Flower Bouquets Are Deadly

 

What a delightful moment when someone presents you with a marvelous bouquet of fresh flowers. But no matter how carefully you treat them and change the water daily - they start to wilt away from day three... Once flowers are cut, they are doomed to die!

• The floriculture industry has huge impacts on the environment through water usage, pollution, pesticides, land degradation, and fossil fuel transportation emissions. The majority of cut flowers that are offered for sale in Europe and North America are coming from Africa and South America.
  
  
• Sending the roughly 100 million roses of a typical Valentine’s Day produces some 9,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the field to North American florists.
  
  
• The floriculture industry, which has loose regulations, generates a lot of chemical pollution through fertilizers and pesticides. 
  
  
• A third of the chemicals used in the floriculture industry in developing countries are banned or untested in North America -- but yet, they are imported.
  
  
• The health impact on workers who are exposed to these chemicals is tremendous.
  
  

There are better flower gifts for Valentine's Day:

The most eco-responsible choice if you want to enjoy flowers are those of the locally grown, organic, in-season variety.  Or choose potted spring blooms as a Valentine's Day gift.  They will bloom much longer and later can be dug into the garden to bloom every spring in the coming years.  For friends or family with a garden or balcony, flower seeds would be the perfect solution. Nothing is more environmental-friendly.

One of the best gifts you can make!

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Glyphosate Danger to Honey Bees & Bumble Bees

Glyphosate Perturbs the Gut Microbiota of Honey Bees & Mumble Bees.
Increased mortality of honey bee colonies has been attributed to several factors but is not fully understood.  The herbicide glyphosate is expected to be innocuous to animals, including bees because it targets an enzyme only found in plants and microorganisms.  Glyphosate is potentially affecting bee health and their effectiveness as pollinators.

However, bees rely on a specialized gut microbiota that benefits growth and provides defense against pathogens.  Most bee gut bacteria contain the enzyme targeted by glyphosate but vary in whether they possess susceptible versions and, correspondingly, intolerance to glyphosate.

Exposing bees to glyphosate alters the bee gut community and increases susceptibility to infection by opportunistic pathogens.  Understanding how glyphosate impacts bee gut symbionts and bee health will help elucidate a possible role of this chemical in colony decline.

Glyphosate may affect bacterial symbionts of animals living near agricultural sites, including pollinators such as bees.  The honey bee gut microbiota is dominated by eight bacterial species that promote weight gain and reduce pathogen susceptibility.  The gene encoding EPSPS is present in almost all sequenced genomes of bee gut bacteria, indicating that they are potentially susceptible to glyphosate. 

"We demonstrated that the relative and absolute abundances of dominant gut microbiota species are decreased in bees exposed to glyphosate at concentrations documented in the environment."

Read more in this new research study about the effects of glyphosate exposure:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/09/18/1803880115

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Explore Vancouver Island: Westwood Lake Chronicles

Twenty-five years ago Lawrence Winkler and his wife Robin bought a homestead, in the middle of Vancouver Island, on the water’s edge. There are still reflections of the small lake at the foot of Mount Benson – of gardens and vineyards and woodland encounters.

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Westwood Lake Chronicles is a “dreamscape” diary, a backyard inventory of life and death in paradise, and the desperate pressures that threaten its existence.  Lawrence Winkler has written an anthem to living deliberately with nature, and the virtues of simplicity, self-sufficiency, solitude, and silence. Find refuge...
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Follow Lawrence Winkler throughout the year, experience with him the beauty of nature and the lessons we are given.  A fantastic read not only for nature lovers, but also a must-read for everyone traveling and exploring the stunning beauty of Vancouver Island on Canada's famous West Coast. 
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Paperback
$19.95 - Free for Prime members

Kindle Edition

$5.40 - Free for Prime members


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From Reviewers:

"A delicious, rich, fascinating melange of descriptive natural history, science, lore and romance by an intellectual who struggles with 'whither Mother Earth?'.  Not a gulpable book - should be savored in sips."
"He describes beautifully his passion for his environment with facts and humor! A thoroughly enjoyable read!"
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Author Bio:
Westwood Lake Chronicles is one of eight books by Lawrence Winkler, an ancient physician and a traveler, a phenomenologist, a mushroom forager, and an amateur naturalist.  As a young man, he hitchhiked around the world, for five trans-formative years.

Lawrence Winkler's middle age is morphing from medicine to manuscript. He has a passion for habitat protection, including the (hopefully) final repairs on a leaky roof. Westwood Lake Chronicles was his first book.

He lives on Vancouver Island with Robyn and Shiva, tending their garden and vineyard, and dreams.  See Lawrence Winkler’s author page and all his books on Amazon.

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