scientist in 1842.

·         Given there are over 330 million people in North America, would surveying some 1,000 gardeners amongst them yield reliable results? Statisticians and the Garden Writers Association Foundation apparently think so; others may question the foundation’s summer 2008 survey findings.

Gardening in the City

·         Food prices escalating in the land of the Brits gives logical rise to an accompaniment to the backyard veggie and fruit farm: the miniature cow. “No taller than a large German shepherd dog, gives 16 pints of milk a day, keeps the grass ‘mown’ and will be a family pet for years before ending up in the freezer,” we learn thanks to Michael Kesterton in The Globe and Mail, from an item by Chris Gourlay reports in The Sunday Times of London. When visiting, watch where you place your feet.

·         Covenant House, on McGill Street near Yonge and College, unveiled a new $250,00 rooftop garden to permit homeless youths to escape from loitering on the streets below. The tranquil oasis features flowers, vegetables, even fountains and a fish pond. Covenant House serves about 4,000 young adults between the ages of 16 and 24.

·         Aghast at having to make seven calls to determine if homeowners conversions of front yards to native plants and wild flowers, downtown Toronto councillors decided a new process was required for city inspectors, one that will allow the Sturmabteilung to tell the difference between ragweed and milkweed. Councillor Paula Fletcher wants to encourage “people off their addiction to grass.” Seven, count ‘em, seven, seem willing to make the change.

·         The Ed and Anne Mirvish Parkette will henceforth be the name of the spruced-up green spot twixt the Bathurst subway/streetcar Station and the street, the City of Toronto decides.

·         Arborist Todd Irvine leads weekly Toronto Tree Tours. Organized by LEAF in partnership with the Toronto Public Space Committee, the Sunday afternoon walks are pay what you can, with a suggested donation of $5. For a schedule of future tours, visit www.treetours.to.

Science and the Gardener

·         Ah, the dedication of vintage wine auctioneers. A new, French-developed ion beam was tested to see if it could indeed date old bottles accurately, confounding counterfeiters. The sample bottles used in the test were from a German ship wrecked off England in 1875. While the age of the bottles was proven, their contents were not so welcome. “The wine, however, wasn’t very good. We still had a headache six months later,” said Stephen Williams of the Antique Wine Company in London.

·         The perennial grass Miscanthus x giganteus is photosynthetic royalty, reports the journal Nature. In field tests conducted by Stephen Long and his co-workers at the University of Illinois in Urbana, this sterile hybrid converted 1% of solar energy into biomass that could be harvested to make cellulosic ethanol. That’s ten times the standard 0.1% efficiency cited for plants in general. The original paper appeared in Global Change Biology.

·         Scientists constructed a 547-year summer drought record by measuring and analyzing tree widths of cedar and pine trees across Algeria and Tunisia, reports the journal Science, citing Geophysical Research Letters

·         What happens when two ants travelling in opposite directions meet on a narrow trail? Depends on the ant species, Vincent Fourcassie, a biologist at Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, France has discovered. One species won’t enter a bridge when a fellow-member is coming the other way. Another ant makes way for nest mates returning loaded with loot. The result? Smooth-flowing traffic on a single track.

·         Mountain pine beetle-killed wood can now be salvaged for use as newsprint. Thanks to a $28-million three-year research project, new technology has been developed that permits the stained, dried wood to be processed at an Alberta newsprint company plant.

·         A lower level of productivity by foraging leaf cutter ants improves productivity within the colony, says Australia’s Monash University researcher Associate Professor Martin Burd in Biology Letters journal. ‘Blodger’ ants, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s News in Science calls the unfortunate Atta colombica. Burd says it was “pretty clear they were underperforming.” He adds that the inefficiency was explicable only if it improved transportation and processing of the leaf matter inside the nest.

·         Spores from two species of club moss, Lycopodium magellanicum and L. annotinim, may help to push back the record of atmospheric ozone concentrations, according to Barry Lomax, now at the University of Nottingham, U.K., reports the journal Nature. Two compounds present in the outer walls of spores and pollen can serve as a proxy for stratospheric ozone say researchers. Samples can be obtained from herbaria from around the world.

