The Petunia plants in our garden keep flowering most of the year. We have three colours of them in our garden.
I noticed an unusual sight, of ants crawling on them, in search of nectar! Now that the ground is wet with collection of water when it rains, the ants keep moving to drier places. We have ants trying to access our cottage from different routes. They look for food to survive and gather food to store for the prolonged rainy season.
The above adaptation we did in our garden to the feeding station was to protect it from ants. Of late ants gathered in the feeding station that kept away birds from the feeding station. Now that the feeding platform is on pillars standing on a tank with water, ants cannot access it. The birds have yet to return. Birds take time to overcome an inhibition due to the change of place of the feeding station and the different appearance of the platform.
We leave grains in a bowl in the old feeding station for the ants to feed on!
The eco system is complex. One learning lesson from this experience is that of the Darwinian proposal- 'survival of the fittest' !
The earth feeds and protects all of its beings!
The humans are to protect and preserve the earth!
There is a civil case registered in the High court in our state against the felling of trees in the Cochin University Campus. There is an open space to build! So why fell trees from the wooded area! Loosing hundreds of trees in the heart of a city is grievous to many!
Another protest is brewing over the plan to eliminate the garden under the metro rails and have it replaced by tiled platform to allow advertisement boards to come up in a stretch of about three kilometres, for which the advertisers would pay an annual fees to the local body !
How refreshing it is to know of such proactive steps of human responses to protect the environment, for preserving the lung space in crowded public spaces!
We need environment friendly gestures to promote health of the earth!
M.C.Mathew (text and photo)
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