Dalmation toadflax is a nasty weed (but pretty) and does nothing in the valley (except get eaten by cows who have eaten all the native plants and be a herbal cure and […]
The End of an Invasive Species, or Evolution in Action
It’s That Time of the Year, Hurry Hurry Hurry
Gather that grass, then fly the wrong way as a decoy. Then fly, fly, fly! Don’t delay. It’s nesting time. Quick, get at ‘er. ~ With thanks to the starlings.
Holding on to Our Water for Dear Life
It’s fun to go out and read the weather by looking down, too. It gives a longer term view. For instance, the really poor shape of the early season cheat grass below […]
Climate, Wild Harvest and Human Life as Environments
More important as a food crop than the pretty yellow bell lily … …is desert parsley. She’s cream-coloured… … with short flower stalks, or tall ones… … or purple, when still half-closed… […]
Invasive Weeds Are Beautiful
I think weeds get a bad rap. I’ve never seen native plants pull this off. Beautiful, really. Enough to inspire for an entire year. Even invasive weeds, like knapweed. Maybe it’s not […]
When Trees are Weeds: Truth and Reconciliation from the Ground Up
Yesterday I started a meditation on classicism, and how the cultures within Canada have some choices, given German experience with the power, failure and abuse of classical models as a means of […]
Beautiful Starlings
Isn’t it a bitter irony that these beautiful birds, starlings, an invasive species here, are called pests and are electrocuted for it by the hundreds of thousands … … by that other […]
A New National Park Reserve for the Okanagan Similkameen?
Here’s my grandfather Bruno Leipe, c. 1963, looking down from above Cawston Creek over the middle Similkameen Valley. This area is part of a proposed National Park Reserve, in partnership with the […]
Slow Glaciers, Cows, Deer, Lichen and Poetry Making a New Hydrology Together
A mysterious rock near the top of the hill. Here’s the hill in the smoke last fall. Looks dry, huh. We’re going up to the top of the bare patch at the […]
How Ecology Got Messed Up
This blog is about walking. Sometimes it’s about walking through myself, which is an environment and peering at stuff. A snake den, I suspect. I’m pretty sure (if I correctly remember the […]
Okanagan Okanogan 