Bushwhacked

I went out this morning to one of the local garden centres to buy a box of calcified seaweed. We have an infestation of nematodes in the wormery which means it's too acid and calcified seaweed is the recommended means of raising the pH. Bloody expensive it is too. ?7.25 for about a kilo. We're supposed to add a handful or so to the wormery every couple of weeks to keep the acidity down. Unfortunately I think that means that the so-called "free" compost the wormery is supposed to produce is in fact more expensive than simply throwing out the kitchen scraps and buying bags of compost like we used to. But this is by the by.

Roadworks in the area meant that I was diverted out of my way for a couple of miles and I ended up taking a detour through parts of the outskirts of town which I haven't seen for some time. Well. Let's just say that recent "environmental work" by the local council has involved a cast of thousands armed with chainsaws and an ecosystem which has been obliterated all the way back to blue-green algae. And I'm not so sure there's much of that left either.

Miles of mature hawthorn and blackthorn hedges have been cut down to no more than a couple of feet high or, in some cases, ripped up altogether. Hundreds, if not thousands, of semi-mature trees have been hacked off at ground level and their trunks and larger branches stacked in piles 6 or more feet high with the shredded and chipped remains of smaller branches left littering the roadsides.

The Bush administration would no doubt have a collective orgasm over the environmental devastation caused and it's not even as if there's any oil in town outside of the supermarkets.