Bees are attracted to pretty flowers. Wasps, too. In a healthy grassland, flowers continue all spring and summer and into the fall, with flowers for the big bumblers and tiny wasps and […]
Honeybees are a Red Herring
If We Went to the Water?
I mean, instead of bringing it to town? What if every house, or community, had to care for water. Currently, water is removed from almost all its streams and wetlands in the […]
The Only Hope for the Okanagan and Similkameen Valleys in a Culture of Fire
I hate to say it, but the dream that has kept my family tied to the land for 91 years in this trough in the Columbia Plateau is over. Instead of a […]
The Fire is Us
There are fires in all directions, for the fourth year in a row. Note the smoke above, in the Okanagan, and below, in the Cariboo. Cough cough. There’s a lot of talk […]
Crazy for Wine
The Penticton Western News is really into wine these days. Here’s a screenshot from an article from May: How great is that. Pandosy arrived in 1859, camped at Ellison, froze in the […]
Out of a Garden, A Desert: The Nuts and Bolts of Settler Culture
Every generation and social class in Canada gets to make the country new, in their own image. That’s part of being in a settler society. Settlement is a permanent process, and everyone […]
Hot Climate Onions
It was 47 degrees Celsius last week. My garlic ripened off, my currants fizzled, my raspberries got set back, my winter onions explained that the year was over, and my perennial Egyptian […]
Only the Flowers, Please and Thank You
Not the lawn (yes, that’s a lawn, Vernon style). Yuck. But morning glory flowers! Ah. Give us the weeds! So delicious.
Everybody Has an Apocalypse Story Now
Hey, look at what’s going down in the news: Scientists Call Northwest Heatwave the ‘Most Extreme in World Weather Records’ Well, um, yeah, and as the source of that article, commondreams.org says, […]
It’s Not As Hot As You Might Think
Choke cherries doing fine. Without irrigation. And before you think, Oh, a Weed, think again. Okanagan Spirits can’t make their Kirsch Virgiana until someone delivers 2.5 tons of these things to their […]
