Spider webs in the mist

Mist conceals but it also reveals, as with these two webs on neighbouring openings in the railings. In each case the spider is tucked out of sight up in the right hand corner.

The two webs are not identical, but so similar that it seems obvious that the two spiders are of the same kind. It's commonsense.

In other words we assume regularity in nature. Seeing two webs with this degree of similarity we automatically conclude that there is a kind of spider that makes this kind of web, and if we see the same kind tomorrow we shall be able to say that it is the same kind of spider that has made it.

The same commonsense refined becomes science. Nature, our world, our universe, follow rules, beneath which there are other rules, and so on beyond the current reach of human intelligence.

And knowing all that we can still wonder at the web's beauty.

Strange diet

Really I am a fairweather gardener. But despite the cold, these last couple of days have been sunny enough to tempt me out, to check the composting experiment (see 14 July 07) and to start tidying up. What a blessing winter is, cutting down August's intimidating jungle to something manageable!


This was an odd find, just lying on the soil where, I suppose, I'd carelessly left it some hot summer day. It is one of those very thin plastic plant pots that bought plants come in, made (so the maker tells me) of polypropylene; and it appears to have been nibbled. Well nibbled. I assume the nibbler was a small rodent, let us say a mouse. But why should it have nibbled the pot? I know mice will gnaw though plastic very effectively when it is a question of getting out (or even getting in), but I'd never thought they actually ate the stuff. That still still seems unlikely, so the initial question remains.

Goldfinches

This is just one, of course, but last Friday we had nine between the two feeders.

Astonishing.

In a compost bin near you

We are interested in the compostability of nappies (well, in compostability generally - see 20/3/07). This is the latest bulletin from the front. I had to empty one of the bins the other day and some nasties were revealed.
First, above, what it should look like: rich, friable, odourless brown stuff with a few eggshells, chicken bones and twigs (and, this being more than a year old, teabags - see 22/6/07).


But lurking in the well-composted material was a large number of completely uncomposted Moltex nappies which had been put in last September, i.e. fourteen months ago, in the belief that they were biodegradable. So why did we think that they would compost?

I don't know of any claim that Moltex nappies are wholly or largely biodegradable, but there is a very clear one they will be broken down in few weeks by worms, and a cool compost bin normally functions as a wormery. The claim appears, for example, at naturebotts.co.uk,
"· NEW breathable backsheet which is 100% biodegradable · Compostable - proven to break down within 8 weeks in a wormery - tests carried out by ecobaby in Ireland, visit www.ecobaby.ie for further information". Here and elsewhere one receives a strong impression of at least partial compostability.

In fourteen months I really would have expected some sign of deterioration. After all, it is not as though the thing is sealed. The outside is polythene or polypropylene and so quite un-biodegradable. But the little bundle is only closed with Velcro, and then the whole point of the inside surface is that it is permeable. Nonetheless the nappies are still heavy and rubbery with no sign at all of biodegradation. I suspect that the problem is the gel, the super-absorbent polymer that is used in such quantity in Pampers and the like. No claim for biodegradability has ever been made for it, but it seems as though it acts as a barrier to microbial attack, so that cellulose (i.e. the wood pulp in the middle of the nappy) impregnated with gel will no longer decompose in the way one would otherwise expect. In brief, thumbs down to Moltex.

The bag is interesting too. Each one says on it, "100% degradable nappy bag", and lower down, "ECO DISPOSABLE", and at the bottom, again, "This bag is 100% degradable". So, compostable, you might think. But not at all. It doesn't say compostable nor indeed does it say biodegradable. The bags are made from a modified version of polythene for which the manufacturers, Symphony Environmental Technologies, do not make any compostability claim. And, indeed, the bags are quite unscathed by the same sojourn in the compost bin. Which just leaves the misleadingness of the Moltex wording.

Rocket science

This is the same story as before: seeds growing in water and different concentrations of Ecover washing-up liquid. And the results are similar to those with mung beans and wheat: little adverse effect, indeed even some beneficial effect up to a concentration of 0.001 (i.e. 0.1%), but increasing growth inhibition thereafter.

Recycling at Manor Place

In addition to what will go in the blue box, we seem to accumulate odd bits of defunct electronic equipment, yellow pages and, in a relentless trickle, batteries. I've been keeping these in a plastic tub for a year or two, meaning to get to Manor Place and not getting round to it, so having to increase the size of the tub every so often. But the other day I finally made the move. It was really most satisfying to add my contributions to the bin for electrical stuff, the bin for yellow pages and the bin for batteries.

Harlequins again

Evidently they have decided that this is a harlequin-friendly house (see 13 May 2007) and so have come to spend the winter in a corner of the ceiling of the front porch. It'll be interesting to see if they survive - not that London winters set much of a test these days.

