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Yosemite under Orion's gaze

Friday, January 6, 2017

Sawadi ka

We have been getting a lot of rain in Southern California this week but apparently nothing like my friends in Thailand.

Shawn sends these pictures over from Lamai and Kho Tao.



Dry out soon and be safe my friend! At least it's a warm rain, right?

Speaking of Thailand, Ricardo and Plaa are creating a tree, bird and butterfly sanctuary there. Awesome!


I have never visited that fair country. It may happen some day.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...


Seeing this post, I wanted to demur, we are not a big NGO with groundbreaking schemes and ecosystem saving superpowers! Thinking about it, I realized our much more modest project might inspire readers to do something themselves (for a big do gooding organization, readers, I recommend the Nature Conservancy. Maybe Robert would call it the John McCain of conservation organizations).
We want to have a house and workshop center on our property, 'sanctuary' is a conscious by product of these more mundane objectives.
The project is on 4 acres (about 1.75 hectares) of land that was a forest 50 years ago, and then rice fields for decades, and we graded, put in ponds and planted over 200 trees with more to be planted. Instead of all fruit trees for orchards we focused on heritage (popular in the past) indigenous Thai flowering trees. They will be appreciated and propagated to help with them not disappearing as forests disappear and other trees come into fashion for landscaping. Since the trees will be producing copious (manure willing) flowers, and since we will not be spraying poison, butterflies will be attracted and be able to live out their life cycle. Since all these trees have some kind of fruits, mostly small fruits not cultivated for human food, birds will be attracted, feed, and have a place safe from hunting to live and breed. Sharing the beauty of trees and creatures will, we hope, inspire others to do something themselves. So that is what I meant by creating a sanctuary, something that many of you could do, whether in a back yard, balcony, or countryside.
Ricardo and Plaa