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 […]
Active Space and Negative Space
The Turtle of Turtle Ridge
At some point, many years ago, someone built a turtle on Turtle Ridge, between Head of the Lake (yes, a turtle head) and Turtle Mountain, and left it for us to find […]
Cinnamon Bear in the Sagebrush
I thought we’d go and check out the wetland just behind the top of the hill today, and see if the wet spring had put water in it. It has been dry […]
How to Turn the Okanagan Into a Desert
I thought at first this bunchgrass was in such beautiful shape this spring because of a winter of voles fertilizing it while nesting in its thatch. Then I realized that it hasn’t […]
Making Heat and Harvesting Cold: If You Don’t Like the Season, Change it
Let’s revisit an image from a few days back, in which I showed how heat and cold met in a deer trail and a red medicine willow, not to mention a tangle […]
The Difference Between Coyotes and Humans
Check out what Sen’klip nabbed and dropped along his trail. Lovely! Check out what farming looks like in the Okanagan today. Here’s a farmer at work on his farm road in Bella […]
Weeds, Nature, Erosion and Hope. With a Fly, too.
Plants don’t grow in dirt. Well, maybe snow buckwheat. The old glacial river eddy (above) high above Priest Valley had its gravel bed stripped away fifteen years ago. So far, nothing has […]
What a Great Year for Bees!
Look what they’d done to the road cut above the hill. They’ve absolutely tilled it, digging nests. I my eight years walking this hill, I’ve never seen anything like it. Go, team! […]
Beauty and the Feast
The mountains have bloomed for Easter. Beautiful Arrow-leafed Balsam Root! Beats me why the whole city doesn’t shut down and take to the hills. And yet, for all that gorgeous display, the […]
Sagebrush Shares Her Water and Builds a World
Have a look at this sage brush: Like all plants, she gathers most of her water from the top surface of the soil, where it is most quickly lost to the dry […]
