Organic gardening: dealing with pests II

Last year it was veggies vs. rabbits. This year grapes vs. birds. After several years of the vine only giving a bunch or two of grapes (which we didn’t even bothered to pick and graciously offered to the birds from the neighborhood), this year the plant exploded. So much so, that we didn’t anticipate we would need to make space for the grape bunches. We ended up with too much fruit on the cane roof: buffet served on a plate to the birds.

Dangerous pursuits: ladders, scissors & nets

My feeble attempt at discouraging the birds from gorging on the plump grapes consisted in opening some canes so that the fruit would drop below the roof, and covering parts of the remaining fruit (most of it) with some left-over pieces of net from the fight-the-rabbit days.

A few weeks later, I’m happy to report, we’ve gathered a couple of bucket-fulls of juicy grapes. 100% organic!

Disclosure: no bird was damaged in the process of growing or harvesting the vines.

Beauty in all its colors

Oscar winner and Kenyan Lupita Nyong'o’s speech on the need of different images of beauty - 50 shades of beauty perhaps?

The danger of a single image of beauty are not unlike the dangers of a single story.

Parabéns a Bonga Mbilo! Congratulations to the little organization that could!

Got some great news from the little organization that could. If you remember, we had been trying to get some funding because they basically run on zero budget (if NGOs in developed countries saw how much is done by NGOs in developing countries without any budget...). Anyhow, I received this message from one of the directors of the organization.

“Minhas saudações e da equipe Bonga Mbilo, espero que onde estiveres, estejas bem de saude e sucesso no trabalho. Nós, deste lado, so saudade de uma amiga que sempre torceu por nos. Neste momento queremos partilhar um dos melhores momentos da nossa associção que acaba de vencer um concurso do banco mundial sobre lamas fecais e outro projeto de HIV sida.”

Congratulations to them! 

Access to water and sanitation is key and changes the lives of people in a dramatic way, more on that here.