Wednesday Ginkgo Walk Pandora Park

These grade five students are writing down nature observations to write haiku. We start by discussing some of the plants that are beginning to bloom, and which ones provide important food for bees. We outline the seven components involved in writing a haiku and I explain that writing a haiku is like fishing: an active form of contemplation where you cast your net to catch a "haiku moment", which you then craft into a poem.

The students were incredible enthusiastic and I was impressed that many of them found a way to have their own space instead of using our walk as a chance to get silly, as we all know sometimes happens in these situations.

I had to take a photo of this kite stuck in a tree. There was an eagle soaring high above it. That was my haiku moment.

I explained that it is better to be specific in your poem--not just a tree, but a white magnolia tree, for instance.

I encouraged the students to use their senses--touch, smell, hearing to really get a total impression of what's going on around them.

When we got back to class we made collages of the haiku, careful to double-check the spelling as much as possible. Haiku uses as little punctuation as possible, and lower case lettering is generally used as well. I told the students that they could could choose to capitalize the first person pronoun or leave it lower case if they wished.

I tried to talk to the students about the ephemerality of the haiku moment--the poignancy of it's "here today, gone tomorrow" quality.







Some students wanted to write haiku about the destruction of natural rainforest habitat. This haiku reads:

across the long street
there aren't many trees
near me
it's not very free

Cloud-Gazing Ginkgo Walk

After a short spiel on haiku and becoming observers of seasonal changes, we took the students on a silent ginkgo walk around the school yard where they made observations and wrote poetry in their mindfulness journals.

Next, we did some preliminary experiments with marking bee habitat.

I am going to talk to the students about radial and bilateral symmetry and how scientists study which kinds of flowers attract different species of bees. It is thought that honey bees are generally attracted to flowers with radial symmetry.


I explained that feral bees sometimes nest in hollow trees, and that trees can provide propolis, pollen and nectar for bees.

I explained the rules for haiku, and that the rules are meant to be a guide and that they can be broken. The students drew stylized clouds and then wrote their poems following the lines of the clouds. Or they broke the rules and did their own thing.


Turns out that many of the students are gifted poets.


Spring is coming soon
The blossoms are gonna bloom
The branch died with honour

Tuesday Ginkgo Walk

All around the Pacific Northwest, I'm sure bloggers are taking photos of the first spring snow drops. They are finally in bloom in our neighborhood, which I think is a bit behind the microclimate of Van Dusen Gardens.

The witch hazel tree near us is in bloom too, and lights up gloriously when the sun comes out.

The squirrels go nuts on this hazelnut tree in the fall, so it's lovely to see the spring catkins.


Some of the winterberries are falling off onto this mossy planting which is an alternative to a traditional lawn.

One lonely quince left rotting on a tree.

I don't know what kind of trees these are. I call them art nouveau trees.

Be sure to take a look at the Wednesday walkabout on the UBC Farm Blog. Check out that rhubarb!

Das Poopin Bees

I took a Ginkgo walk around Van Dusen Gardens yesterday and the bees were up and out of their hive! My first clue was splotches of yellow goop in the snow. Yes, it's bee poo and it's all over the snow around the hives. So if you go up to the gardens to see the hives, now you know that after a long winter's huddle in the hive, the bees are desperate for the loo when the weather warms up. Too bad the batteries in my camera died or I would have taken lots of poop pictures. Well, maybe it's for the better. I'll never forget that day last summer when I was bee-watching in a my garden and a bee hung her hind end over the edge of a leaf and made a plop. I giggled.

The pussywillows are out and they are a very important source of nectar and pollen for building up the brood at this time of the year. If you have a chance, take a look at this document from UBC Botanical Garden's Botany John site which celebrates the life of John Davidson. There is an excellent paper about nectar and pollen sources from native plants in B.C. I was heartened to read his belief that "wildflowers constitute the foundation of success for the beekeeper." He believed that willows were the most important plants for beekeeper and that the bees could store 8-16 pounds of honey from this single source. So if you go out bee-watching in early spring, look for bees landing on pussy willow catkins.

The Crow Hour

Yesterday I went for my Wednesday ginkgo walk around Tea Swamp Park. A ginko walk is a meditative walk with the intention to write a haiku. There were a variety of beautiful cloud formations in the soft, late-afternoon sun. As I passed Sophia and 19th I noticed seagulls circling in a thermal updraft. Then the crows came--innumerable murders of crows heading off to Burnaby to roost. This is a daily occurrence in Vancouver. You can set your coffee break to it. It still amazes me every time I see it.


One day I was sitting on the bus once with a bunch of skateboarders sitting next to me. One looked out the window and said, "It's the crow hour." His friends looked out the window in silent meditation. It was a haiku moment.I had even thought about doing an art project about it--getting other artists to blog about what they are doing when the crows pass overhead, but I found someone has already done a major project focusing on this behavior.

I found info on Suzanne Northcott's Crossing Boundary Installation, an article about the show in the Canadian Universities Press website, and an article about the installation in the Georgia Straight.


there is a birch tree in my heart,

its bark

breaking, mending

breaking, mending

Sweet snowdrops!