Wine is getting expensive these days. A bottle of Okanagan red usually costs upwards of $20. The best stuff goes for over $150. Ouch. Yes, I understand that only so much wine […]
Maréchal Foch: The Forgotten Grape of the Okangan
The Organic Machine
One of my goals for writing Okanagan Okanogan was to collect material and photographs to support a project reimagining the landscape of the Greater Okanagan as a series of organic and physical […]
Volcanic Marmot City
Yesterday, I showed you the photos of my afternoon in the vole gardens high above Okanagan Landing. If you’ll recall, the voles created a rich garden of all their favourite plants, in […]
Amazing Vole Gardens
If you’re going to plant a garden, it’s a good idea to dig around and till the soil a bit first. Here’s a meadow vole doing just that, affectionately imaged by the […]
The Problem with Watersheds
Human engineering rearranges landscapes to make water flow. This is a curious thing when a landscape is renowned for being short of water. Since the human carrying capacity of the Okanagan has […]
Brown Beauty
Back before 1920, watercolour painters used to paint landscapes to portray previously unnoticed colours they had seen in nature. That was the age in which the dominant European agricultural images of the […]
Cool Water Tech
These bunchgrass individuals are growing on almost bare stone, high on a slope three hundred metres above the valley floor and little troubled by weeds. This is the cloud zone that has […]
Coyote Hunting
I ran into an old friend today, high on the hill. First sign, here: Coyote and His Family at 4000 Feet To him, the valley is a river of light. He goes […]
What is a Museum For?
Perhaps a museum is for preserving valuable cultural artifacts of more than personal significance and which might otherwise not be available for purposes of public renewal. Things like this: Pumphouse on the […]
Ice Wine and a Riesling Fit for Kings
Ice wine and Riesling are both cold climate wines. For a riesling, let’s look at Cedar Creek, in Okanagan Mission. For ice wine, let’s go to the far north, in Vernon. If anything […]
Okanagan Okanogan 