I attended a Vancouver Food Policy Council meeting this week. The topic was food scraps, so I was motivated to attend on a warm summer evening. It was lovely to see the enthusiasm around the room and especially wonderful to see the interest in food recovery or food rescue as […] Read More
One of my neighbours and fellow Village Vancouver member is into bees. Mary Bennett is also into art and has found a way to marry the two. She developed a series of Bee Walks to show off various hives and mason bee homes in the ‘hood, some of them quite […] Read More
I fell off my bike yesterday. A big white Samoyed leaped into my path suddenly in pursuit of another dog. I hit the dog, barely, and jettisoned off my bike onto the gravel path. I lay there stunned for a moment or two. The dog’s owner came to help me […] Read More
I don’t own a cell phone. Mostly because I don’t want to become one of those people who can’t even walk their dog without checking their email. And I know I would. If you do own a cell phone and have a few old phones hanging around, here’s one way […] Read More
I’m on a mission to install rodent resistant bins at every community garden in my neighbourhood. Last year, we built a wood and wire bin at the Pine Street garden where I am a member. When I recently worked with Mole Hill to set up a community compost, we had […] Read More
I was living in Quebec City during the first referendum to decide whether or not the province of Quebec would separate from Canada. It wasn’t a great time for English Canadians to be living there, even those of us who did speak French. But the majority of Canadians breathed a […] Read More
I went to my first community kitchen Wednesday night. It was held at a church right across the street from me, very convenient. Every two weeks we get fresh picked produce delivered from Yummy Yards, a local urban farm. Problem is, we don’t know what we’re getting until we get […] Read More
A couple weeks ago, I was planning to get together with friends for dinner. I suggested they come west as I’d been to the eastside the last couple of times. As I started to make a list of places we could go to eat, even I was bored. When I […] Read More
Many years ago, sculptor Davide Pan breathed life into a very rough concept I had for a garden gate at City Farmer. The gate used recycled gardening tools and was lifted up and down with pulleys. I wrote about that experience in the Diary in a chapter called Lust & […] Read More
In 2006 I was hired by the BC Ministry of Economic Development to develop and deliver a green building tour for a visiting delegation from Austria. They were a consortium of architects and green business leaders. One of the delegates owned a timber construction company specializing in building without glue […] Read More