If you live in a place where you can’t see the sky, you don’t need to know the weather. But if the sky can get at you, you should have a personal […]
Let’s Cancel Christmas

I mean, really. A holiday that sees people putting spiritual wreathes on their doors, made out of the woven limbs of bushes in a prayer for coming spring, that sees them tossed […]
Brave Bees… Perhaps

The balsam root blossoms on the hill were visited by these furry brown bees yesterday. These are the first bees I’ve seen on the flowers that were not shy. They wouldn’t scare. […]
In the Grasslands, Tiny Effects Aren’t Tiny at All

When I was working on the Spirit in the Grass book with photographer Chris Harris, one of the ecologists on the project told me that the effects of sun and shadow at […]
Go, Garlic, Go!

It’s a happy time in the garden. Garlic is 15 centimetres high. Leaves did their job. How great is that, eh! And, yeah, there’s lots of it. Go, garlic , go!
It’s Either Wine or Sunflowers, Eh

The expanding social competition among vintners to be super-elite seems to be at blame. This will be one of the few balsam roots you’ll see this year above Okanagan Landing, some 5,000 […]
Alders in the Spring

Last year’s snow bent the branches down. This year’s spring power’s through on the work of last year’s summer. This is that special time of the year, when the old year and […]
The Sacred Mountain of the North Okanagan

I went down to the lake to read the news. Terrace Mountain was pretty free with it. This old stratovolcano showed me a bird feeding something, or about to devour something. Note […]
Grassland Education: Reducing Climate Risk 8

The Okanagan Valley is home to a nearly extirpated grassland ecosystem, that exists only in a few endangered pockets. Even so, it is a key grassland area for studying the effects of […]
Hunger: Climate Change in the Okanagan, 7

Here’s one of last year’s fawns looking thin as all get out. Well, yeah. Mule deer browse on willows and Douglas fir in the winter, out of the snow. Here, that means […]