The tiger lily is native to china. In China, the roots are eaten like potatoes. The Columbia lily is native to Cascadia. Source. So, that makes an interesting confluence of cultures possible. […]
Tiger Lilies: a Bridge Between Worlds
What Colour is Big Sagebrush?
Great Basin Sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata), a member of the aster family, rolls across the hills of my country. You could say that where it is home so am I. Not just the […]
Becoming the Garden
There’s music, mathematics, and this: Three things that are one, yet are culturally separate. It is left for poets, I suppose, to bring them together in temporary assemblages, but that seems to […]
Speed Gardening!
One of my neighbours up the hill built a house a couple months back. Garden is in already!
Bees of the Earth, Flowers of the Air
The double-flowered plum my father planted to give away to friends has found a home here, while he has gone to sea forever. After two years, she has a visitor! I like […]
Dandelion Swan Song
Aren’t the orchards pretty in the springtime, with their quaint tractor wobble reminiscent of human fragility and everything? You, too, can achieve this effect on your own yard. These babies will […]
The Many Faces of Smúkwaʔxn, or The Birth of the Sun
Arrow-Leafed balsam root (smúkwaʔxn) has her private moments. Here, she is bringing a crop of suns out of the earth. Smúkwaʔxn has her public moments, too. The suns are mature a couple days […]
Helping the Bees
Here is the local crowd in the pussy willow down the road at 2 pm yesterday. Bees, wild and domestic. Big honey bees, small solitary bees, and even a fly or two. […]
Yellow Bells Arrive
Once an important food crop, yellow bells are now rare, yet continue to mark the exchange of water and heat in the soil and to mark what is still possible for renewal […]
How to Make a City Indigenous, Even if You’re Lazy, Eh
Let’s go downtown as if we lived here. Let’s look at Canada through the lens of the story it tells in the Syilx illahie (illahie is Pacific Slope trade jargon for “story” […]
