The Importance of Trees

This past Monday, I went to the Best Book Launch Ever for my friend Ariel Gordon’s book Treed: Walking in Canada’s Urban Forest. I laughed, I cried (thanks to Erna Buffie‘s beautiful, generous and true introduction). I ate tree, acorn, leaf cookies made by generous and talented Anita Daher. I pretended along with everyone else […]

Faith

Lately I’ve been thinking about faith. It’s hard not to when this winter has built itself so tightly around us, with record-breaking cold (-36 with the wind chill today) and a lot of snow for our place in the world. The other night, though, I had a dream that the red-winged blackbirds had returned. I […]

Putting Down Roots

When J. and I first moved into this house, as autumn crept into winter, we started feeding the birds and thinking about gardens. As soon as the weather cooperated, we carved out a small area of grass, ordered some soil and, as they say in England, got stuck in. We bought a selection of native […]

Deep Dive

In the Whiteshell last weekend, at the gorgeous and oh-so-welcoming Falcon Trails Resort, I wrote with eleven other women during the Wild Writing in the Boreal retreat Donna Besel and I co-taught. I went a bit wild, too – thanks to a singalong, fantastic company, and too much homemade Hutterite Colony wine… Lucky for me, that […]

Big Picture and Small

It’s been hot here in Manitoba. Forest fires are already raging north of us and the birds regularly stop by to take sips out of our birdbath. Meanwhile, down in the U.S., the government recently decided to do away with all the regulations that were put in place following the subprime mortgage crisis and subsequent […]