Ice dropped a stone two miles to its bed. Lichen came. It’s still here. Grass came. It’s still here. Trees have come and gone how many times with fire and wind? Two hundred? Five […]
The Ice Age is Still Here
Growing Food Without Water in the Hot Okanagan
Well, it’s dry, eh. And hot. Whew. This is 9:30 A.M. The afternoon was 38. (That’s 100 for you folks down south.) Forests are burning up. Smoke everywhere. All the upland water […]
This is How You Make Bread and French Fries
First, you take the shrub steppe of the lower Snake River. Then you add petroleum-based fertilizer (white tank) and water (six deep well pumps). This combination makes bread. It’ll be seeded again in […]
The Problem With Petrochemical Agriculture
It’s too easy to do it wrong. View of Spallumcheen Farm from Swan Lake A 10,000-year-old lakebed gets thrown up into the wind while boaters get ready to be pulled around […]
Persian Music for the Coldest Night
Last night, the frost stayed away on this spring-two-weeks-too soon. The apricots are waiting for bees that are too cold to fly. Thanks, everyone, for your prayers. Tonight, though, is April 1, and […]
Okanagan Rhododendrons and Climate Change
In the Okanagan Valley, rhododendrons, so glorious in the rain forests on the Pacific Coast, and so frost tender, grow at elevations between 3,000 and 5,000 feet, in moose swamps of black spruce, alder, […]
Snow on the Apple Factory
When the Okanagan Valley was a grassland, it was cold in the winter. The grass stretched up to the high country forests. In the valley floor, orchards were planted, then cities, and […]
Oh, Grass, My Beautiful One!
Grasses are the children of a warming earth, and this is their season. I’ve been talking of science lately, but a science based in poetry and in ancient earth knowledge, so I thought today, […]
The Earth is Dying (And Not Because of Global Warming)
I went up the hill, and I found one sagebrush buttercup. Take a look, so you’ll be present in this scene. It’s important. It’s about the state of the earth and the state […]
Canada: Ideology Gone Bad
Ideology is an Invasive Weed (Part Two) In cold post-glacial lakes there are no weeds. The weeds grow in wetlands draining into the shore. In Canada’s version of the Okanagan Valley, it’s […]
Okanagan Okanogan 