A friend asked how I knew when my green zebra tomatoes were ripe, when I’d never grown them before and they were green when they began and green when they ended. Good […]
Ripening the Sun
Surely This is the Life!
Billions are spent to send men to the moon. Now the talk is of Mars. Telescopes are trained on space to find distant planets, orbiting distant stars, that are capable of sustaining […]
Water From Rock
This is a fairly typical bit of vineyard in Germany’s Mosel Valley. Yes, grapes root in this stuff. It’s a good thing there’s lots of rain and it doesn’t get ridiculously cold. […]
Wine, War, and Peace
So, the Romans went north and, well built hilltop forts, actually. And planted grapes, from Egypt, and then … well, you know, they married the local girls and never left. Welcome to […]
Aliens Among Us
How thin is the world … Apple Orchard Under the May Sky In the 236,513,210,000,000,0000,000,000,000 metres from one side of the universe to the other, these apple trees take up 2 metres of […]
Many Worlds
Ever since Apollo astronauts sent back a picture of the blue earth hanging in space, it has been easy to imagine the earth as a drop of water in the emptiness: tiny, […]
Creatures of Light
Some people try to define life. It’s a little bit like locking yourself in a library stacked with millions of volumes of texts. The fluorescent lights hum. The electrically-disturbed atmosphere makes your […]
Fusion Reactor Update, Really
Last year, I built myself a nuclear fusion reactor, on the principle that the sun is a really great one but that its reactions are only completed when they strike the earth […]
Soil Atmosphere and Eternity
Plants are creatures of light. They live in the air, eat light photons, and give off oxygen, yet strangely the dimmer the light they’re nibbling on the more efficient their photosynthesis becomes. […]
The Art of the Palette
Art can be made out of land in many ways. One is to build a highway. These art projects often are a form of politics. Take the highways of Eastern Washington, for […]
Okanagan Okanogan 