Rock gardening is the purest form of gardening in the Okanagan.
It’s native to this place, and very Zen. That makes sense for rock that started off in Japan and wandered here across the Pacific.
It used to be practiced by gardeners everywhere. This is the art form I grew up with in this place, back before university culture taught us that art was something else. Rock gardens were the thing, before our cultures were broken by the diasporas that began in the 1980s. You had to work with the earth to make them grow. You had to think like a painter and a monk.
That was the Okanagan. Up on the mountain it still is.
It’s no surprise, though, is it, that when volcanic rock grows, it flowers red, and its blooms are surrounded by the ash of the other spring that began in October and is now in its mid-summer drought, in April!
Don’t you think it’s time to put down your roots into native stone?
Categories: Arts, Earth, flower gardening, Gaia, landscaping, Nature Photography, Okanagan Art
Okanagan Okanogan 
this is, again, observant and utterly lovely- the part about the second spring, the blooming red, the putting your roots down into rock. Thank you. Ruth Anderson Donovan artswrite@gmail.com
PS I am sending a comment this way, since commenting in WordPress involves signing in, and yet another password and user name, and there is often not a place to comment on Facebook. Look forward to hearing you with Kelly in the valley later this month in Edmonton. Ruth
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Thanks, Ruth! I really enjoyed posting this one. I found a place in which 6 weeks of spring blooms were all out at once… a magical, shelter slope!
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