Design

I have a very old sweatshirt with these words (Ralph Waldo Emerson's) accompanied by an embroidered leaf on the front. I was poking around today on previous blog posts to see if I'd written about this quote before. It turned out that I had referenced it in this post , which reminded me of a magical morning seeing spider webs in the Garden. And that experience was 2 1/2 years ago. This quote is on my mind again, as I'm percolating thoughts about a newsletter piece about using cool apps, software, and digital technology to enhance nature observation and appreciation. I'm totally convinced that direct experience and observation of nature is what's most important and compelling; what I like about current technology is the ability to learn more easily and immediately, complete with visuals and/or audio, whether it's at my study desktop (most often), or through some other sort of digital technology. My guess is that our ability to learn about nature and natural hi...

It was a lovely and mild fall day (exceptionally mild, to be sure, for the end of October). My morning 'work' involved taking new SC Master Naturalists around the Garden for a couple of hours. Woo-hoo! I wasn't behind my computer in the office (darn), and I was delighted with the opportunity to share the Garden with these folks. Gardens are wonderful places for people to connect with nature in a friendly place (ours is almost 300 acres and includes not only managed gardens, but also woods, streams and ponds, meadows, and an arboretum). And gardening is more often than not a portal into an expanding interest in nature and wildlife. Birds, butterflies, bees, toads, garter snakes, woodchucks (hmm), rabbits, beneficial insects, other insects, etc., etc. visit a wildlife-friendly garden. Natural habitats have become more and more fragmented and disturbed, so our wildlife-oriented gardens, especially those that are full of native plants, become important connections between...

Observing, noticing, and being curious are at the heart of 'interpreting nature.' I'm passably good at it now- I'm full of 'I wonder' questions, and I can tell a good story, and I think that I can engage program participants and encourage interest in the natural world. That's all we can do, after all. A follow-up: I was thinking about this after an afternoon program focusing on interpretation. A two-hour period was barely enough time to observe and practice some basic interpretive approaches, and leave with some reflections and new questions. .. . one was whether the foliage of deodar cedar (one of the cut branches I'd brought to use as one of number of subjects for interpretation) was rich in Vitamin C (like some of our native pines) so we began thinking about the role of Vitamin C in plants. Another observation was how flexible the branch was (a great adaption for heavy snow in its native Himalaya mountains). Another subject was a collection of sm...