Feed aggregator
Fruit and veg straight from the field
Hay-on-Wye, Powys Market town enjoys a renaissance of home produce picked the day before with no chilled storage in sight
Joe at the market garden called 100% Hay is always smiley, but this market day morning he’s looking especially chirpy. The sun is shining, customers are queuing, and the full bounty of summer is weighing heavy on his stall.
Laid out beside his year-round staples – potatoes, garlic, onions and chard – are boxes of summer fruit: red and yellow raspberries, deep purple blackcurrants, blush-red strawberries. Out of adjacent boxes spill the season’s first tomatoes and courgettes.
Continue reading...Hinkley Point: EDF's UK boss 'confident' of go ahead
Batteries and software energise renewables
New Yorkers flock to foul flower
The amphibious, fluffy, golden-bellied Rakali
Drop in little terns numbers concerns RSPB
Plastic bag use plummets in England
England's plastic bag usage drops 85% since 5p charge introduced
Number of single-use bags handed out dropped to 500m in first six months since charge, compared with 7bn the previous year
The number of single-use plastic bags used by shoppers in England has plummeted by more than 85% after the introduction of a 5p charge last October, early figures suggest.
More than 7bn bags were handed out by seven main supermarkets in the year before the charge, but this figure plummeted to slightly more than 500m in the first six months after the charge was introduced, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said.
Continue reading...Heavy lifting
'Worse than one thousand pukes': fetid corpse flower overwhelms New York
One of the world’s largest flowers, Amorphophallus titanum takes around a decade to bloom and promptly dies two days later in a foul-smelling crescendo
Visitors crowded the New York botanical garden in the Bronx and began to sniff. On a rainy Friday morning, they traveled en masse to witness one of the world’s largest and smelliest flowers – Amorphophallus titanum, also known as the corpse flower. It’s the first time the flower, which takes around a decade to bloom and then dies after 24-36 hours, has appeared in the city since 1939.
“It smells like lettuce when you take it out of the bag,” a woman yelled from the crowd of onlookers in the Enid A Haupt conservatory. “It smells like the aquarium. Like the penguin enclosure,” another added. The odor came in waves as onlookers jostled for the best spot to take photos and selfies with the giant flower. Some left holding their noses.
Continue reading...Week in wildlife - in pictures
Stork-billed kingfishers and baby rhinos are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world
Continue reading...Fuels of the future
Lava pictures from 'smiling' Hawaiian Kilauea volcano eruption
Chernobyl could be reinvented as a solar farm, says Ukraine
Ministers create presentation to show how idle land around nuclear disaster site can be used to produce renewable energy
The contaminated nuclear wasteland around Chernobyl could be turned into one of the world’s largest solar farms, producing nearly a third of the electricity that the stricken plant generated at its height 30 years ago, according to the Ukrainian government.
In a presentation sent to major banks and seen by the Guardian, 6,000 hectares of “idle” land in Chernobyl’s 1,000 square km exclusion zone, which is considered too dangerous for people to live in or farm, could be turned to solar, biogas and heat and power generation.
Continue reading...Australia plans new co-ordinates to fix sat-nav gap
Civic pride 'can help sustain urban biodiversity'
Large Abelisaurus Dinosaur dinosaur footprint found in Bolivia
Thorn tree tangle of pagans and poets
Langley Bush, Cambridgeshire A bronze age grave, Roman shrine, gibbet mound, parish marker, gypsy haunt - centuries of decisions and deaths right here
Odd, the durable significance of some places. You can understand a mountain or cliff or sprawling forest – places that awe the eye on the ground, horizon or map. More enigmatic are the little places. Slid away, unremarkable but exquisite in appearance or legacy, for reasons frequently forgotten but strangely lingering.
This one, historically, a bronze age grave, then Roman shrine, then outdoor court, place of execution, parish marker, gypsy haunt, poet’s muse. Today, the name of a road and the title of a plaque. This is Langley Bush, lost in a field near Peterborough.
Continue reading...Port Augusta is at centre of our renewable transition – now isn’t the time to turn back
Scientists endure extreme Antarctic temperatures to extract ice cores – video
This footage from the Antarctic summer of 2007-08 shows how Australian scientists endure extreme conditions to drill ice cores from Antarctica’s Law Dome area. Law Dome is a spot in eastern Antarctica where scientists have been drilling to gather historic climate datat. New research using Law Dome ice cores suggests the world might be able to burn less fossil fuels than previously thought
Continue reading...