Today, I’d like to show you some water in its living environment and some crazy water. First, living water: That’s mock orange, doing its thing. Home to deer, porcupines, bears, lazuli buntings, […]
Crazy Okanagan Water
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 […]
Global Warming, Indigenous Culture and Industrial Nature
Please, forget carbon dioxide for just a minute, if you can. It’s a symptom, not a cause. There is worse. Nature in Canada This mule deer doe is trapped by fences on […]
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 Short History of Whiteness in Cascadia
It’s not a physical thing. Apricot in Her White Gown White is a tricky, racial word. Here’s a small piece of a meditation on it from my book in progress, Commonage: The […]
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.
Apples Make Their Own Heat
Here’s my Spigold opening up last week. Note how the sun drew the leaves out quickly, but the flowers take their time, drawn out more slowly by the heat their fur traps […]
Okanagan Okanogan 