As part of the effort to make the Okanagan sustainable, we should plant filberts. This scrubby and beautiful bush provides a rich harvest of nuts in the fall. Filberts are native here, and […]
The Sustainable Okanagan 6: Let’s Go Nuts
Green Fire
Cheatgrass burns off a whole season’s water at once … in early March. By May, this will be a desert, and this fire will be red. This sagebrush-cheatgrass culture takes the place […]
The Best Fruit Growing Land
The image below shows an old síyaʔ (saskatoon berry) gathering ground in the Thompson River Gorge, across the river from an ancient village site. Notice the advantage of growing fruit this way: no […]
Celtic, Greek and Earth-Based Creativity
Back in the old days that are still alive with us now … The Celtic Alps, over Lac Neuchâtel … people came from the East with the treasure of life … The […]
The Earth Puts Her Roots in the Sky
I want to draw a correspondence today between leaves and soil. I think it’s pretty cool. First, here are some leaves doing just fine without soil. Welcome to mullein. When it finishes […]
Living Soil
Here’s some soil: It’s a series of shelters, which capture water, minerals and heat, and amplify the conditions for light and seed germination, in the warm area in the first millimetres above the […]
The Beauty of Spring in November
In November, in Cascadia, it is springtime, whether you are in the wetlands on an island in the ocean … Oyster Bay, Vancouver Island … or far inland, in the grasslands, where […]
What Do You Call a Photograph When It’s Not Made With Light?
Photography: writing with light. A more anglo-saxon suggestion is sun print. There’s more to them than prints on paper. See that? That snow buckwheat is light written or (im)printed on metamorphic bedrock, or, actually, […]
Teaching Gravity in a 21st Century Classroom
First, two pictures of gravity. I don’t mean the effects of gravity. I mean gravity. Gravity is not mathematics. It’s either here in these pine cones or it doesn’t exist. Water carries […]
When Trees are Weeds
This is an old growth forest full of weeds. The sage brush is the weed … … not the bunch grass. Sagebrush is an indigenous plant, but it comes in a bit thickly when […]
Okanagan Okanogan 