blossoming

 It's an unusually rainy year here. I'm used to the mist and fog of the westcoast, so I assumed this was normal spring weather in Southern Alberta. While the locals complain and wait for their grasses to turn brown and gold in the summer heat, I have no problem wearing my raincoat and sliding through the mud, rolling down the coulees with the the thunder, long grasses licking my legs. I'm sure the plants are enjoying it too -- the nature reserve has become a jungle and is keeping me from feeling too homesick for my coastal rain forests.

moss phlox

little mushrooms

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three flowered aven

chokecherry bush

waterton lakes national park

 An hour and a half southwest of Lethbridge is the gateway to Waterton Lakes National Park. I've been running a field trip for grade seven students to the park front, teaching them about rough fescue grasses, the transition from bison to ranching, and grassland ecosystem inhabitants. Guest speakers from Parks Canada and the Nature Conservancy of Canada reinforce a natural heritage ethic, talking to the students about sustainable grazing and managed fire. 

Introducing these city kids to their fantastic back yard can be challenging -- the ground here is soft and crawling, the wind strong, the sky frighteningly dynamic. So we make webs out of yarn mimicking relationships between the long toed salamander, cedar waxwing, creeping juniper, moss phlox, trembling aspen, moose, trumpeter swan. we draw ant hills and deer poo, we take photographs of mountains, of fungus, of lichen-covered rocks, we examine medicinal plants, we open our coats like kites and feel the wind. Yesterday, so fortunate, we watched a black bear run up a hill not too far from us and then later saw a mamma grizzly with her long legs and empty springtime belly walking her tiny golden cub across the road in front of the school bus.

these pictures were taken by Luke who is thirteen years old and enjoyed looking closely at everything growing around us.

potter's guild

Earthenware cermaics, wheel throwing soup bowls, the rhythm of the wheel; one of the first things I did when I moved to Lethbridge was look for a pottery studio I could join. I found the Oldman River Potters Guild in the basement of the Bowman Arts Centre, an ancient brick building across the street from the library.
Southern Alberta is nationally known for its ceramic heritage. Medalta clay, producing old style crock pots and mugs, table settings and stone jars, formed from the clay silt banks of the South Saskaschewan river flowing through Medicine Hat, made up over seventy five percent of the tableware in Canada until the nineteen-seventies.
There's something incredibly grounding about wheel-work: the muddy clay and and the upward gravity you produce with coaxing crooked fingers and pressure in flat-angles along the palm of your hand. The centering of the body, elbows to thighs, knees rigid, shoulders steady, neck long, chin tucked. The symmetry of form, the raising of walls, cylinder to sphere
Then to serve a meal, a bowl of spicy gingered-cardamom soup, or summer blueberry-almond steel cut oats; or that palm-warmth in a cup of tea, bergamont earl grey, or clear sea greenish, or lemon and to savor the whole circular experience of the vessel, body-to-body-to-hand-to-mouth-to-belly-to-bowl  -- well, yes:

pond life

I've been running a program for grade five classes this month at the Elizabeth Hall Wetlands. It involves a lot of exploring-time where I talk to the kids about animal signs, pond formation, and the importance of wetlands in the grasslands ecosystem. We spend most of the two-hours I have with the class in small groups looking very, very closely at growing things, dying things, breathing things. We start in the forest recording tracks, food sources, homes, and scat and then I hand out ice cream buckets and little nets and we try pond dipping. We've found all sorts of beautiful little treasures nestled under fallen cottonwoods and hiding in the watery sedge grasses. We've watched horsehair worms and whirligig beetles dance and twist. Last week we woke a porcupine from a summer-slumber in a bright green-leafed tree. We've found bones and mushrooms and broken robins eggs with the yellow yolks spilling out. muddy nests, turtle shells, ducklings, caddisfly nymphs, and waterstriders.

these are some snapshots taken while exploring the forest and the wetlands with ten-year-olds.

"they're glowing!" said Madison, peering at the underside of a bracket fungi
"this slug is so alive!" said Leah, while a tiny black mollusk crawled back into it's hollow-log home

coulee climbs

Luta and I frequent the riverside at Peenaquim Park. There are steep coulees to run up and down and she has been working on her coyote-jumping technique in mouse hunting. These pictures were taken on mostly south-facing slopes not far from the high running Oldman River.





narrow-leaved milkvetch

a member of the pea family, or the Leguminosae, producing two types of fruit, both legumes and loments. legumes, you may recall, are important contributors to healthy soil, using swollen nodules in their roots they work with bacteria to replenish the nitrogen content.





seinfoin

the species name, viciifolia, means "vetch-leaved"



sagebrush

the best way to experience this plant is to run your fingers through the soft leaves and then smell your hands.

buffalobean (also known as golden bean)

these were the first to flower en masse all over the local coulee. spring-yellows everywhere, vibrant and glowing. historically, a dye was made from the buffalobean to colour skin bags and arrows of the blackfoot tribes in the region. it is also important to note that these gorgeous little jewels are extremely poisonous and eating any part of this plant can cause respiratory paralysis.

perhaps few-flowered milkvetch

 



wormwood

an invasive species introduced in settler's gardens. this plant is used to make absinthe among other medicinal tonics. this picture is a dried-out plant from last year and these little bushes are all over the coulees.



 

 

leafy spurge

like the wormwood, leafy spurge is an invasive species brought to north america as a garden plant. it is poisonous to cows, but not sheep and goats who can help mitigate the damage by grazing it. with roots that can grow over ten meters long, it is a difficult plant to remove.

  

prairie crocus

first flowers of the season, their furry ear-like leaves poke out of the snow "listening for the first sounds of spring," as the story goes.