https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-28/bom-winter-outlook-2020/12292658

I have noticed a distinct lack of bees here after our bush fires.

As well ,another large tract of land has been poisoned nearby. Even the much maligned lantana flower has many bees feeding from it.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-21/backyard-beekeeping-on-rise-as-bee-populations-come-under-threat/1226653

World Bee Day 2020: Everything you need to help save the bees

If like us, you are buzzing about these insects, this is how you can support these all important pollinators

• Eva Waite-Taylor
• 12 hours ago

World Bee Day – celebrated on May 20 – is a day adopted by the United Nations from the Slovenian Beekeepers Association to raise awareness of the importance of protecting and preserving bees and other pollinators.

It honours not just honeybees, but bumblebees (of which there are 21 species) and the 77 species of solitary bees, too.

Bees are most commonly known for honey, but these intelligent creatures are also behind most of the food we love – fruit, veg, chocolate and even coffee.

And Albert Einstein once famously said that “if the bee disappeared off the face of the Earth, man would only have four years left to live”. But why are bees so important?

Essentially, bees are crucial for the pollination of plants – pollinating a third of the food we eat and 80 per cent of flowering plants – many fruit, veg and crops that feed livestock depend on bees to pollinate them.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/may/20/joni-mitchell-where-to-start-in-her-back-catalogue

If half the effort
devoted to ‘conquering’ The Virus in such haste
were to be applied to ‘de-conquering’
the environment and mitigating climate-change,
we could say that we had matured a little
as a species. Instead, the War against The Microbe
is filling up the world with yet more plastic waste.

From Antony.

Yesterday I watched three white headed pigeons dart out of the trees in a hurry.

I then found Fluffy feet, headless and a bazza hawk flying off .

Fluffy came to me from a rescue from a camping site. Her sister was a victim of a feral pack of dog attack 3 years ago.

She became my favourite and everyday when the hens were free ranging, she always came to the cabin door to be let in to do her daily rounds of my living space. Once satisfied she had found all crumbs on the floor would happily rejoin the other hens free ranging.

8 years she has been here………………………I will miss her.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/logging-returns-to-native-forests-hit-by-bushfires-20200501-p54ots.html

 

After the fires subsided here at the end of January we had little respite until the virus hit.

Conspiracy theories abound here. A 5 g protest in town yesterday..irony was the protesters were filming and taking photos of the Telstra towers on their 3 and 4 g mobiles.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/24/vodafone-exec-5g-coronavirus-conspiracy-theory-video-revealed-pastor-luton-jonathon-james

When our fires raged here in Huonbrook and Night Cap National park our biggest fear was that our land lines for our telephones would be razed.

No mobile coverage here yet.

Our fears were heightened by the speed of the fire’s front and our already neglected phone poles and lines. Telstra does not maintain the phone lines which must mean they are being fazed out.

We have no choice and if the fire season becomes an annual event then we have to be ready. Already our rain fall for this time of the year has been below average and spasmodic therefore the rain forest is still drying out.

I see more herbicide use in the valley. Odd really as we are now on the verge of accepting yesterdays herbicide habits are contributing to bio diversity loss.  See more on Insect declines globally.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/25/ourselves-scientist-says-human-intrusion-nature-pandemic-aoe

 

 

Days merge, sun is out, cooler nights so sleep is easier.

Media when I get up and 6 at night.

Bonfires, stacking and burning excess dried tree branches, summer started in August 2019.

Clearing turmeric leaves, harvesting pineapples, the sweetest yet, avocados from a tree that has been in the ground for 25 years, drought, smoke, heat and when the rains came its flowered and fruited.

And chilli, lots of chilli.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2020/apr/06/coronavirus-street-art-in-pictures

https://www.smh.com.au/national/the-rise-of-vaccine-hesitancy-and-the-anti-vaxxer-movement-20200401-p54g3m.html