The cupolas of Camberwell Green

This the most modest of the three, and it looks as though it was built in accordance with a new building line on Denmark Hill. But then the Kennedys Sausages building and the one next to it didn't get redeveloped. It is a pity, for it means that from many angles the view of the cupola is marred. Perhaps in the future ...

Ideally also in the future we'd have a fourth cupola at the Green end of any redevelopment of the east side of Denmark Hill.

A bit more bioscience in Camberwell 2

Again the effect of varying strengths of Ecover washing-up liquid, but this time on wheat. The result is much the same as it was with mung beans (see 8 August). Rocket next time.

A bit more bioscience in Camberwell

The plants on the right are clearly doing better than the ones on the left. That is because as you go to the left the plants are growing in increasingly strong solutions of Ecover washing-up liquid. But, interestingly, the weaker solutions, and I think .001 is typical for our washing up, seem pretty harmless, possibly even beneficial. So we can safely put the water on the garden.

These are mung beans. I'll try next with wheat and with rocket, and then do the same with washing-up liquids that are not advertised as being environmentally friendly.

Another use for old bricks

It is wonderful how quickly a pile of bricks gets colonised. I suppose when the pile is six bricks deep and twenty bricks high, low down at the back it is always dark and cool and moist. Ideal evidently for yellow slugs (Limax flavus) , of which we found dozens when we took the pile down. They'd even laid eggs (I own up to some rearrangement to make a convenient picture). They are entirely beneficial, just eating rotting stuff and so helping to speed up the cycle, and thus common inhabitants of compost bins.

But it beats me what they find to eat in a pile of bricks.

Bricks and mortar

Part of the garden wall was threatening to fall down, so we are having it re-built. Most of the bricks that were whole in the old wall can be re-used, and the new wall is being done with lime mortar, like the original, i.e. no cement at all. And thus was most of Camberwell built.

This isn't just conservation fussiness - lime mortar has a hugely lower carbon footprint than does cement. It also has the indirect effect that when you take a wall down you can get the mortar off the bricks. The only bricks we couldn't re-use here were the ones that had been repaired with cement. When you lay bricks with cement you doom them to single use.

So reclaimed London stocks are only available because of the lime mortar they were put together with.

Great tree

This wonderful tree, which I take to be a black locust, Robinia pseudoacacia, looks as though it belongs in a park or large garden rather than where it is, on the pavement in Wyndham Road. Certainly the tree is much older than all the surrounding buildings and, in its solitary splendour, it doesn't look as though it was designed for the pavement. Perhaps a large garden is where it used in fact to be, and Edwardian children played under it; but the garden has long since been taken away. How good that it has survived.

Biodegradability

What does it mean to say something is biodegradable? Our answer is that if an object is still identifiable after a year in a fairly cool compost bin, it is not biodegradable in any useful sense.

But it is difficult to carry out a comparative trial in a compost bin, so we are trying a substitute approach, putting stuff on the soil surface, covering it with a black plastic bag, and keeping it moist. On 4 July we started with an Ecover bag (A); an M&S potato carton (B and C); a Kanga incontinence pad (D); and an Earthfriendly eco baby wipe (E). More recently we've added a Weenee nappy pad. All the products claim 100% bidegradability/compostability.

The pads seem to be entirely wood-based pulp and tissue, except that the Weenee admits to having some gel ("superabsorbent polymer" - crosslinked polyacrylate). The other items all seem to be made of a polymer derived from starch, poly(lactic acid), or PLA (trade name Ingeo).

So we'll have a look at how they are getting on every couple of months.

Butterflies

We are seeing Holly Blues in the garden. The Holly Blue is a gift to non-butterfly experts like us - it is the only small blue butterfly that you normally get in Camberwell. So if you see a small blue butterfly you can say knowledgeably that it is a Holly Blue. According to the RSPB, "Adults drink oozing sap, aphid honeydew and carrion juices", not so charming, and "Caterpillars usually eat holly and ivy, but also dogwood, spindle and heathers." Ours are often flying round the ivy - perhaps ready to lay eggs.

Teabags

We changed to Fairtrade tea a few years ago, buying both Teadirect and Clipper. I only recently realized that Clipper teabags are biodegradable while Teadirect's are not - they hang around perfectly identifiably after a year in the compost bin. I suppose after a longer time and more disturbance they would physically disintegrate, but that would just mean small pieces of nylon in the soil rather than large ones.

So, anyhow, we have become obligate Clipper teabag buyers. Happily both Somerfield and the Co-op on Camberwell New Road sell them.

So what's it all for?

This little lovely is a lime hawk moth on the pavement just down the street yesterday. Our instinct was to take it to a safer place - a shrub outside the house.

