Daniela Ginta, Freelance Writer

Gratitude makes the journey better. Kindness, too.

Category: Environment Page 17 of 19

Tomato School – Why Gardening Makes Sense

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On July 21, 2014

In Armchair Mayor Column, Environment, Life Stories, Motherhood

Tomato schoolI tried to grow tomatoes in Vancouver many times. The climate did not agree with my intentions and the tomato project became a ‘perhaps one day…’

Then we moved to Kamloops in late summer, just in time for a bountiful harvest at the farmer’s market. Baskets of tomatoes stared me in the face and gave new meaning to paradise found.

Come spring, we made a first shy attempt at gardening, knowing that summer might take us away to visit family overseas. It did. Summer was to be hot and the garden on its own. Still, memories of the basketfuls of tomatoes plus a tomato seedling gift from our neighbour made temptation too hard to resist and tomatoes were planted; so were potatoes and pumpkins.

Then we left. A month and half later, we returned to a wild garden where the tomato were reigning supreme, full of fruit. Some tomatoes were old and wrinkled, others in their prime. For a tomato grower desperado that was a sight to behold. I saved seeds, lots of them.

This year we evacuated grass from half of the back yard and rolled up our sleeves for a more professional approach.

Seed, water, weed, watch grow, weed, wonder how could that be, weed, and repeat as necessary. Yes, it is work. Regardless, it paid off. We have been eating fresh organic veggies since early spring and the fall harvest promises to be a big one, if it matches even remotely the summer one.

Many early mornings have found me in the garden carefully checking each crop, discovering new growth: tiny beans, tiny squashes, tiny tomatoes and assessing the ever-growing corn stalks, staring into their green tunnels of leaves wrapped around each other in an embrace that will end in late fall when fresh-green becomes husky.

On many of those early morning when the boys were still asleep inside and the city was half asleep still, I thought how much parenting resembles gardening. It is an everyday thing, it must be, or else there’s a risk to crops. Persistence, humbleness and knowing that every day brings new wonders. Realizing that it’s a together thing all along. Never thinking of how much work you put in it because the rewards are overwhelming.

Once awake, the boys descend in the garden, and they do so several throughout the day, and then the feasting starts, straight from the garden: lettuce, peas, carrots, kale and herbs. They wrap them up creating earthy hors d’oeuvres that could not taste better.

Not a leaf is wasted, not a pea green blob left uneaten; excess makes it to the dinner table and that comes with thanks. Many.

A few days ago a mega review of some 340 studies settled the dispute on the value of organic food. They are superior to conventional produce. They taste better, have a higher content of antioxidants and other active compounds we benefit from and if you happen to grow it yourself, you ditch waste for good.

There has never been a more urgent time to get children down and dirty. Growing food with them alongside teaches many of the forgotten lessons of today: that you need to work in order to eat, that you have to keep at it if you want to see results, that you cannot rush or else, and that waste is the enemy.

We need to have them learn all of that. Above all, in the culture of waste and abundance (perhaps we need to redefine abundance?) they need to learn the value of food through the revealing sweetness of every green pea they pick out of a pod they’ve seen grow for days.

They will see live seeking life in the garden, they will wonder at the utter perfection of dragonfly wings and the gentle sway of butterfly dances. They get to ask questions.

Meanwhile, you’re growing food. Answers on a plate, some questions left unanswered because how else would kids take the next step when they are about to discover the world. Inquisitive minds should not be taken for granted.

It takes time, sure it does. But so does parenting. So why not combining and make them waltz along while you’re writing the music in green notes? Worth a try, wouldn’t you agree?…

An Inventory Of An Unruly Garden

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On July 7, 2014

In Environment, Kamloops, Life Stories

As of this morning, it goes like this:

ConfusedOne confused sunflower. Either confused or a rule breaker causing a bit of a flower revolution, with a clear refusal to follow the sun. Imagine that. I’d say it takes guts.

A cluster of orange suns: Calendula flowers, a must if you’re a bee. Not for eating otherwise. I consider flower eating a sin.

