Laughter in a barren land

Nature has its own ways of protesting

Nature under attack

For the last 10 years I have taken my dogs (six down to three) to the nearest place where they can run free in relative safety. Until two years ago, it looked like this:

Now it looks like this:

A less than ideal place to see nature in its full glory.

There remains one path of a few hundred meters where the vegetation is as it was.

Lush in the rainy season, this morning not so verdant

The path starts from one rubbish dump and finishes in another:

Nature fights back

Nature is resilient, though, and there are still a few plants and creatures to remind me how lucky we are to have them with us.

There is a sea of these Clerodendrums at the moment. They're not only elegant to look at but they have the most alluring scent of any plant I know. If there was ever a perfume like it, I would be caught hook line and sinker. I've just learned that they practise sequential hermaphroditism - male one day, and female the next. Relieved that when my ancestors were in the evolutionary queue, one of them didn’t think that would be a good idea.

Yesterday I caught sight of this beauty- Lethe europa niladana the Bamboo Treebrown and these Uraniid moths are always around in the rainy season. Oh, and sometimes you come across things that I guess are in a different category of nature.

Plenty of richly coloured leaves to look at in the early morning sun

And there are always birds calling- these White crested laughingthrushes are regulars. I don't know if they're laughing, celebrating or squabbling but it's a joyful sound and I imagine they're sticking their collective fingers up to the developer who's wreaked such destruction all around.