But the life of the lime hawk moth doesn't quite fit the fairy tale. As an adult it doesn't feed - it mates and dies; perhaps ours was already on the way out.

Near the shrub there is bucket with water for pot plants. One of the local boys wanted some water for his water pistol and we had a look in the bucket and found that it was teeming with animal life: mosquito larvae, tiny red worms, water fleas (I'm pretty sure) and even smaller creatures going about their business. It's enough to make you believe in spontaneous generation.

Well, mosquitoes could have laid eggs, and anyhow the water came from a water butt, not from the tap. But a few years ago the water butt was a clean, empty plastic container and the rain came from the sky. Evidently the makings of water life are constantly lurking in relatively dry places.

In sum, Nature goes on in her mysterious and heartless way in Camberwell.

Young things

We first saw a great spotted woodpecker in the garden in 2004 and thought, what a rare and surprising thing. Last year a juvenile visited the fat feeder quite often and this year we have seen both an adult and a juvenile. Last week, briefly, the juvenile was on the fence and the adult was feeding it from trips to the fat feeder. So it isn't rare, but it still seems surprising - I thought you had to go into the country to see woodpeckers.

Of course it is the time of year for juveniles - the garden is full of young great tits and young blackbirds (a young blackbird being fed is of course what the photo shows). And we also identified a pair of young squirrels, a little smaller than adults and behaving in that exploratory playful way that seems to mark the young of at least all mammalian species.

Plastic bags

I don't suppose gallant little Camberwell will follow in the footsteps of gallant little Modbury and ban plastic bags altogether, but small moves are being made. Somerfield will give you a "bag for life" in exchange for five used ordinary bags, or sell you one for 10p. The bag for life is estimated to last 25 times longer than ordinary plastic bags and can be exchanged for a new one when it is worn out. (Something odd about that phrase "bag for life"?)

Alternatively and again emphasizing re-use, there is a plastic bag exchange at Basic - put in the ones you don't need, get ones out if you are caught short.

Insects mostly

During the long dry spell, and I assume in consequence, blackfly proliferated in the garden. They were even on the holly shoots. Their natural predators, for example bluetits and ladybirds, didn’t seem to be on the job. I suppose normally we have a lot of both bluetits and ladybirds and not many aphids, so I shouldn’t complain.

Recently we have been seeing ladybirds, generally harlequins (the one shown is on lavender in Camberwell). These are a bit bigger than 2-spots and 7-spots and have more spots (although they are variable and sometimes appear, for example, with two large red spots on black). Harlequins are fairly recent arrivals in Britain and are spreading out from the south-east. Entomologists are alarmed because while harlequins devour aphids voraciously they also attack other ladybirds. On the other hand no-one is suggesting any particular action, and none seems feasible.

Also, if harlequins are so good against aphids, and turn out against the blackfly, perhaps we should welcome them. I might be able to start growing broad beans again. I really don’t like blackfly, which probably do less damage than, say, woodpigeons, for which I have a soft spot. But if we didn’t have blackfly, or other aphids, what would the baby bluetits eat? and who would grudge a baby bluetit a meal?

Detergents

Great for the dishes and the clothes and the hair, then down the drain and away, out of mind, but in fact into the great Victorian sewers and in due course into the sewage treatment plant. As an amateur surfer (no pun intended) I have found it hard to find good technical information on the effect of washing-up liquids and other cleaners on sewage treatment, but it does seem that Ecover, while just as toxic as other products to organisms such as water fleas or green algae that are not at all accustomed to it, is much better tolerated by the kind of bacteria whose business in life is munching their way through sewage. So two cheers for Ecover.

Here in Camberwell, Basic on Denmark Hill refills Ecover washing-up liquid, laundry liquid and multi-surface cleaner bottles. This is cheaper than buying new bottles and of course saves all that plastic being chucked.

Plastics recycling

Having got over the first flush of pleasure after the Council started collecting plastics for recycling, I began to wonder what was going on.

A bit of backstory: the little recycle logo on most plastic containers has a number in it which tells you the kind of plastic. The commonest are polyethylene terephthalate (PTFE), number 1, most plastic bottles; high density polyethylene (HDPE), number 2, milk "cartons"; and polypropylene (PP), number 5, margarine tubs, yoghurt pots etc.

Flash forward again. The Council leaflet says you can put out "plastic food trays, plastic yoghurt pots, margarine tubs, all plastic bottles". That seems to cover the three common kinds of plastic. But what about other items that are made of those plastics? and what about "food trays" which can be made of almost anything, including polystyrene which is normally a recycling no-no?

It seemed that a more intelligent instruction to householders would give the numbers of the plastics that could be put out and, even without such an instruction, one could act intelligently if one knew what numbers the Council could in fact deal with. So I asked the Council. The question was a long time in the answering. The final answer was that they didn't know.

