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
Irrigation the Other Way
Rather than pumps and pipes and all those expensive systems, why not just lay out the land in flats and catch the snow? Because the effects are short-lived? Well, then amplify them. […]
Asters Looking Out for Each Other
In the very place where big sage (an aster) … … makes a sun of heat in the winter and melts the snow (bringing on summer two months early) … … … […]
What if History Were Not Over? I Mean, for the Kids’ Sake
History is the study of what has happened in the past. But what if the Big Sage below, weighted with snow, were history instead? There comes a point where the inner heat […]
Hair is Great Stuff: A Coiffure Guide for a Day in the Grass
Look at this stag horn sumac, hairy as all get out… hairy through the winter to reflect the winter sun and prevent scald and drying out … …and hairy in the […]
Big Sage At the Centre of the Universe
Big sage does her thing in the winter. It would be wrong, though, to call her a survivor.She makes stuff happen here. She provides shelter for flies in mid-January. The flare out […]
Big Sage Doesn’t Know Autumn
She doesn’t know spring, summer or fall, drought or rain. She just knows the flow within twigs. Her connection with the earth is that sure and self-contained.
The Private Landscapes of the Okanagan Valley
Here’s a healthy stand of bunchgrass, which I showed you a couple days ago. As I mentioned, the Okanagan Valley of the North Eastern Pacific Rim probably looked like this 200 years […]
When Trees are Hills and Hills are Trees
Look how simple these high European landscapes are, how swept by the sea, how chewed by cows, how much the earth has been given over to the sky. Now, compare with the […]
Two Ways of Autumn
The european fern meets the Plateau sage. They enter the cold together. One holds below the ground. One holds in the sky. To both, the cold is nothing. As you can see, […]