·         After examining 7,000 fossilized bones, Brooks B. Brist of Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, deduced that dermestid beetles were scavenging on dead dinosaurs during the Jurassic 150 million years ago, reports Natural History. Dermestid beetles are well known in forensic circles, notes the magazine: they congregate on corpses to feed and breed, and their presence and life stage can help establish when the victim died.

Weather

·         The weekly weather cycle detected in some big Western European cities has been linked to higher levels of vehicle exhaust and factory emissions on weekdays than weekends, report Spanish researchers in Geophysical Research Letters, cited by the journal Nature. Winter weekends tend to be drier and sunnier than weekdays says the scientists who noted the effects extend well beyond urban areas.

·         The world is set for a ‘big chill,” possibly a mini-ice age, according to the Old Farmer’s Almanac. “The next 20 years is going to be colder,” said assistant editor Sarah Perreault. “We do recognize that [global cooling] could be offset by greenhouse gases and other human on the Earth, but we’re tending toward the cool period now.” Saint Suzuki is not amused.

·         How good are long-range forecasters at predicting precipitation? Judged by their climatological colleagues not very good, according to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. The overall skill score for precipitation was just 3% notes Richard A. Kerr, writing in Science. Not surprisingly then, he claims next winter’s weather is pretty much anybody’s guess.

Down on the Farm

·         The Canadian Wheat Board is predicting a record wheat crop worldwide this year, but warning prices will remain high, according to an item from the Canadian Press in late August. Strangely despite the usual bout of bureaucratic pessimism, flour prices were already falling in the supermarkets.

·         Wheat rose the most in a month, rebounding from a one-year low, as drought threatened southern Hemisphere crops and the bailout of American International Group boosted confidence in American markets, ever-optimistic Bloomberg News reported.

·         Contemplating putting your gardening expertise to commercial use and becoming an Ontario farmer? An organization based in Guelph, FarmStart, is currently working with future farmers, including both urban and rural youth, new Canadians and people wishing to start a second career on the land. Courses have been offered in both Guelph and Toronto. More at www.farmstart.ca.

Genetic Modification

·         Scientists in the United Kingdom are hoping to launch the first field trial of genetically modified (GM) trees in that country in a decade, reports the journal Science. Gail Taylor of the University of Southampton and her colleagues have asked the U.K. Forestry Commission to provide land for a small-scale trial of poplar trees with reduced lignin, which could make them a more efficient source of ethanol for biofuel.

·         The new genetically engineered bacteria known as ALK2, ferments cellulose to produce ethanol more efficiently, the scientists reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. The advance may unlock more energy from waste products of farming and forestry rather that using food crops such as corn.

Environment

• Birds may not suffer dramatically from wind turbines but the whirling propellers are not so environmentally friendly for migrating bats a University of Calgary study has shown. Differing in respiratory system from birds, bats suffer from a sudden drop in air pressure that occurs near the turbine blades with fatal results.
• The Bruce Trail Conservancy (BTC) received a $325,000, three-year funding grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation (OTF). The BTC is one of Canada’s largest land trusts with more than 2,500 hectares of Escarpment lands that have been secured and managed by the organization. The main trail is 894 km long, with over 400 km of side trails, reported the Flamborough Review.
• “I want to challenger the stereotype of green people as being all pot-smoking hippies,” says Boyd Cohen, a business professor at B.C.’s Simon Fraser University (CanWest News)
• Ecosexual is “an evolving breed of city dweller for whom keeping green is every bit as important as in their romantic life as in their choice of household cleanser” according to San Francisco magazine, surely as believable as anything else from the left coast
• The U.S. Department of the Interior has proposed loosening rules controlling how the government follows the Endangered Species Act in building and permitting highways, dams, and other projects, reports Eli Kintisch in Science. But this is “like the fox guarding the hen house,” says ecologist Robert Mrowka of the Tucson, Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity.
• “Let’s hope the economy versus the environment [debate] will not continue – it’s not either/or – without the environment there’s no economy,” environmentalist David Suzuki was quoted in the Toronto Star. And of course, without any economy there will be no David Suzuki Foundation, planes to fly the gabbling guru around or that Caribbean restaurant he reportedly favours.
• Lake Erie featured vast floating fields of algae once again. Scientists say that one possibility is that more phosphorus is getting into the lake more quickly as a result of run-off from increased suburban development, reports the commuter newspaper Metro.
• Cigarettes are not only bad for your health, they don’t help the environment any, we learn from the current Toronto Field Naturalist Newsletter. “Cigarette butt litter is the world’s greatest environmental litter problem. It is estimated that 1 in 3 cigarettes end up as litter, and once littered, they can leach chemicals such as cadmium, lead and arsenic into our environment within an hour of contact with water  . . .” [*Disclaimer: writer is son of a tobacco farmer and a reformed smoker.]

