Here’s a modern orchard, an enclosed space, a guard or garden, all full of fruit, from the late latin ortus, or, you got it, all together now, an orchard. The beauty of […]
How Caroling Became Line Dancing … and Beyond
Cultural Evolution in a Post-Canadian Landscape
Today, sober reflection. Tomorrow, a celebration. Kind of a small difference, eh. When the 5,000-year-old rattlesnake den on the hill was blasted away to make room for the luxury view homes the […]
Fire in the Similkameen
Things are burning up in the high country between Keremeos and the Pasayten wilderness. Here was the view Thursday morning, looking south from Olalla towards K Mountain. By 4 pm I left […]
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!
The Year of the Kazillion Cherries Has Begun
When I pruned these trees, the wind was kaboodling down the Similkameen Valley like a grizzly bear made of dry ice. Sawdust was falling in my face from my saw. My feet […]
Beauty and the Bees
I spent the day yesterday at Tree to Me, an organic orchard in the Similkameen Valley. The apples were in bloom. Before grafting some apple trees and maintaining the grafts I put […]
Cascadia, Illahie, and La langue de nos mères
Here is the Similkameen Valley in The British Columbia. This is the land that holds me, and which made me, just below the foreground slope (Mount Kobau). Just behind it is the […]
Magnolias and Plums in the Ice Storm: a Pruning Guide
Here are two examples of the gapping energy I showed you the other day. For the original please click here. First, the magnolias at Bahati Farm. This darling is 38 years old […]
Sundog Over The Similkameen
Dogs will roam, eh. It always was Coyote’s country. This is how I started my day pruning at 8 a.m. The sun is to the right, over the shoulder of K Mountain.
Thank You, Clematis
Clematis grows wilds in the creek beds and river banks around here, as long as the native alders, brown birches, and cottonwoods are not disturbed. After all, a vine like this needs […]
Okanagan Okanogan 