This is a story of a beautiful wild bee. It is also the story of a beautiful wild flower that she adores. First, the flower. In a few spots on the grasslands […]
Neon Green Bee
Why Did the Snake Cross the Road?
Answer: to get cool in the remains of yesterday’s rain! Bull Snake on a Hot Afternoon, Chilling Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Yeah, but this is a tractor road linking two sections of a vineyard, and […]
Why Did the Turtle Cross the Road?
I met a beautiful person yesterday evening, in the north part of town. Here is half of her habitat in an unreasonably wet year … BX Creek just south of Swan Lake […]
Grafting: Slow Brewing a Bottle of True Apple Cider
Sometimes, the long view is best. Thinking it would be great to knock back a cold bottle of apple cider five years from now, I’ve laid the foundation for it. If you’ve […]
The Importance of Colour
Oh, the ironies. A girl spends thousands of generations evolving the capacity to change colour to match the shades of individual grassland flowers, and then? Well, they die, and weeds take their […]
Prickly Pear Cactus
And today we stop breathing. Once upon a time, there was a prickly pear cactus. It lived high up on a warm rock outcropping in a cold place, and was as happy […]
Needle-and-Thread Grass
Today, just a little love song for needle-and-thread grass, a grass so thin that it nearly vanishes when the light burns through it. Not for needle-and-thread grass a story of the wind. […]
Weeds and Water and Wilderness
For a few weeks, I’ve booted around vineyards from the Rhone to Mosel, trying to get a glimpse of the art of farming, as it was practiced when it was still a […]
Green Wine
A wine starts long before it hits the chemist’s test tube. In fact, it starts out something like this … Baco Noir Grapes in the Okanagan At this early stage of their […]
Roman Water Today
This is a story about water. It begins a long time ago, as some stories do. Back then, the rain fell, as rain does, and the Celts were making wine out of […]
Okanagan Okanogan 