Show Biz

·         Do not – we repeat, do not – read the following while indulging in any liquid refreshment. James McAvoy will appear in a new starring film role – as a garden gnome, according to Sky News. The actor is set to strut his stuff as a green gnome in the Sir Elton John 2010 flick Gnomeo and Juliet. Quite finished gasping? The item was headed ‘To gnome him is to love him.’ Aaaah!

• Keith Stata, owner of an eccentric Kinmount movie house in Ontario bear country, says the smell of popcorn attracted the hungry beasts, according to the Toronto Star. Now he’s decided to coexist with the bears, feeding them extra popcorn. Perhaps once again he should watch Red Skelton’s celebrated performance of “the bear was bulgy . . .”
• My, how organizers of the MTV Video Music Awards put out for their guests. The Jonas Brothers requested room temperature apple juice as part of their backstage riders while Christina Aguilera demanded vanilla-scented candles along with a couple of bottle o’ best bubbly – and four black bath towels. Its good to be in show business.

Law and the Gardener

·         Nearby residents are not finding Heather Mills a model neighbour. Back in January, a large marquee was erected for her 40^th birthday party. Ever since the garden of her US$6.4-million home in East Sussex, U.K. has been graced by the tent to the consternation of the locals. An official order to remove it was ignored, resulting in threats of a court date.

·         The man behind the theft of thousands of bicycles in Toronto, Igor Kenk, has also been charged after the recovery of a bronze statue called The Centaur by Toronto sculptor Misha Frid.

·         High-school volunteers in Victoria, B.C., are painting floral motifs on telephone poles hit by persistent tagging, reports Maclean’s. Nearby in suburban Langford a young man and his parents are being sued for the $25,000 cost of his graffiti spree. “We anxiously await the results to see which anti-graffiti measure is most effective,” Maclean’s says, “the threat of the courts of the power of flowers.”

Business

·         John Deere announced it will close its almost century-old Welland, Ontario plant, sending 800 workers onto the streets. Operations will be moved to Wisconsin and Mexico. Certainly the company’s motto, ‘Nothing Runs Like a Deere’ has proven correct: the horticultural equipment manufacturer runs – away from Canada, that is.

·         Is this chutzpah or not? Mike Wilson, CEO of North America’s third-largest fertilizer maker Agrium Inc. has bought 20,000 more shares to bring his personal holding by 13% up to 175,000 shares, despite slumping a third on the TSE since mid-June.

·         Shares of fertilizer producers have been battered since June but two Canadian producers said that strong demand and prices bode well for their balance sheets, reported the Financial Post. Executives from Potash Corp of Saskatchewan, the world’s largest fertilizer company, and Agrium Inc, a major nitrogen producer and retailer of fertilizer and chemicals, both told investors that the outlook for their commodities remains bright.

