Hansel in 1935 It begins with a grandfather taking a boy out into the garden. Then comes eight decades (and a bit more) of working with the earth to keep that moment […]
In Memory of Hans Rhenisch, Gardener, 1932-2017
Midsummer Autumn
Celebrate the season! It’s a colour palette for rejoicing. Art without four seasons. Life without four seasons. Life with dozens, often two at the same time, passing through each other like clouds! […]
California Quail in the Rainforest
The ancient salmon forests of the Pacific Coast were felled long ago. Well, most of them. Hoh Some of the lost ones went to houses in Vancouver and Seattle. People still live […]
Lambs Quarters for Dinner
It’s your choice: a bounty better than spinach, or drought. Same rainfall, same soil, same sun, same day, same hour, same tongue, same thirst.
Plastic, Gardens and Drought
The replacement of lawn with gravel to save a rain shadow valley from drought is based on the principle of laying plastic down over the living earth and smothering it so that […]
Who is the Gardener?
I have learned this week what I already knew but had no words for. I am not the gardener in this land, but the garden that the land makes. Needle-and-thread grass makes […]
The Romance of Wine
Maybe we should stop copying the cultural appropriation of old celtic technology, eh, and get real. Pesticides, Vineyards and Tourists on the Rhine Sometimes it’s hard to keep laughing. Just a thought.
A Summer Home for the Family, On Earth and in the Sky
Here we are in a community garden in Stein am Rhein, Switzerland, an old roman fortress, and before that a 4000-year-old settlement where Lake Constance becomes the Rhine. A shaded picnic bench […]
What Kind of a World is This?
A native plant that returns disturbed soil to its natural state and makes most excellent summer-in-a-bottle for those winter days is called a weed? Dandelion and Peach Forever Really, we should be […]
Hello, Oregano!
The first people of spring are the first people of the winter to come. Welcome back! December’s pasta sauce in her first, peppery blush.
Okanagan Okanogan 