So, on the grasslands, blue green algae (part of this healthy soil crust in the Cariboo) pulls nitrogen from the sky and makes it available to plants. So does the lichen on […]
Balancing the Atmosphere With Algae
Communicating With Deer
Here’s the walking trail above the orchards west of my house in late winter. Notice how the path is as wide as a road, is packed down from human traffic, and is […]
Things Are, Well, Things
I’ve been exploring the writing of the 20th Century German philosopher Martin Heidegger, who wrote peculiar philosophy that was simple in German and nonsensical in any other language, and even though it […]
Indigenous Trees and Settler Trees
Here’s an indigenous fruit tree, a black hawthorn in bloom on the banks of the Shuswap River. And here’s an apple tree, a species brought by settlers 160 years ago. Both are […]
Everybody Needs a Friend
This Macintosh apple tree at Splatsin is struggling out of an infection of Horsehair Canker, with her nurses: two currant bushes (you can spot the one behind). It’s harder to spot the […]
One Hundred Years
A hundred years ago, it was the modern fashion in the US Okanogan to train two trunks from every apple root, at a narrow angle to each other. The practice died out […]
Time to Plant the 2023 Okanagan Garden
Yup. These lovely scallions were planted in 2019, and overwintered twice. The white onions were mature a month ago, as you can perhaps see, but the red onions are perfect right now. […]
Hazelnut-Cherry Hybrid
So, this is what you do. Plant a cherry tree. Leave it or fifty years. Over time, it is fifty feet high, and her daughters have formed a grove, around her. They […]
How People Learned to Stay Still: a Story Old and New
From many, one. From one, many. Just not all at once. Here is Siya? blooming: a cluster of white-petalled flowers catching the eye because so many are close together. Not all bloom […]
Active Space and Negative Space
The sagebrush on the Bella Vista Hills in the North Okanagan creates an active space, which defines the space around it as negative space, or space without sagebrush! It is quite pushy […]
