At the time of year when the first flowers sport stinkbugs … … and the aspens put out their first leaves, untouched yet by leaf-ming worms… … and cedar bugs frisk about […]
Northern Pocket Gopher Makes the World
It’s Slowwwwww Salad Time!
I asked the garden what was for dinner 2 nights ago. She was very kind. Some of these I planted a year ago, they went to seed, and came through the snow […]
Joy in the Week of Bees and Wind
When the wind is a bee. Filbert catkins, waiting for the wind. When a bee is the wind. Well, a wasp, but what a tiny beauty with her fur stole! […]
Entering the Wild
I tell ya, have a look. Life forms growing wild. Pine, alfalfa, big sage, red dogwood. All tangled. Wild. Or maybe not. Have a gander at the image below. Just a half […]
The Dry Dry Earth of Home
It would be nice to think of water soaking into the soil, and all that ground below us being recharged with rain and draining down to the lake and cycling around. The […]
Sweet Apricot Kernels
Move over California, with your water-hungry almonds. 4.5 litres of water to grow one almond? Ridiculous! We have apricots with sweet kernels here in the north, that can grow in the shrub […]
How to Beat Global Warming By Turning the Grasslands Upside Down
Water has a surface tension. It divides light into bands of energy. It keeps some and sends more away, but not evenly. So does mullein. In mullein’s case, it covers its pulpy, […]
Fall Rain in the Grasslands
So, it rains, right. 35 centimetres of snow have already melted. Now the rain. Rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain. And the sun. Melting stuff, even through the clouds of rain. So, […]
Imagine the Technological Possibilities!
Imagine if you could regulate heat loss and roof melting simply by switching from a flat roof to a roof covered in river rock, or a lightweight approximation of it. The insulating […]
Practical Ways to Re-Indigenize the Grasslands. Really.
Two days ago, I suggested that the former grassland hillsides of the Okanagan Valley (now large, private expanses of unproductive and water-wasting weeds), an area at least equal to the 100s of […]
Okanagan Okanogan 