This beautiful valley is running out of water. There are many culprits, and not all of them the usual suspects. Today, I’d like to talk about one small solution, which entails using […]
Sprouting a Future Without Water
For the Love of Weeds
There is a group of plants that produce food, require little or no irrigation, little care, and are open to be shared by human and animal grazers. They are called weeds. They […]
Gardening With Fire (and Spiders, too)
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
Wild Orchards and Fenced Orchards
Like a pack of young red-tailed hawks circling over and over above a subdivision full of cats and mice, house finches, California Quail and small dogs, I’ve been worrying an idea: it’s […]
Water, Wealth, and Poverty
Here’s what water looks like up in the hills: Wild Saskatoons in Full Fruit, Scotch Creek, Washington Saskatoons were once a major human food source in this area. Notice how the fruit […]
No Wonder This Place is Called Turtle Island
Turtles like water, and they like the land, too. They’re at home in both. That’s a mighty power. They helped created the world from a ball of muddy muck as well. Well […]
White Washing Water
Talk about water, which is a large part of the talk in a near-desert environment, is also talk about people and grass. Here’s a story about that. Last of Washington’s Grass The […]
Okanagan Okanogan 