When the big (failed) subdivision was put in on the slope above my house, the road fill was seeded with blue bunch wheatgrass, the signature grass of this grassland. Slowly some big […]
Sustaining the Okanagan 12: Beauty and the Bees
Sustaining the Okanagan 11: Weaving Water to Combat Desertification
I know, I know, Chinese elms are a weed. They grow well here, though. Their flowers feed spring birds. In turn, those flowers have a zillion seeds … … and pop up […]
Sustaining the Okanagan 10: 24 Apple Pies
We know who makes the best summer apple pies. Here she is, the summer pie maker. She was born in Russia 220 years ago. Look how young she looks in my garden. Here […]
Sustaining the Okanagan 9: 1 Hour, 42 Jars
Keep your eyes open. Oregon Grape, Okanagan Lake Shore Ripe when the stems turn red. Spend an hour. Go to the kitchen. Soon you will have 30 Jars of jelly and 12 […]
Giving the Children Water: The Bigger Educational Picture
Last night, I wrote about the benefits of environmental transformation that could come through the simple mechanism of attaching a wetland to every school in the Okanagan. It’s worth elaborating on, because […]
Sustaining the Okanagan 8: Give the Children Water
Schools aren’t classrooms. Classrooms are courses within schools. Putting children in classrooms teaches them about classification and abstraction, how to think in groups and how to put their words into sentences. It is […]
Sustaining the Okanagan 7: Going Lemonless, Mmmmm
Every day trucks from Mexico, California, Texas, Arizona, Florida and no doubt all sorts of other places with names and histories of their own drive north full of lemons for the houses […]
The Sustainable Okanagan 6: Let’s Go Nuts
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 […]
Ending the Fraser War
This is the fifth in a series of archived posts on building a sustainable Okanagan together. This one is about water. And fish. And property rights. Today we’re at Mud Lake. It’s also called Rosemond […]
Don’t Be a Settler!
Shrimp skeletons on Okanagan Lake, eh. The little buggers were introduced to the lake over 40 years ago. Pretty sci-fi. Don’t worry. That sand is imported too. Oh, and the water? Aha. […]
Okanagan Okanogan 