I've not been writing much here, but

There's been more out there in my 'suburban forest' blog (link in right column) but I confess I am doing more outside work than scribble about it. With physical and mental benefit!!

Notes from linkedin caused me to review my profile generally today (after all, three people have looked at in three months... Well, maybe a few more). The great puzzle I find is that people send me messages saying they would like to connect... but if I write to them ["Hello, thanks for asking me to connect, your profile is interesting, etc.. ] it seems usually they do not respond. What is this 'connect' ... or does someone imagine my name will help them in the world, or is it just raw numbers of connectednesses?

Which tends to bear out this fun item in The Guardian this week, asking "has every conversation in history been a series of meaningless bleeps?"  One commentator on that usefully sent me (and hopefully one or two other readers, who knows) to find George Orwell's four motives for writing. What Orwell seems to miss is the tendency of this species to burble on and on, or conversely, not. Though he might suggest that that is a dimension of propensity not motive. On the matter of whether there is point or not to things said (motive or propensity), the brown chook, the elder-chook – yes, this is sort of in the wrong blog, but it remains germane – spoke to me with evidnet concern when I took my breakfast outside this morning: to say, I took it, that the two white chooks, recent arrivals, had vanished. Or so I thought Mrs Brown to say, at length, over hours. And to the of us both relief, later in the day the elegant young Livornese Ladies wandered back in from up the street.

Also though, I had figured out by then that Mrs Brown was telling me not only that she was alone and had only me to Friend and Connect (see meaningless beeps, previous para, but see also this, also from The Guardian recently)... but also that the feed bin was empty. This I divined from inspection of the bin, not from our discourse.

Cross-cultural barriers lesson 1: attend to the facts, not your assumptions,

Cross-cultural barriers lesson 2: do not presume the number of facts is the number you suppose.

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Last night the LinkedIn computer, perhaps after a party, had written to me to say:

From: LinkedIn
Subject: Dennis: Australian Aerospace Resources Pty Ltd, BAE Systems Australia and NGO Recruitment are looking for candidates like you.

That last one was for: Country Director - China - World Society for the Protection of Animals
The details (of course I went to look) mentioned animals once but then slipped gracefully into the human resources species-talk, beginning with this from The Book of Common Babble:

You will be responsible for the development and delivery of the business strategy in accordance with regional and international goals. As the spokesperson you will develop and nurture relations with stakeholders including government authorities, inter-governmental organisations, media and key society. 

So:
... these below are my newly edited top-of-page self-promotional LinkMeUpScotty words, to see what new offers may come!

Beginning as you may know with Job Title, Company, Dates and Location, the sine qua nons of existence:

writer  

good company occasionally July 1943 – Present (69 years 11 months): in head, on paper, on screen, on brain, on soul... on too many subjectsI have a novel half done, 50000+ words. It runs through my head but currently not to paper, many other things under way in life. 
The novel draws on life experience in locations, in Australia and China. It has social and political dimensions. 
It also derives from personal experience of trying to be a reformer who works to change systems from within, rather than by tearing down. An activity that can mean you get abused from both sides, from the entrenched and conservatives on one side and on the other from the protesters at the gate. In my novel I hope to describe the story of leaders in China in the 1980s in that difficult context. 
But also with a contemporary Australian connection... though month by month, like the female protagonist in my novel, I find much of 'contemporary Australia' disconcertingly unattractive, not only in prospective political leadership but also the determination it seems, of a swathe of the population, to abandon thoughtfulness and go for dumb whinging. 
See, whatever I do turns to writing.. or thoughtful dumb whinging?
Oh, here is something I wrote long ago, so many aspects of life seem to weave together so often:
http://aplaceof.info/06/0610.1/1027capes.htm

from foreign policy back to the chooks

I have put up this page on how to manage a small number of chooks (Australian English generic and gender free term to cover roosters, hens, chickens, chicks) in a suburban environment, relatively disease free and withou also raising hoards of sparrows, pigeons and less mentionable birds.


I have placed our place near Bodalla on the market, info here ... too hard to get there these days, sob.


I have been inhibited writing because of problems with my right arm, have now acquired some speech recognition software, hopefully will return to the writing, but perhaps via painting first... meanwhile, it is a very busy time with a food garden gone mad in this season of alternating rain and heat. Here some photos from back garden. 

CLICK ON PICS TO ENLARGE.

First, this is the view north from my office window, 
this damp frog-rattly morning 22 December 2011. 

'Lawn' of chamomile and parsley, bush basil and rocket in seed, 

bangalow palm growing;

rose climbing below and peach leafing over window

- all this was grass and concrete path to clothes line three years ago.
Yesterday a blue wren sat for some time on that tall post (cypress, not yet sculpted) 
behind the young palm,
bouncing, as wrens do, landing to face 90º away each time,
a slightly apprehensive rotating lord of all he surveyed.

... looking northeast down the path from veranda, across the previous view:

rose, peach, banana, fig, rosemary, potatoes, more... 

tamarillo tree with huge crop developing, droopy leaves right side...

in a permaculture garden you seek to develop  mulch from what grows

and you take more interest in harvest from the cubic metre 

than from the heavily fed individual plant.

In time, the objective is to close the system, minimising inputs from outside, 

collecting seeds and cuttings, roof water; kitchen scraps and fresh pick for the chooks, 

chook poo back to the compost and garden.

Compost, youngberries, mosaic - always combine art and nature!

Always expect a photo to include limbs of parsley gone to see!

floral and food-al; 

two callistemon (bottle brush) bushes in company with sweet potato, pumpkin, mandarin;

marjoram and lotus leaves poking their heads into the bottom left of picture.

Here lived chooks before

— the well manured run now planted densely to asparagus, dill, strawberries, yacón, marjoram, mint, comfrey and more, including two white cedar trees

 (two white cedars being allowed to grow, many suckers being pulled up!)

I look around and see so many suburban gardens 

where the owners seem to try to impose a permanent look from the beginning, 

a recipe for mowing, snipping and reflecting a need to control nature. 

But nature evolves, ecologies change and they offer us opportunities to marvel at them.

This northern and eastern back garden in pictures above 

 has growing palms and deciduous trees 

It will turn into a great shade area in time, in summer, more open for light in the winter.

Already the eastern garden (below), around the corner of the house, 

which had two large established deciduous trees when I arrived ini 2008,

is heavily shaded in summer, open in winter. 

Work continues, to make this a rainforest room, with earthy women, 

ponds and a stile to enter and exit the bedroom. 

Source of cool breezes through the house later in the summer day; 

leaves off and warm early sun in the window in winter.