On our dog walk today, Syd pointed out how unhealthy many trees looked — should they appear like this in spring? I agreed. The more you look, the more you see. And those strange hazy skies? Syd thinks it’s the result of aerial shpraying, as a certain German we know insists.
After I got home, I took my camera as I walked to the feria (street market). Wow! Lots of unhappy-looking trees, indeed.
Right across the street from us.
Then, in the feria, I ran across Pilar, host of blueberry picking and the feria orgánica (see Atlántida Events in the menu bar above), and asked her.
Yes, she said, the wind has been horrible, regaling me with stories about her torn-up shade arbor, piles of plums on the ground and lost blueberries as well (I’ll see on Saturday morning) because of the recent winds. She says the wind damages branches, allows contaminación and hongos (fungus) and insects to invade the weakened parts of the tree.
Pilar knows her stuff. She advises the Uruguayan government on hemp and marijuana production (former promising, latter disappointing because the chosen distributors — pharmacies — apparently want nothing to with marijuana. Hmm, less profitable than pharmaceuticals? Or something else?).
Anyway, weather’s getting weird, and it may be the result of some “geoengineering.” But for now I’m going with weather, and not aerosols, for the damaged trees. We simply have nothing here like the shpraying I so clearly saw in North Carolina, Spokane, and later developing in Mexico.
Your friend, Pilar, is on the right track. Read this wonderful book The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate— by Peter Wohlleben
Thanks – looks like a great suggestion – will read! When I lived in the hills outside Wiesbaden, West Germany in the early 80s, my walks were in sterile woods with meticulously cleared ground; foresters were grappling with “waldsterben” – forest dieback with no obvious cause. I remember hearing about trained foresters being amazed in North America at a natural forest – seeing the teeming life of decomposition and regeneration for the first time.
Around here (US PNW), there has been a lot of die off with maple trees. Haven’t spoken to anyone who can pinpoint a cause.
Not long ago I met a guy who moved from the OR coast. Said that their retirement planning had included planting trees, 300/year. After Fukushima, they got to a point where the survival rate of the newly planted trees was zero, and the existing ones started growing deformities. He had quite a few more things to say as well.