Angus Soutar
We have several interesting articles that are in publication and they will be available soon. Meanwhile, we have published the up-to-date list of our courses in the What's On section of this issue and, if you haven't already visited our previous issue, there's lots to read there.
These are days when society seems to be caught in a state of confusion, distraction and disruption. I'm not sure whether this is making people sick (there are certainly plenty of sick people around at the moment) or whether the struggles of sick people are interrupting the smooth running of society. Smooth running is we British were brought up to expect, so the current situation upsets us.
But it is summer, we need to get outside, ignore societal worries and get a good dose of sunshine. Unfortunately, for that to happen, we need to be able to see the sun. In Northern England we have yet to see a prolonged spell of sunny weather this year. Temperatures have been at or below long-term averages and I have been keeping winter clothes handy. It reminds me of the soggy family holidays of yesteryear that we used to "enjoy" before cheap air travel arrived. We seem firmly outside the remit of the World Health Organisation's Global Boiling jurisdiction and are offering up prayers for southerly winds and a dry dusting from the Sahara.
All this could change; warm autumn weeks are a recent memory and a dry spell in the Autumn is always on the cards. But the temptation is to spend too much time contemplating the future. As we approach the Lammas days, we can slow down and have a look at what is happening out in Nature. I can find lots of good news there. In spite of our concerns about the weather, the plants, be they ground cover, bushes or trees have been growing at a cracking rate. Earlier in the year we had lots of greens and now the soft fruit has ripened well.
Some gardeners have been complaining about the wet (often those who complain as soon as a dry spell begins). Undoubtedly, this has not been a good year for many farmers and it remains to be seen whether the effect on this year's crops is as bad as the dismal yields of 2012. Conventional cultivation methods are not adapting well to changes in the weather. Meanwhile, Nature is running riot.
The one "fly in the ointment" is the shortage of flies to put in the ointment. I am seeing a marked decrease in the number of insects. The honeysuckle and buddleia run rampant outside our house, but I have yet to see the hordes of bees and butterflies that usually descend upon the flowers. Can we put this down to "Climate Change" or is something else going on?
To blame everything on Climate Change is to fail to address the core problem, which is loss of habitat at all levels of scale. "Biodiversity Action Plans" do little to prevent the damage caused by "Net Zero" and "Economic Growth" policies. I have argued elsewhere that current government policies are more about promoting "business as usual" than they are about energising the changes needed to re-vitalise our world. It's going to take more than bullying citizens into further recycling and buying electric vehicles if we are to roll back the destruction of habitat that causes the problems in the first place. We will need to reconfigure our society, or it will be reconfigured for us.
The solutions are not, and cannot be, simple. Nor will they be "convenient". First, we have to accept that change is needed. Only then can we attempt to sway the direction of change. The core of our confidence in permaculture is that Nature knows what to do, even when we don't. If we can harness the "free" energy of Nature, rhe power of living and growing things, cover everywhere with vegetation, then I am convinced that everything will start to come right.
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