Wildlife in north London…

09/18/2012 By 2 Comments

I am aware that, although I have great faith in the earthshattering importance of the deep thoughts that I confide to this blog on the subjects of freefrom food, allergy, electrosensitivity and the ways of the world, there are a number of readers who subscribe to it merely to discover which of my plants has been chomped by slugs, how the local foxes are doing and to catch up with the latest antics of our cats…..

While they can log in to the latest on the garden and the cats via the links at the top of the page, I have just realised that  there was no way of them checking up on the doings of the squirrels, the fox cubs, and the other wild life inhabitants of our north London garden, as most of the links to their pages were buried deep in some earlier blog.

For your benefit, therefore, dear Readers, I have just added a little ‘activity index’ at the top of the Michelle’s Garden page via which you can see our resident dunnocks battling though the snow, the squirrels defeating my best efforts to keep them off the bird table, and the baby fox cubs having breakfast.

Enjoy!

Filed Under: Cats, Gardens Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Yet more on slugs…. Edible ones…

07/09/2012 By 8 Comments

I have just received this email from John Scott and feel I need to share…….

As I was putting three slugs into the bin tonight, I thought what a waste, when there seems to be so much ‘eating’ on them, and I was going to ask you if you’d ever come across any slug recipes, but I’ve actually found one – on the Rick Shaw Unschooling blog here.

“They were like a cross between chicken and calamari. A bit like escargot, although I’ve never experienced deep-fried escargot, so I can’t say, exactly! Certainly they were delicious, and the combination with green tomatoes was lovely!”

So there you go – a simple alternative form of meat for those who are allergic to everything else, though the comments that follow the post above seem to cast some doubt on whether European slugs are such suitable fare. I suppose one could import “banana” slugs and cultivate them…

I must admit that I thought I had a pretty strong stomach – and I do hate slugs so eating them would be a suitable revenge – but having read Emily’s post……  Judge for yourselves…

PS. The picture is of Emily’s son at the ‘soak in hot water and vinegar for 10 minutes to kill and remove slime’ stage!

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Not just the slugs that are out to ‘get’ edible plants…

07/09/2012 By 1 Comment

Following on from the sad tale of my parsley’s demise….

 

 

 

An edible garden designed by  designing-edible-gardens.com

 

 

 

I have just, rather belatedly, been catching up on the far sadder tale of Denise Morrison of Tulsa, Oklahoma, not to mention Ron Finley of Crenshaw, south LA and Adam Guerrero of Memphis, Tennesse, all of whom have had their edible gardens targeted and, as far as the first two are concerned, destroyed  (Adam did get to keep his but only with serious restrictions) by their local authorities. The latter seem to have taken agin’ them for reasons which are hard to divine. At least my slugs and snails are feeding themselves….

Denise Morrison has had a lot of coverage for her ruined garden which included more ‘than 100 plant varieties —  flowers, apple trees, pecan trees, grapes, lemons, stevia, strawberries and several types of mint among many others — that Morrison used not only for food, but for medicinal purposes such as treating her diabetes, high blood pressure and arthritis’.
See this report from Mother Nature Network, or this one from Oklahoma’s Own, or this one from Reason Hit&Run , or this one from TreeHugger and if, having read all of those, you want to support Denise in getting her garden back up and running, you can sign this petition, or you can send donations to Denise via Lori Fulbright, C/O News On 6, 302 S. Frankfort, Tulsa, OK 74120.

Filed Under: Alternative/Complementary Health, Food, Gardens Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,