I went for a long hike through the fire that fried the hills a couple weeks ago, to see how things are getting along, and was struck at how foreign fire has […]
Gardening With Fire (and Spiders, too)
Green Zebra!
Green zebra tomatoes are my friends. They taste like a cucumber-tomato salad, no cucumbers necessary. Slice them up on a plate and they look like cucumbers. Beautiful. Green Zebra Tomatoes Getting Ready […]
Bad Cows
Yesterday, native species and fire. Today, imported species and fire. And shame. First, California Quail. Brought here so that men can go out hunting. Men hunt moose now, up north, so the […]
Fire and Ants
Remember that fire? Grass burnt to the end of its story a couple weeks back? Only living thing left a few grasshoppers deep into the first stage of the grieving process and soon […]
Black Krim Tomato
Welcome to the Black Krim tomato. Think of it as self-marinating. Put that bottle of balsamic vinegar away. That stuff was invented to make Best Boy tomatoes taste like Black Krims. Black […]
Six Month Tomato Salad
Six months ago, I dreamed of a salad. I planted pink, yellow, red, RED, orange, black, brown, roma, cherry, and green tomatoes, and, oh my. Here is the salad almost in its […]
Secret Weapon in the War Against the Weeds
Meet your darkest enemy. This plant is the end of any grassland it gets a hold in. Pretty soon, huge areas of grass are useless for anything, even to walk through. The […]
Writing on Rock
Writing about the culture that has come out of aboriginal-settler relationships in what is sometimes called the Late West, is a bit like peeling a layer off an onion, and there’s another […]
The Other Side of the Coin, or Where Did All the Indians Go?
One thing about life in the Still Wild West is that there are always multiple stories. For example, yesterday I told a story about my vision of the land, which unites both aboriginal […]
Visions of Earth and Sky
Been thinking. Putting two and two together. Thinking, “Some things are so obvious that you can’t see them for a long, long time, and then you see them and you think, whoosh, […]
Okanagan Okanogan 