CheekyForever-growing yellow, totally unruly beans that are regularly frequented by an army of curious popping-everywhere grasshoppers. The name says it all. As for the severe case of bean unruliness, that is caused by my assumption that you need to plant a lot of beans to get a few good ones. Fake assumption. All the plants survived. This may be the first ever bean jungle recorded in Kamloops.  Note: There is something undeniably fascinating about watching an entire nursery of tiny grasshoppers cheeky mature into the curious poppers they are today. Also not for eating.

Green with yellow pantsA magnificent large yarrow plant reigning over the middle of the backyard and host to green bees which, if you crouch down and wait, you can see hovering over the white clusters with their pants full of orange pollen. That’s richness; mine and theirs.

Many stubborn peppers. They take their time. That is all. Having started them from seeds, I am in awe of how they’ve grown, the very process is mind-boggling. They can afford to be stubborn.

GreenEighteen or so cherry tomato plants. From seeds also, and owners of some envy-causing clusters of tomatoes. The yellow flowers are constantly visited by a fat bumblebee. They are his as much as they are mine. Favourite garden activity: trimming tomatoes. Try it, it’ll surprise you. It tugs at the very need to see accomplishment as you go; hard to resist.

Peas, lots of them. Sweet and round, perfect for garden snacking. Their leaves are utterly fascinating in how they hold water in perfect spheres. Eat your Teflon-based coating, Gortex technology!

Big and yellowA pumpkin patch with big yellow flowers open towards the sky and taunting with the promise of big pumpkins to come, but no baby pumpkin yet. If there’s an underground resistance movement going on in the garden, pumpkins and peppers will be the first arrested. They’re just too obvious.

The world’s best behaved potato plants. ‘Nuff said.

ShyOne squash plant that respects its nature for a change, unlike his fellows. It’s yellow and it has bumps. Beautiful by default like everything else in the garden.

Peek-a-booAmong many others things in the unruly garden surrounded by tall corn and Campanula stalks studded with purple heads, two grass-tumbling, tree-climbing, occasionally muddy boys who eat carrots straight out of the ground, peas straight out of the pod and are capable of some of the wildest water fights. Just like it should be.

Inventory complete. Well, sort of…

A Few Issues I Am Struggling With

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On July 3, 2014

In Armchair Mayor Column, Environment, Kamloops, Life Stories, Social issues

Originally published as a column in the AM News on Friday June 27, 2014

I choose to call them blunders of our times, if you’d allow me. Here’s a sample:

Locally, the school dilemma. On Monday, the decision was made regarding Stuart Wood Elementary. It will be moved on McGill Street, starting with September 2016.

One of the main points made during the meeting was that this is done in the best interest of children. The school, being an old heritage building and such, requiring lots of costly upgrades, is not suitable for children: not safe enough, not big enough. Fair points, reiterated as a justifying monologue since a dialogue at that point was thought to create a bad precedent. Dialogues inviting to brainstorming create good precedents; democracy relies on dialogue and feedback.

The big issue of not having a community school just got bigger. Children cannot walk to school anymore, a good chunk of downtown liveliness just went out the window. I cannot help but wonder about students who might arrive at the bus stop too late because life tripped them that particular morning and about the increased pollution due to increased traffic on Columbia Street.

Air pollution has been declared a carcinogen by the World Health Organization last year. Allergies and asthma in children are at an all-time high, and particulate matter is already an ugly guest in Kamloops. Increased pollution in our city is not in the best interest of children. Clean air is.

But clean air is becoming a precious commodity, whether we like it or not. And it will only get worse if we put more cars on the road, drive more and idle more. Which we do, every day. An ‘idle-free city’ status reinforced by law is long overdue.

Locally and globally, the plastic dilemma. I see it as I walk around town, I see it when we go camping, and there are reports of oceans being covered in plastic while becoming depleted in fish.

