Tag Archives: chemicals

Earth, Our Mother

by . Posted on
30 Jul

Like every woman, she is complex, changeable, volatile  . . .  and beautiful, oh so beautiful. Different in every changing season, every face of her more beautiful than the last.  Wild, unpredictable, untameable she is glorious in her power and wonder.  Groomed, tamed and tamped down in manicured precision she is muted but beautiful still.

She nurtures us, feeds us, embraces us when we need to breathe and think.  She clothes us, cares for us, picks up after us and deals with our detritus of daily life.  She loves us despite our taking her for granted, littering her pristine playgrounds and murdering our sisters and brothers in furry, feathered, finned flesh.

She has put up with us as we have emptied her reserves of fuel like a child sucking on its mother’s breast, furiously, feverishly long after it should have been weaned.  She has birthed us and given us her all as every good Mother does until she is depleted, exhausted and tired of our endless demands and selfishness.

She has put up with our growing pains and we have tried her patience through toddlerdom, school and adolescence.  Now she just wants us gone – why don’t we grow up, wise up and ship out?  And leave her to rest, decline and die in peace?

We have tired her out but with her last reserves of energy she is raging at us – why won’t we listen?

Why do we think we can take, take, take and give nothing back?  Did she teach us nothing?  Have we learned nothing in all our years of evolution and living with her?  Or is it still that this patriarchical society we have created where technology is the craven image we worship has to learn to love and wonder at woman in all her power and glory before we can honour the Mother who gives us our daily bread and so much more?

If it is not our generation who stop the mining, raping, pillaging madness then who?  If it is not us who demand clean, renewable energy and power and an end to poisonous chemicals and GM, then who?   Who will protect this beautiful Earth we are so honoured to call home for our children, who will?  If we don’t stand up and fight these greedy, blood sucking corporate parasites, who will?

She is so fragile this beautiful Mother of ours, right now, sucked dry.  And we have all the power and technology and the intelligence and the heart to stop the hunger, feed the world, and live in harmony with this beautiful Mother who has given us life.  It’s not too late to honour and learn from our indigenous communities and harness the forces of this tempestuous Mother of ours to give us all that we need and more.

Yes, it is a big fight.  Yes, it seems impossible.  Yes, the forces we are battling against are huge and powerful with deep, deep pockets lined with our hard earned wealth.  But David slew Goliath and us little, little people with our big hearts and our wisdom and passion can swell this groundswell into a roaring tsunami for change.  We have to.  Tired as we are, bowed as we are, so is our Mother and she needs us to speak for her, to help her, to work with her, to love and understand her.

And so doggedly, we must plod on and hope that in our lifetime things will change.  That not only Earth, our Mother, but all women, young and old, will get the respect, love, compassion and gratitude they so richly deserve.  Vive la revolution!

Prone over Porcelain and Snoozing my life Away

by . Posted on
05 Feb
Now I know that Little Miss has said that the farm is to be organic but we have a weed problem that is out of control and several steep banks where even the death defying George daren’t take his tractor, so there is only one thing for it – Grazon.
Of course I can’t do any spraying (or much of anything since I am so often prone on the sofa snoozing my life away!) so my brave husband-to-be has to go into the chemical fray.  We are both so conscious of the toxic fallout from these quite frankly HORRIBLE chemical soups that we would far rather not expose ourselves, and I made Ged get all the kit to protect himself.  Attractive, isn’t it?!
Little Miss appears to have had a hand in the proceeding from where she watches her potential parents as they endeavour to get her new home finished for her arrival, because not long after Ged commenced Operation Chemical Fallout I heard swearing and stripping in the front yard and found that he had come under enemy fire!  For some reason beyond my comprehension the sprayer I have used faithfully for the past few years turned traitor on its new master and blew a gasket (literally!) causing a fountain of chemical soup to deluge the one part of his body unprotected . . . his eyes.  Poor, poor love was in so much pain so we flushed and flushed and flushed, rang the poisons hotline and then laid him down with a cold flannel over his face to rest them as they recuperated.  Looks like Little Miss is going to get her way after all  . . !
It is very hard to feel enthused about the renovation while I am Little Miss Slumber and I am afraid I am falling behind.  I went to the doctor and we agreed that an ultrasound was essential to correctly date my pregnancy so we booked me in that same afternoon and Ged came to have his first peek of his little princess.  Apparently there’s a very strong heartbeat there and we are six weeks pregnant so we are in for a lot of momentous changes to our lives this  year, culminating in a new arrival at the end of September (they say 25th, I say 22nd) but I have been known to be wrong before . . . . !!
When I told Mummy she said ‘are you feeling sick yet?’ and I said in my most superior and patronising tone ‘I don’t believe in morning sickness, it’s all in the mind’.  Boy, was I wrong about that!  I never knew you could feel so sick and still stand up (although lying down is by far my best position for coping with the unrelenting nausea.  Why do they call it morning sickness  it’s from the moment I move from horizontal to halfway close to vertical in the morning, until the moment I lay my weary head down to sleep at night.  Ugh.  And what is it with the secret society of women who have borne children, that they never initiate their childless sisters into the horrors of hanging over ceramic from dawn to dusk?  I’m amazed that the world is as over-populated as it is – I can’t imagine why you’d willingly go through this more than once (even with the Australian $5,000 baby bonus and exhortations to have ‘one for you, one for Australia’!!)
Ah well, this too shall pass . . . . x