Every winter for the past few years I’ve spent countless hours watching the squirrels. There were five hanging out beneath the bird feeders the other day. They practise a tense Cold War, facing each other 18 inches apart. Sometimes one would get a little too close – much squeaking would ensure. Occasionally an incursion would […]

One of my favourite places is the Albaicín in Granada, Spain. This neighbourhood of narrow streets between whitewashed houses has survived pretty much intact in the centuries since it was built by the area’s Muslim inhabitants. It’s on a hill opposite the Alhambra, the glorious palace complex that glows red against snow-topped mountains. The best […]

The first thing I saw yesterday was the trees shivering. A breeze was nuzzling the tiny branches of the hemlock and spruce. The forest was alive. Two turkeys came to visit. They’ve been around a lot this winter—under our bird feeder, pressing arrow tracks along the road. The sun turned their brown feathers an iridescent […]

Many a happy childhood day was spent by a chuckling stream in the hills and dales of northern England. We built dams and chewed on hollow grass until the sun set. There was no happier place, no happier place in ourselves. One day in one stream, I found clouds of foam in the water. It […]

Some 15 years ago, I lived 18 floors high in a downtown Toronto apartment – exposed concrete ceiling and a view of the city, CN Tower and all. Everything I could want was within walking distance: movies, restaurants, and a giant grocery store with a Great Wall of Cheese. I lived at the centre of […]

I trudged through the snow yesterday to refill the bird feeders. The chickadees, nuthatches and woodpeckers have gone through about 60 pounds of sunflower seeds since the start of the winter. The squirrels, prevented from reaching the feeders thanks to my clever baffle device, stake out the ground beneath. When I come to do my […]

I was staring at some lichen on an old apple tree when the world dissolved and I was never the same again. Lichen is not an organism on its own. It’s made up of algae (or bacteria) and fungus. The two come together and make something new, neither algae nor fungus. If one of the […]

About a decade ago, I went to visit one of my websites – I had an online business then – and something looked off. I wasn’t sure quite what. Maybe there was a warning message. Maybe the site was particularly slow. But whatever it was, I ignored it and went about my day… until I […]

Last week I began choosing plants for the garden I’m making at our office in town. It’s not any garden, it’s a naturalistic garden: it will use native plants to create something that goes beyond pleasing me as a human and instead, I hope, will please an ecosystem. After all, being home is knowing we’re not isolated […]