Warnings

The cherry trees look pretty ugly right now. The younger leaves are curled and sticky, blackened with aphids that drip honeydew, weakening the trees and making a mess everywhere. They are however an abundant source of food for ladybird larvae and there are hundreds of them on every tree. I predict that there will be a plague of ladybirds this year. It happened a while ago and people were complaining about the clouds of insects that seemed to manage to get everywhere.

Populations in general have tendencies to surge in the good times and then decline as resources become scarce or as disease takes it's toll allowing the strongest and fittest to survive. Of course this is a part of the driving mechanism of evolution and all species are subject to it.

The human population is exponentially increasing but there is evidence to suggest that overall there is an inverse relationship between intelligence and family size. Certain groups are increasing in size more than others, and this gives some cause for concern. There are Muslims in France who are claiming that within 20 years that France will be a Muslim country. The same thing is creeping insidiously into most European countries and the prospect is very scary. At the moment there is a freedom within the the western world to think for oneself unless you are born into a religious society. Being a Muslim removes that freedom to think and a society that is led by the Mullahs can only move backwards. Within decades we too could be executing our children, stoning our women and building Mosques rather than feeding the poor and basing our lives on a medieval text that advocates a barbaric way of life and murders those who leave or disagree with them. An unthinking population will be so much easier to lead and this is what has been the basis of all the major organised religions, all of which have their origins in the middle east, a region that is and always has been at war with itself.

The ladybirds that have infested my garden are most likely Harlequin ladybirds - a foreign species. They are bigger and stronger than the native varieties and better able to compete for resources. It is likely that within a few generations that the natives will become a small minority or even die out.