I know, I know, Chinese elms are a weed. They grow well here, though. Their flowers feed spring birds. In turn, those flowers have a zillion seeds … … and pop up […]
Sustaining the Okanagan 11: Weaving Water to Combat Desertification
Sustaining the Okanagan 10: 24 Apple Pies
We know who makes the best summer apple pies. Here she is, the summer pie maker. She was born in Russia 220 years ago. Look how young she looks in my garden. Here […]
Light and Shadow Weaving the Land
Isn’t it fine to climb out of the sedges of the wetlands … … and the bunchgrasses of the drylands just above them… … into the pine grass high up …. … […]
Camouflage is the Wrong Word
Camouflage is the military art of concealment. As a word it has been back-engineered to apply to the actions of animals, like the toad below. The toad is not concealing itself, though. […]
Sustaining the Okanagan 9: 1 Hour, 42 Jars
Keep your eyes open. Oregon Grape, Okanagan Lake Shore Ripe when the stems turn red. Spend an hour. Go to the kitchen. Soon you will have 30 Jars of jelly and 12 […]
The Great Divide and the Great Gift
Here’s where the grasslands divide in two. The river in the foreground is the Shuswap. That water flows into the Thompson, which flows into the Fraser, which flows into the Salish Sea […]
Giving the Children Water: The Bigger Educational Picture
Last night, I wrote about the benefits of environmental transformation that could come through the simple mechanism of attaching a wetland to every school in the Okanagan. It’s worth elaborating on, because […]
Sustaining the Okanagan 8: Give the Children Water
Schools aren’t classrooms. Classrooms are courses within schools. Putting children in classrooms teaches them about classification and abstraction, how to think in groups and how to put their words into sentences. It is […]
The Gentle Colours of the Grasslands
If you see something darker, chances are it doesn’t belong. Even that alfalfa in the back is being a little garish, isn’t it!
Kelowna: The Inhuman City
At a certain point, when physical and social urban space is continually built out of practical considerations, usually the manipulation of people for purposes of efficiency and budgetary accountability, the city becomes […]
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