At the same time, retail stores abound with plastic products, with even more coming whenever a holiday is approaching. We allow for the manufacturing of a plastic forest that prevents us to see the real trees…

Plastic is a great invention and incredibly useful, but not all and not in the amounts present nowadays. Much of it also affects human health, children most of all. Just to put things in perspective, approximately 280 million tonnes of plastic are produced yearly and recycling touches but a mere 15 percent.

At the same time, pipeline and mine decisions circle overhead like a bunch of hungry crows and it feels like the only thing worth doing is making a circle the way elephants do, putting our young in the middle so they’ll be protected no matter what. Are we? Are they?

Globally and locally, pesticide use. They are still around, those discreet ‘notice of pesticide use’ on lawns here and there. Desert or not, we want our lawns green and lush.

Pesticides are also used widely because that’s how you grow food for many, we’re told.

Well, food is plentiful in every grocery store, so plentiful in fact that it gets thrown out. Pesticides are known to affect human health, children in the first place (a fresh off-the-press study connected pesticide use with autism) and they are killing bees. Without bees there is no food. If we add climate change to the equation, also affecting crops, it doesn’t look pretty. Abundance has an expiration date when not backed up by sustainable agriculture.

One of my biggest dilemmas, though, is this: there are chemicals present in our world, some very toxic and many independent studies proved it.

Yet the people who are in the business of promoting their use, designing marketing schemes to dress them up and shrugging off any evidence of harm even when being thrown in front of them, I just wonder how do they live their days knowing that what they do affects people’s lives irreversibly. Self-justification is a powerful tool all people use, but it can only go so far. If a conscience is present that is.

Here’s truth that cannot be denied: the sun sets on the western horizon in everyone’s world, everyone’s crops are affected the same way when bees die, and all children eat and breathe chemicals if chemicals are present. It invites to sharing responsibility, a desirable state-of-being, able to throw off the best-designed PR justifying haze before it engulfs our brains.

As for that stubborn belief that I hold onto, it’s this: we can do better, I am sure we can.

Critical Thinking Develops, Just Like A Muscle, When Used Often

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On June 20, 2014

In Armchair Mayor Column, Environment, Kamloops, Life Stories, Social issues

(Published as a column in the AM News on Friday June 20, 2014)

To protectTwo issues are topping this week’s hot list. One local – the imminent closure of Stuart Wood Elementary – and one provincial, the approval of the Northern Gateway pipeline.

As it happens, they seem to have at least two common denominators. The first is that they will affect more than the present generations and they will cause changes to the landscape as we know it.

The second is that such decisions require open and extended public consultations and a strong dose of critical thinking in order to be deemed acceptable by the majority of people, an important safeguarding feature of any democracy.

The Stuart Wood imminent closure has brought forth a sad reality and it extends past the walls of the actual heritage building. The downtown needs a public English-speaking elementary school. Lloyd George is a French immersion school that could be converted, once again, to a dual track. Or another site can be considered as a potential location for a new school.

Should the school close, the whole face of the downtown will change; its vibrancy will suffer and new families may be deterred from moving in, knowing that they’ll have to buss their children to a school up the hill.

As the saying goes, when there is a will, there is a way. In this case, it could be paved with some solid critical thinking bricks leading to a result that will benefit families with young children and all residents who want their community to stay as vibrant as ever. Schools can do that.

As for the Northern Gateway pipeline, yes, it was approved. No big surprise there.

The decision was made after an independent panel reviewed scientific data, the PM said, and yes, it is supposed to bring tremendous economic growth and create new jobs.

And who in their right mind would stand in the way of economic growth and more jobs (though opponents argue that more existing ones will be lost should the pipeline happen)?

The answer is no one; if it’s done right, that is.

By the looks of it, there are still multiple issues regarding the pipeline. Will the jobs (most of them temporary, let’s not forget that, once the pipeline is built) be given to Canadians, and how much of the revenue will stay in the province?

Yet he ultimate question and most important is, of course, how much is the pristine beauty of that area of the province is worth, should a spill occur. You simply cannot put a price to that or risk it in any way.

According to Nature Canada, the oldest nature conservation charity in Canada, a pipeline has an estimated ‘one in four chance of a major spill during its lifespan.’ Any risk of a spill is too much.

