Weekly Observations 17th July - 23rd July: What signs of collapse do you see in your region?
Share whats happening in your hometown, region or country that might not be in the focus of international media!
Please provide a general location. For Example:
Location: Southern Ireland
Picture: Cerberus heatwave over the Iberian peninsula and southern France
Location: Czechia
Absolutely no bugs or birds. It's on the decline for some years but it's just earily quiet this summer.
Do you mean that literally? As in no birds what so ever? If so, that's just so incredible sad.
I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, sure I've seen some pigeons and heard a bird here and there. But sitting on my balcony, I just hear silence (and some traffic) where birdsong used to almost drown out traffic noise. Two trees in front of my home always had several bird nests, nothing this year. I haven't seen a single sparrow or woodpecker which used to be common. And I'm barely seeing any insects on places that used to be full of them so I guess there's just nothing left to eat.
Location: Massachusetts, USA
First credible flood warnings in my area.
Some context: The region in which I live, after catastrophic flooding in the middle of the 20th century, domesticated and tamed all of the rivers. We have a system of dams and other flood control that mostly keeps our water levels very stable. New Englanders do not understand how artificial the stability of our water levels is, and the kinds of floods we used to have here before all the dams were built to make sure that never happens again.
But now we're getting rainfall like never before, and it's not like our dams are any better maintained than our bridges are - and our bridges are a known scandal.
Location: suburbs of Chicago, IL
While I usually live in NC, I am visiting family. In this particular brand of suburbia, every single day the streets are alive with the sound of gas powered lawn mowers and leaf blowers. While I watch the news drone on about petty celebrity drama, the graph breaking upward trend of ocean temperatures elicits barely a word from any news source, and people carry on paying to burn gasoline to make already short grass shorter and move the cuttings around.
Thanks for keeping these coming. It sounds like you could profit from splitting your plot into experiments, including baseline for control.
How is your soil pH doing? Have you considered paying for soil analytics once to check for potential problems?
I'll be adding some wild type sunchokes to my grass roof this autumn. The last time I used commercial cultivars which became a pest but never flowered.
Most of the new plants I add are eaten alive by snails and bugs. Jerusalem artichokes seem to thrive and bear fruit, which is rare.
Location: Central Germany
Cerberus heatwave mostly spared us here with only Saturday being a freakishly hot day (28°C --> 38°C temp jump for a day) but it showed me once again how badly prepared most older buildings are for what is to come.
Location: Florida
In the past it was normal after driving the highways to have the front of your car covered in insect splatterings, especially during the two love-bug seasons per year. There was a small industry for bug wash, but nets, etc. After a long drive from one end of the state to the other you have to stop and wash the front of your car off just to see. Now, nothing. Nothing at all. First the tiny things go, then the small things, then the food.