In an image-driven culture, gardening is symbolic. It fills the social role of display. Like clothing or a tan or a tattoo. The key is to fill the social role while protecting […]
Gardening is Not Real
This is Not a War
Grass springs. up. If you come along and eat it, it springs up again. That’s because its regenerative life is under the ground, in rhizomes, sods, roots and seeds. When grass needs […]
When a Weed is More than a Weed
Dandelions were brought by the earliest settlers to the Pacific Northwest, as food and medicinal plants for gardens. They escaped. Earthworms were also brought by European settlers. Curiously, settler culture now encourages […]
The Pointlessness of Herbicides, or For the Love of Laziness
Herbicides are drugs for the mind. Here’s what a family down the road has done to give themselves a fix, and to take care of the Earth’s pesky problem of being alive […]
Never Trust Electronic Communication
So, I phoned ahead, right, and asked for a strip of land to be tilled for my baby trees. What I didn’t know was that there was a 3/4″-thick piece of rebar […]
Making Heat and Harvesting Cold: If You Don’t Like the Season, Change it
Let’s revisit an image from a few days back, in which I showed how heat and cold met in a deer trail and a red medicine willow, not to mention a tangle […]
The Forgiving Earth
The kids learn the ideals of society. Or, better put, the parents try to teach them. But the Earth has its way, and even the lawnmowers succumb to her greater power. Eventually. […]
Noxious Weeds? Don’t be Silly.
The scotch thistle is listed as a noxious weed in the Okanagan. The image below shows it after the first year of is growth. Now it’s ready to grow a tall stalk. […]
The Price for Speaking of the Land in English
Lines, flows, and waves crossing points of measurement or data are primary in contemporary understandings of language. The thought that goes from one point to another and makes a point, even wave […]
Hope for the Earth: Settler Lessons from the Voles
The bunches grass bunches up. With the help of snow, it mounds. We could call it mound grass. We could call it a village. Note the vole highway in the lower centre […]
Okanagan Okanogan 