The process leading to the final decision was anything but responsible, according to a group of 300 unapologetic scientists who called the Northern pipeline report flawed and useless. Environmental groups, regular citizens and a coalition of BC aboriginal groups openly opposed the project, saying that the pipeline should not happen.

Too much to risk, they say and not enough to gain.

Here’s an analogy: imagine you’re standing on a cliff by the water, ready to jump in. You are a good swimmer, but there are boulders that can hurt you as you jump. Some say the risk is minimal, the risk too small to count, others say the risk is high and the effects irreversible; they say you shouldn’t. Would you still jump?

Critical thinking is what we employ in making decisions. From every day small ones to big, monumental ones that are to be reflected onto many generations to come as well as the present ones, and also sealing the fate of the place we call home, province and country-wide both.

We tell our kids to think before they act and be ready to face the consequences. But if consequences are not immediate, as in this case, who will be facing them?

Critical thinking is required in today’s world more than anything. We’re bombarded with a flurry of information, we have to choose, we have to stand by an issue or another, and, bottom line: we have to be present in the community, just like we are in our own homes, and have a say in the decisions to be made.

In case of decisions involving more than one person and one generation, the effect of any ill-fated mishap is multiplied to the point of being impossible to estimate.

Critical thinking, getting involved and voicing an opinion might just prevent that.

How else can we look into our children’s eyes and say ‘to the best of my knowledge, I did everything I could’ without looking down because in truth, we know we did not…

Some TV Sets Have More Stories Once Unplugged…

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On June 10, 2014

In Armchair Mayor Column, Environment, Kamloops, Social issues

Originally published as a column in the AM News on Friday, June 6, 2014

A few days ago some of our neighbours had a garage sale. A bit of a slow day, that Saturday, they did not get many customers. At the end of the day, they left a few things on the lawn with a ‘Free’ sign attached. Among them, a vacuum cleaner and a TV set.

Three days later, the TV set is still on the lawn, the ‘Free’ sign fading away as we speak. It’s in great shape but it lacks flatness (the irony…), so no one wants it. It has survived the last night’s thunderstorm and the scorching heat during the last few days.

And why would anyone want it anyway. Free is yesterday’s bargain. Worthless, or so it seems. Today an item has to be either antique-looking or brand spanking new to be taken into consideration.

Yet an uncomfortable thought surfaces as I write this. Where’s this TV set going to go now? Dump? Perhaps not yet, but a few more days of being subjected to the elements will render it broken and thus useless. And then what? Then it’s the dump.

Think of how many TV sets are there already and how many will join the ranks of broken paraphernalia soon. Unless they’re all being sent to some third world countries for the kind of recycling that we would not get close to – too many toxic chemicals and heavy metals to meddle with – but hope someone will.

New models of everything, from trucks to TV sets to children’s electronic gadgets come out every year. From one day to the next, the truck or car seems to make an odd sound and may not be worth fixing but replacing altogether, the TV screen could be a bit bigger, and the kid’s toy… well, the new games just won’t fit. So there.

Everything new is made with resources, mostly non-renewable ones.

Every few days a new mine project surfaces and location details are unsettling. Like this morning when I caught the tail end of a news piece about a new mine nearby, the Ruddock Creek Mine. To be opened, should the environmental and safety assessment deem it doable, near the headwaters of Adams River.

Yep, the one I learned about as soon as we moved to Kamloops; I learned that every four years it gets so full of spawning sockeye it turns red. Millions of them, I was told about the numbers many witnessed in 2010. So the 2014 will be another big one. What about 2018? Or 2022?

Our own Ajax conundrum takes us on a dance of back and forth that tugs at our minds mixing the needs and wants in such ways that we don’t know what’s what and whether we need it… Tailings here or there, the thing is, mines to be opened or reopened near communities need to be properly assessed. No shortcuts, no misleading information. Transparency.