Health

• Look forward to the first fall frosts to free us from the perils of West Nile disease. Great gardening weather meant 40% more mosquitoes than last year’s low to vector the virus, according to Toronto Public Health estimates. “The message has to be that we are at peak-risk period,” Dr. Mike Drebot, chief of the viral zoonoses section at the National Microbiology Laboratory told the National Post’s Jenny Wagler. “Until the first frost, there could be mosquitoes flying around that could be carrying the virus.”
• Neither popular belief nor common medical advice is correct: eating seeds, nuts, corn and popcorn does not cause the bowel disease diverticulosis or its painful complications researchers at the University of Washington discovered. Their work was published a recent issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and indicates nuts and popcorn reduce such risk.
• Red wine contains polyphenols, which destroy asmalondialdehyde (MDA) released by red meats in the stomach, say Israeli scientists, we learn from Maclean’s. Thus drinking red wine reduces the risk of arteriosclerosis. The dastardly news from the researchers, however, is that grape juice works just as well.
• Public health nutritionist Dr. Carrie Ruxton at Kings College London, U.K., looked at published studies on the health effects of tea consumption. She and her colleagues found clear evidence that drinking three to four cups of tea a day can cut the chances of having a heart attack, they reported in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Some studies suggested tea consumption protected against cancer, although this effect was less clear-cut, according to Metro commuter newspaper.
• Seasonal affective disorder, or SAD, is a type of depression that affects an estimated 2% to 6% of the population. Now, reports CanWest News, Canadian scientists have discovered that the human brain undergoes a seasonal depletion of the “happy hormone,” a finding they believe explains why moods get darker as days get shorter. The researchers report their findings in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry. Gardeners, indoors or out, are seldom affected we believe.
• Physicians attending the annual meeting of the Medical Society of Prince Edward Island raised the alarm over the increasing popularity of energy drinks, saying they contain potentially unhealthy amounts of caffeine and other stimulants. “It’s right next to the candy in the stores. It’s the cigarettes of three decades ago,” said the society president as reported in the Summerville Journal Pioneer.
• With 45,000 products in an average supermarket, confusion lurks in every aisle, says National Geographic. Enter Yale University’s Overall Nutritional Quality Index (ONQI), which scores foods from 1 to 100, based on nutrients, vitamins, sugar, and salt as well as impact on blood pressure and other health concerns. Broccoli, blueberries, oranges and green beans all clock in tops at 100; soda or a Popsicle rate just 1 on the scale. More at www.onqi.org.
• Ordinary honey kills bacteria that cause sinus infections, in a many cases better than antibiotics, says a new study from the University of Ottawa, writes Tom Spears in the National Post. Unfortunately, neither Canadian buckwheat nor clover honey works – its either manuka from New Zealand or sidr from Yemen. A few years ago, New Scientist magazine reported the successful use of manuka honey in treating burns.

Bullfighter

• “The world has spent $50 billion on global warming since 1990, and we have not found any actual evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming,” writes former consultant to the Australian government David Evans in the Financial Post. “Evidence consists of observations made by someone at some time that supports the idea that carbon emissions cause global warming. Computer models and theoretical calculations are not evidence, they are just theory.”
• “There is no evidence that CO2 has ever driven or ever will drive world temperatures and climate change. The consequence of that is worrying about CO2 is irrelevant,” states U.K. Astrophysicist Piers Corbyn (Canada Free Press)
• “An extraordinary series of postings at http://climateaudit.org, the deservedly well-trafficked website of the courageous and tenacious Canadian statistician Steven McIntyre, is a remarkable indictment of the corruption and cynicism that is rife among the alarmist climate scientists favoured by the UN’s discredited climate panel, the IPCC.” Lord Christopher Monckton, EPW Blog,
• “Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, but the effect is strongly logarithmic. The first 20 ppm achieves 1.5 degrees of heating, but it takes more than another 400 ppm to equal that. By the time we get to the current level of 384 ppm, carbon dioxide is tuckered out as a greenhouse gas. From here, every 100 ppm extra may be worth 0.1 of a degree.” Australian geologist David Archibald (Canada Free Press)
• Member of the New Zealand Parliament Rodney Hide holds qualifications in environmental science. He is singularly unimpressed by arguments for global warming. He recently stated during a parliamentary debate: “The entire climate change-global warming hypothesis is a hoax, the data and the hypothesis do not hold together. Al Gore is a phoney and a fraud on this issue, and the emissions trading scheme is a worldwide scam and swindle.”
• “Reducing your cattle herd’s methane emissions could prevent the polar ice caps melting but it will certainly improve your bottom line,” claimed Lorne McClinton in a paper on feed additives, a study that received $189,500 from the Saskatchewan Agricultural Development Fund. This was but one item cited by Lee Harding, Saskatchewan director of the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation as a “a tragic waste of resources” to Bruce Johnstone of CanWest News. Another project received $256,000, and used modified gas masks made in New Zealand (at a cost of $315 apiece) to capture methane gas being emitted by cattle.
• “As the global warming hoax begins to lose its power to influence public opinion and policy, the Greens are not likely to be heeded for a long time to come because they were right about the Ice Age and lying through their teeth about global warming.” Alan Caruba (Canada Free Press)

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