Thanks for helping, everyone! My mystery plant from yesterday, the one creeping along the upper shore of Okanagan Lake… … is no mystery. It is cleavers: Cleavers is a sister of coffee, […]
Mystery Solved!
Dogwoods Reveal Their Ancient Healing Secrets
The great medicinal being, stektektsxwíIhp, aka red osier dogwood or red willow (be careful with that; more than one plant bears that name), reveals her anti-inflammatory secrets when her leaves stop making […]
What is Medicine? What Isn’t?
In Western culture, artistically-prepared, purified products are medicine. They are designed to correct a deficiency or combat an invasion to the body’s temple. The natural state of this temple is one of […]
Porcupine’s Favourite Colour
When medicine willow (the apricot-coloured one below) grows in deep shade, it collects a deep, reductive power. It is not the leaves you harvest but the inner bark, but it forms in […]
What the Body Knows in Cold and Light
What is pale and drawn out by light and cold is not dead. The life is within, or, rather, it is concentrated, or distilled. When you walk through the cold, every twig […]
Sour Dates
They might be called russian-olives, and they might look and taste like sour, sawdusty olives, but they’re really dates, and they are weeds. They wreck ecosystems, displace native species, reduce environmental diversity, […]
Okanagan Okanogan 