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
The Artwork of the Forest Floor
Well, not art, exactly. It is through these structures of synapses in compound webs that a forest thinks. Balance is all. Colour too. And look how a random imbalance thrusts the energy […]
No Mulch or Tillage on This Soil, Please
A living skin, however, is what the climate of the grasslands east of the coastal stratovolcanoes calls for. Anything else is quite the ongoing struggle. Whew. Save your back, eh!
Birth and Life in the Grasslands
In the grasslands of the intermountain west, a seed doesn’t need to be planted in the soil. It falls into a crack in the living skin of the earth, which grows over […]
The Hidden Water of the Grasslands
A grassland slope… Big Bar Esker (An Esker is a river that ran upside down beneath glacial ice.) Flowers in Big Bar Lake. Grassland ground up on the esker… That’s not […]
Amazing Grassland
I want to show you something amazing. This is the bunchgrass that made the West, and these are the deer that graze it. The grass looks brown, but that’s just the water-gathering stalks […]
The Lungs of the Earth
Bunchgrass defines the grasslands of the intermontane west. It is not, however, the main story here. It is only the canopy forest. The real grassland is here. It is far older. It lies […]
A Revolving Botanical Garden
Today, I am proud to be a guest on the website, My Botanical Garden. I hope that my explorations in knowing the land by walking it daily, camera in hand, will bring the […]
Life Raft for the Grasslands
Can you imagine drowning on dry land? It happens. On the grasslands, the difference between breathing and drowning is so slight. For instance, at a height of 860 metres, after a day […]