What is going on is this. The information the Council puts in its leaflet is the information it gets itself from the recycling contractor, Baylis Recycling. So the Council knows no more than you or me. I surmise that the same instructions are given to the Baylis employees who hand-sort the plastic. So if you put in something that doesn't come within the description, even if it is in fact the same kind of plastic and just as recyclable, it gets chucked. So I wonder, when we read the recycling statistics, do they include what is dumped by the contractor?

It is to be hoped that something better can be achieved with the heralded new recycling facility for Southwark, or with Ken's big scheme.

This is nice

Well, it is only a sawn-off uprooted tree stump in St Giles' Churchyard with some not very impressive daffodils on top. But what would be very nice is if it is now the Council's policy to leave such stumps in position to become food in the future for the myriad small creatures that love munching their way though rotting wood, most spectacularly stag beetle larvae.

As to the daffodils, they are a bit higher up than they expected. It will be interesting to see how they get on.

Pecking order

Feeding the crows in Burgess Park, I find that the front stalls are soon occupied by town pigeons. They are bolder than the crows, although the crows are willing to come closer than they used to be. But what strikes me is how little aggression the crows show towards the pigeons. When a crow and a pigeon are going for the same piece of bread the crow normally gets it, but the crows make no general attempt to keep the pigeons at a distance.

The crows are larger, with fearsome beaks, and it is not as though they don't know how to be aggressive. Yesterday two of them appeared to be trying to tear a third apart, and when crows and magpies get together things can get very wild.

Pigeons, generally, seem very aggressive. In the garden they see off woodpigeons which again are somewhat bigger, and chase smaller birds away habitually. They are not aggressive to the crows in the park, but nor do they seem to take much notice of them.

I wonder why town pigeons are so aggressive - too much contact with people perhaps.

Fish

There is some good news. Somerfield on Butterfly Walk has Marine Stewardship Council certified wild salmon fillets, Alaskan pollock fillets in beer batter and glazed Cape hake fillets, all Youngs products. And Lidl (not quite in Camberwell I suppose) has MSC certified Ocean Trader products: Alaskan pollock fish fingers, and both pollock and wild salmon in puff pastry. One has to assume that everything else is contributing to the extermination of fish stocks somewhere or another.

Waste food

Last week's Southwark News had an item under the heading "Bin strike could mean smelly summer". And we've had concerns expressed about the possibility of less frequent rubbish collections, and that report about a third of food being thrown away.

But whatever food you throw away, if you throw it into a compost bin you don't have to worry about a smelly dustbin. Even the smallest garden can accommodate one of those nice plastic beehives which you can buy at a subsidized price of a few pounds.

On the other hand, composting remains resolutely unpopular. I was brought up to it and have always taken it for granted. But I suspect that for many people there is a quasi religious objection, religious not in the sense of any particular religion's doctrine but in a more primitive sense of taboo, of dirtiness, which may affect people who are fairly rational in other areas of their lives.

There is also the issue of what you can compost. The answer is almost anything: raw food, cooked food, meat, orange peel, teabags, nappies of the right kind, cotton clothes, woollen clothes, feathers from old pillows or duvets and of course all non-woody garden waste. Just bung it all in, and in a year or so you have a dark brown to black material, looking a bit like a mixture of dry coffee grounds and chopped straw, with no smell whatsoever.

Of course the books are full of don'ts, raising fears of rats and heaven knows what else. But the nice plastic beehive has a lid and I guess is pretty well rat proof. We have three and have never seen sign of rat in ten years. The rats will be more interested in the dustbins round the front with fresh supplies weekly of uncomposted waste.

Rats themselves of course are very much on the taboo, dirty side of the line - oddly unlike pigeons, which on any objective assessment are less desirable but which manage to seem "clean" so you can feed them in Trafalgar Square.

Camberwell Green buildings

I learn from the Camberwell Quarterly that Southwark Council has rejected a renewed application to redevelop Butterfly Walk. It mentions the proposed facade on Denmark Hill.

Amen to that - by and large the buildings around Camberwell Green are elegant and harmonious (and we are so lucky). It is terribly important that very ordinary strip on the east side of Denmark Hill, if it is to be replaced, should be replaced with something better, something that reflects the existing fine buildings in the vicinity. As I recall, what was proposed was your usual tubes and glass Arizona shopping mall effect .

Required reading

No Nettles Required The Truth about Wildlife Gardening by Ken Thompson (Transworld Publishers 2006, £6.99). Much of it is based on gardens in Sheffield, but all of it could apply to Camberwell - urban gardens small or large, scruffy or manicured, are homes to much more wildlife than we think. (Just don't use the nasties in plastic bottles on the garden centre shelves.) Unputdownable.