Daphne is a bitch
Invasive daphne
By Darren Bond
Humans are perhaps the ultimate invasive species, but here on Hornby Island, as in many rural settings, there lurks an attractive yet harmful plant. It would appear that plants like to live out beyond, too.
Daphne (daphne laureola) was likely brought as an ornamental addition to a country garden. As often seems to be the case – think blackberry and English ivy – it has thrived and taken over wherever it finds a conducive spot without natural predators.
We hadn’t really noticed it much, even up to recent years, but it has seemingly really multiplied in the past while. At first it seems like a welcome bit of greenery with nice leaves, making friends with its neighbours under the trees. I tried pulling one up and realized what a tough little sucker it was.
A few months ago, we asked a local resident what it was. She replied, daphne, and set us straight on its reputation.
Now it seems that we have a multi-year job on our hands to get rid of it and perennial surveillance to keep it in check. Getting rid of daphne is a bitch.
It’s quite toxic and apparently not good for people with respiratory problems. Advice on best practices is that you should start with isolated little plants to avoid letting them get started in the first place. Then, you work from the outside in in patches so as to control the spread. You need to wear long clothes and gloves. Cutting should be done below the level of the dirt to prevent them from starting up again. You should take them away (to where?) but not in the closed environment of the car.
After all this, it is deemed a good thing to replant with native plants, such as Oregon grape or salal. (This I have already thought about and want to explore further as I touched upon in another posting.)
Gee. Why don’t the bloody opossums – another invasive species – eat the daphne?
This is all too stressful. Maybe it’s time to call the whole project off and move to the serene safety of the city.
What do you think?
Meatless Mondays
By Darren Bond
Hornby plums and blackberries
I don’t think there are many people who would argue that eating less meat is probably a good thing. It helps the health of people and cuts way back on the environmental impacts of producing the meat in the first place (it turns out that cows are big culprits). There are a couple of snags, though: it tastes great and who has a set of recipes at their fingertips that doesn’t require obscure ingredients not already in the cupboard.
Johns Hopkins University has a website with more info.
They’ve got a program called Meatless Mondays. I think I’ve heard of this before and it seemed, vaguely, like a sensible idea all ’round.. Cutting back one day a week is about a 15% reduction (1/7th).
Well, I think perhaps the key is just to start. Certainly we’ve found that when we do without we don’t even really notice or miss it. It might be just some kind of bean casserole or whatever. We’re eating more salmon (yes, some people will say this is cheating, but then some people will say that honey is also verboten) and loving it (simplest recipe of all below).
So, we’re taking the pledge… Starting tomorrow, Mondays will be meatless!
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Now that Mondays and Fridays are taken with alliterative dicta, we’ll have to come up with the rest. Ideas? Tuber Tuesdays?
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Simple 200/20/20 salmon recipe (from local celebrity chef, Karen Barnaby): 200 degrees for 20 minutes on plus 20 minutes off (oven door left shut).
- a bit of olive oil to coat the bottom of a baking dish
- lay in a couple of fillets (3 to 4 ounces per person)
- sprinkle with a bit of salt (we use Kosher salt)
- serve with Basmati rice or whatever and green beans or whatever; moist and delicious.
Our Carbon Footprint Is Getting Bigger
by John McLachlan
Sad, but true!
We are planning to build a relatively “green” house on Hornby Island. We’ll be doing things like having a green roof and collecting water off of it, using water-efficient appliances, insulating well and using double or triple-pane windows, possibly including some solar panels to help offset hot water heating cost, looking into “waterless” urinals (that’s a post unto itself) and also having a garden to grow some of our own food.
But really, let’s not fool ourselves. Our carbon footprint is going to be WAY bigger than it is living how we currently live.
Right now, we live in a condo in downtown Vancouver. With this mild climate of this city and the construction of towers, we spend about $600 per year to heat our apartment. We drive our car about 3,000 kilometers per year (2,000 miles) and most of that is for longer trips. The car now can easily sit for a week without use. We walk everywhere downtown. Darren uses transit for getting to work. We buy groceries a block from where we live.
We really do want to go as green as we possibly can, but it’s easy to fool ourselves into thinking how wonderful we are doing this when the realty is:
- We will live on an island which means there is even more oil needed to deliver products there not to mention just to get there ourselves
- We will have to drive to get most groceries and other supplies will require a two ferry rides
- A 1,500 square foot house will require much more energy to operate than a condo
- The infrastructure of a house means no shared facilities so I suspect our effect regarding resources (wood, steel, tile, paint, you name it) will be higher as well and all those products need to be shipped there
The good news is, we will live in a place that does make recycling easy, we can cycle to get small groceries if needed and I suspect that over time, Hornby Island will develop more of its own little economy whereby smaller farms can start to supply different products that can be bought on the island.
Affiliate link to Amazon.com
I think in time, we will be forced to use more locally grown products and learn to live with less travel off the island to get things. I am a firm believer that, like Canadian economist, Jeff Rubin says in his new book Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization, that we are in for a radical shift in where our products come from, whether that be food or hard items and we will be traveling a whole lot less once oil starts to really go up in price.
Being more self-sufficient is going to be a real asset.
Being more self-sufficient is an aspect of our decision to move to Hornby Island despite the bigger boots we’ll have to wear.
