Imagine being a human, and witnessing this. Just a group of weeds about to go to seed and spread. No, actually. Look again at the orchard fencing in behind. These are weeds […]
Once Again with Dandelions
When a Weed is More than a Weed
Dandelions were brought by the earliest settlers to the Pacific Northwest, as food and medicinal plants for gardens. They escaped. Earthworms were also brought by European settlers. Curiously, settler culture now encourages […]
The Pointlessness of Herbicides, or For the Love of Laziness
Herbicides are drugs for the mind. Here’s what a family down the road has done to give themselves a fix, and to take care of the Earth’s pesky problem of being alive […]
Never Trust Electronic Communication
So, I phoned ahead, right, and asked for a strip of land to be tilled for my baby trees. What I didn’t know was that there was a 3/4″-thick piece of rebar […]
Come to My Cascadia Show at the Kelowna Library, January 30th at 5:30 pm.
Cascadia: The Once and Future Utopia I’ve been hard at work, putting ten years of explorations of Cascadia into a beautiful presentation. It is an honour to be asked by Okanagan Express […]
Tiger Lilies: a Bridge Between Worlds
The tiger lily is native to china. In China, the roots are eaten like potatoes. The Columbia lily is native to Cascadia. Source. So, that makes an interesting confluence of cultures possible. […]
Our Children Have the Right to Be Raised by a Living Environment
Abstraction can be our enemy. Even concrete is better for the planet… … than this stuff. Nothing Growing in this Abandoned Pile of “Composted” mulch Every dandelion knows that. Conservation of water […]
The Red Shift of the Sun on Earth
As the sun nears the horizon, the grassland reveals itself. Note the shift of colours towards red. That’s largely because cheatgrass, which has now gone to seed, dominates for a few weeks, […]
Self-Sown Gardens, Early Spring Gardens and Beautiful Lettuce
A garden can sow itself. Wasps will love you, and eat all kinds of pests in the process, and the birds, oh, my. The gold finches adore lettuce-gone-to-seed. And orach, too. Well, […]
How to Make a City Indigenous, Even if You’re Lazy, Eh
Let’s go downtown as if we lived here. Let’s look at Canada through the lens of the story it tells in the Syilx illahie (illahie is Pacific Slope trade jargon for “story” […]
