The British Columbia Agricultural Land Reserve Commission, created to protect agricultural land from development, has just approved the transformation of 10 acres of agricultural land on the Okanagan College Property in Vernon […]
Playing with Land
Volcanic Marmot City
Yesterday, I showed you the photos of my afternoon in the vole gardens high above Okanagan Landing. If you’ll recall, the voles created a rich garden of all their favourite plants, in […]
The Problem with Watersheds
Human engineering rearranges landscapes to make water flow. This is a curious thing when a landscape is renowned for being short of water. Since the human carrying capacity of the Okanagan has […]
Brown Beauty
Back before 1920, watercolour painters used to paint landscapes to portray previously unnoticed colours they had seen in nature. That was the age in which the dominant European agricultural images of the […]
Cool Water Tech
These bunchgrass individuals are growing on almost bare stone, high on a slope three hundred metres above the valley floor and little troubled by weeds. This is the cloud zone that has […]
Leisure Economy or Value Added Economy?
In the Okanagan, the economy is largely built around real estate development, which is built around people playing on water. Well, sort of: The Leisure Economy in November A summer culture waiting […]
What Season is This, Anyway?
Spring, of course! Take a look. Mid-November, and Spring Has Sprung in the North Okanagan A day before, these new weeds were sitting under three inches of snow. The snow will be […]
Financial Matters
Up in the British Columbian Okanagan, we have just come through a civic election. Throughout the valley, the call was heard for responsible civic management, financial audits, and streamlining local governmental regulations […]
Moving Borders
According to the old European story of Demeter and her daughter Persephone, this is the time of the year when the maiden earth descends to spend half a year with her husband […]
Turtles
North America was renamed Turtle Island by the poet Gary Snyder, as a gesture of respect to the aboriginal cultures of North America. The term originated with the Iroquois tale of the […]
Okanagan Okanogan 