It’s not paranoia or some mad environmental activism, but fear of what’s to become of this province in a few years should all the projects be freely approved. The Northern Gateway Pipeline assessment was described as ‘flawed analysis’ by 300 Canadian and US scientists in an open letter to PM Harper just days ago. The project should not be approved, they strongly urged.

Economic growth goals make sense as long as they don’t destroy the very grounds they rely on to happen. We need jobs, people need oil and copper and gold and zinc and they’ll need more because more is never enough these days. But when the goal is mainly exporting and the jobs not that numerous, is it truly worth it? For who?

Some of the above resources were used to make the TV set that sits on my neigbours’ lawn. What gives?

That we need things as we go through life is true, just like it is true that a country cannot rely solely on its own set of natural resources to mine and use. Some will come from somewhere else and some of ours will go somewhere else too.

Yet during the planning for mining, transporting and using of resources, the health of land and people cannot be dismissed or brushed over in flawed and incomplete assessments.

It comes to what we’re willing to live with. If you spill a bucket of oil in your garden, how long till you’re comfortable to let your pets or children walk around? How long till you trust that patch of land to grow your veggies in?

The TV set I pass by on my way to downtown is a sad reminder that we do live with the consequences of our actions. This one is just more visible that’s all.

Places Like That

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On June 1, 2014

In Environment, Life Stories, Self-improvement

CirclesThe lady you met in downtown Bella Coola said don’t drink the water by the petroglyphs unless you want to return, so I set out to not drink the water…

I didn’t. It was crystal clear and I didn’t.

I resisted the beauty of the emerald valley until the last day when we said goodbye. It was no longer worth resisting.
Countless cascades tumbled down every mountain like long white arms grabbing the very edges of my heart pulling it all in like one does a drawstring bag. Inside, all the joy I did not let out fully during our trip to Bella Coola.

I found reasons not to, you see… It’s too far, too isolated, too this or that. But that never works. Because…

It’s beautiful.

It’s peaceful.

It’s a world apart…

It’s a world that calls you to it and if you’re not careful you’ll answer its mermaid song.

…
GiftIt matters less that I didn’t drink the water. In a rainforest, the mist envelops you and you breathe it in. You don’t need to drink the water, you breathe it and then you realize its primal call is already tying your heart to that mossy path in the woods that you followed because you wanted to know where the place came from, how it all started and how people lived back then.

Simply, you find out… you listen and find out.

The old man sitting by the river, rubbing his hands in delight as the young fishermen tango with the fast moving river in their aluminum dinghies, tells of the simple life. It still is, yet many years after the white people came, many things have changed. As always, some for the better and some for the worse.

Back then it was dugout canoes that slipped as if on ice on the shiny surface of a river that misleads the ones who don’t know its powers.

Back then they were still as connected to the land as they are now.

Back then, the river was swollen with fish and the ocean too.

Back then there was a glacier on top of one of the guardian mountains. The old man points to where the glacier was. Gone now.

The next morning, the lady at the small gas station says the same. She came to homestead here 35 years ago, the glacier was shining blue like a droplet of sky, now sorely missing.

PeekingYou know you’ve heard this story before. Worlds disappearing, worlds we take for granted. You know it’s not fair. You know it’s a privilege that you could be here.
You know you’ll be back, though you did not drink the water. In fact you’ll return because of that.

 

 

portraitYou’ll return because you want to drink it. To know more, to understand more and to cherish more.

The journey will have been a humbling one. So much to learn, so much to understand about simplicity, beauty, new beginnings and resilience. About yourself.

Doing Right By The Land And Its People – Why It Makes Sense To Love Our Land

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On May 25, 2014

In Armchair Mayor Column, Environment, Life Stories, Social issues

(Originally published as a column in the AM News on Friday May 23, 2014)

RoadWe left Kamloops on a rainy morning, set for a long trip to a place we’ve never been before: Bella Coola. The best kind of road trip; heading into a territory you don’t know, you cannot find enough information about and knowing there’s nothing like seeing it all up close.

Rain trailed alongside to Little Fort and then to Williams Lake. Everything was dressed in emerald green and cloudy fog.

We drove on a perfect ribbon of a road, left the rain behind and got to see grass so green it sparkled, and a horizon so inviting that you could not stop driving just so you can see what’s beyond it while the eyes were stubbornly glued to the surrounding beauty.

PeekingThe evening sky turned light blue and that’s when we saw the first of many beautiful painted horses, young colts hiding behind their mothers. Running free, most of them skittish yet curious, because when we stayed long enough by the side of the road to look at them, they came closer so they could look at us too.

Fair, no?

We passed communities so small they make you wonder how can they sustain themselves and why would people choose to live so far into the wilderness.

Countless birds studded the glittery surface of marshes, taking off suddenly to calls only they could hear. The sunset glazed gold and burgundy on long lazy clouds as we drove by burned forests, trees sticking up like ghosts… Among them, new forests were growing; tiny evergreens ready to write new stories of a land that could never grow too old.

SleepinessWe passed Alexis Creek, Tatla Lake, and decided to stay the night on the shores of a lake that is as calm as it is big, one of the gentle water giants of our province. Anahim Lake.

We talked to locals and found out about the suspended ferry service that hit the communities of Anahim Lake and Bella Coola hard. Tourists from all over the world would take the ferry up, they said, but few do now. Struggles the rest of us know little about.

We hit the road again, traversed Tweedsmuir Park and wondered at its pristine beauty. We spotted a fox with a fur coat that matched the surroundings.Gotcha!

HopeMore road, more burned forests, more exploding green seedlings. Hope.

Awed by the picture-perfect snow-clad coastal mountains, we descended on the serpentines affectionately called ‘The Hill’ by the locals, keeping a careful eye on the dirt road that is the result of much persuasion of the government by the locals, back in the ‘50s.
A distinctive feature of small isolated communities; determination.Truth

Hagensborg and Bella Coola opened up in green lush forests and thick grass every which way. The coastal mountains with their perpetually snowy tops guard the fertile valley.

LostWe hiked, saw petroglyphs hidden deep into the rainforest, sloshed our way through a flooded estuary that held life and death in perfect balance, and sat down with one of the elders by the side of the river one windy evening.

The old man was anticipating the arrival of a few fishermen down the fast river. Invited to join him, we sat down. Half an hour later the river brought a couple of dinghies with it. Sure hands casted nets into the murky waters. Fishing for spring salmon, but this is not the big run yet, the elder said.

More people came to watch, a seasonal ritual we were now part of. Someone mentioned the long-gone e
ulachon, the fish that were the reason for the old Grease Trail trading route.
They’re mostly gone now, but the Nuxalk people still hope for their return, the elder said. Shrimp boats caught tonnes of them as by-catch over the years and now the abundant runs ran dry…

PrayerA new totem by the river, a young boy holding his hands as a prayer to bring back the eulachon, was recently put up by two young carvers. Hope.

The fishermen were long gone but we stayed to chat. We found out about the industrial projects the community fought hard to stop just so they can have their salmon and their land the way they’ve always had them.

It’s more important than any money industry brings, the elder said. You can’t bring nature back so easily after they damage it with who-knows-what resource exploitation.

A car stops and the lady driver tells of a deer that just sprinted on the other side of the river. The old man squints to see it. He missed it, but happy to know it’s there.

You’ve seen so many during your lifetime, I told him. He smiled, looking far into the thick forest that cradles the invisible deer. It’s not about one deer, but every animal, bird and patch of land.

SurprisedThey are reminders that the old place they call home is renewed every year with new life. Hope. You have to respect all animals and the land that feeds them; the same land feeds you too, he said.

It’s about choices and compromises, he says, just as long as you can address the needs of a community without hurting the very land they live on and off of.

Tomorrow we’ll be heading back home, realizing yet again, that we are blessed with a land so rich it transcends imagination; rich not in resources to be gouged out, but to protect and help be, hopefully forever.the winding road

Hit the road, see the beauty and say it isn’t so… I dare you.

 

PS: For more road trip photographs please visit the recent Chilcotin/Central Coast/Bella Coola gallery

 

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