I hope you enjoyed seeing my spring wildflowers and now you can go out to find your own! You might want to use the printable photo hunt below to get you started.
The first quarter of 2015 has flown by and with it many missed opportunities to work on my goals. Taking time to check in on the progress made towards goals is as important as making the goals. It is a way to stir up some urgency to make concrete plans before the year is completely gone. So, that is where I am this morning as I reflect on what has been achieved and what has not in relation to my Nature Study Goals for 2015.
1. Yosemite Photo Project: We took one of the photos during our last visit to Yosemite a few weeks ago. I need to plan better for our next visit in June.
2. Visit one new state park: Nope, not yet.
3. Visit one new national park: We have firm plans and reservations to visit Zion National Park later in the year.
4. Visit a bird refuge: We picked a refuge that is about three hours away and will be visiting in May and then again in November….it is written on my calendar!
5. Take one new hike: Nope, not yet.
6. Read ten nature-related books this year: I have read three and will be started the fourth in April.
7. Rock project: I wrote on my goals sheet the places we will visit to learn about two of the remaining rocks on the list.
8. Create one nature journal entry each month: I am using the Once a Month Nature Journal ideas to create at least one page a month.
9. Rewatch the National Park series on Netflix: Accomplished!!!
It is not too late to create some nature study goals of your own. I invite you to download and use this free printable goals planner:
Would you like a walk through my garden? We are having an early spring in our area and with that is the bursting forth of colors and leaves of all shapes. I love the garden’s treasures and each time I take a stroll I find something to enjoy. I forced some forsythia blossoms in the house this year but nothing beats the sprays of yellow that decorate the front corner of my yard. The birds love to sit in the top of the limbs and pick out the dried blackberries that share this space in the garden.
I can never remember the name of this shrub that lines the border between my neighbor’s yard and mine. It has these amazing blossoms that attract bees by the dozens. Yes, we have bees even now in the early spring. Bees in this shrub, in the rosemary, and around the opening California lilac!
The side of the house has its usual daffodils, narcissus, and bleeding hearts all making their usual appearance at the beginning of the flower season.
The pittosporum is coming alive and soon it will have its fragrant blossoms to scent the spring air.
My candytuft is full of blossoms and insects. Look closely and you will see an insect poking into the center of a flower cluster. This must be one happy little insect. The flowerbed with this plant is slowly filling in year after year with more and more of this pretty flower.
I am thinking this is a holly hock volunteering to grow in the middle of one of my garden boxes. I don’t remember planting anything in this spot last year because of our drought conditions but it sure is springing up nice and healthy so we will leave it for awhile to see what comes later in the year.
Our day lilies are pushing up their fan-shaped leaves and will soon be shooting up some flower stalks with their pastel colored flowers to come later in the summer. It is like an old friend and I welcome its appearance.
At the end of last summer, I chopped my rose bushes back with a hard pruning. They were so pitiful and ugly then and I decided anything that happened would be better than looking at those scrawny bushes that had not endured the drought very well at all. And look! They are coming back with a pretty shape and even have buds! The way it has made a comeback makes me smile.
Do these leaves look soft and fuzzy to you? In real life they are amazingly soft and this plant is such a great choice for our dry climate. I may just need to plant a few more Jerusalem sages to fill in where other plants have completely died from lack of water. This one just keeps on going!
My wallflowers were very sad at the end of last summer but now look at how many flowers and buds there are to enjoy! I love the little teeth on the leaves and the purpleness of the buds.
The birds have once again come through with some sunflower plantings. I have about six sunflowers all growing in pots on my deck which you know I will be watering through the summer.
The zinnias have self seeded in the pots again this year and I will be adding in a few more as the spring progresses. These are some of my favorite cut flowers for my kitchen table and I hope I end up with a variety of colors to enjoy.
That is a quick tour of the garden….hope it cheers you up and inspires you to start thinking about the up-coming flower season in your part of the world.
Happy garden day!
Are you ready for your spring greens? You may want to do a “spring green” nature journal.
Here in my part of the world we have experienced a warmer than normal February. This means we are looking at early spring conditions and lots of wildflowers already. For those of you who live where you are buried in snow or are having super cold days, forgive me! My kids live in New York state and they have been frozen most of February and I understand how long your winter seems to be this year.
Look at my wildflower photos as a breath of spring that will be coming your way before too much longer.
The above flower is one of our normal early wildflowers and it greeted us alongside our normal hiking trail. This pretty flower is the Hound’s tongue.
We also have this beauty starting to bloom along the trail and it always marks the beginning of our wildflower season. The Sierra shooting star is one of my very favorites and is going to be featured in my nature journal later this week!
Now we are jumping to a different habitat…the California coastal trail near Muir Beach in Marin County. We had the chance to visit there last weekend and I snapped this pretty yellow flower during a hike.
Here is another flower we saw quite a bit of on our day at the coast.
We also made it to Muir Woods and we had a great hike under the redwoods. The redwood sorrel was everywhere…getting ready to bloom I think. Look for an entry on Muir Woods National Monument soon here on the blog.
There is nothing so wonderful as a month of early spring wildflowers to enjoy with family and friends. As the season progresses we will no doubt enjoy many more days wandering the trails looking at flowers. I know the names of quite a few flowers but there are some that I need to learn so my field guide will be in my pack and my nature journal will get some new entries as I continue to become friends with the wildflowers of California.
3. Visit one new national park. I know it is worth the effort to achieve this goal so we have begun thinking and exploring how to visit a park this year.
4. Visit a bird refuge. I love learning about birds so much and this is something that our family can accomplish with a day trip.
This is my third year creating goals for our nature study and I think I am getting better at being realistic about listing things that are both meaningful and achievable. I will be updating my goals and sharing my victories every quarter instead of each month in 2015. Join me if you like and share a link to your goals in a comment so I can pop over and cheer you on.
Here’s to a great year!
Please note there are Amazon affiliate links in this post.
Overall I think I did pretty good this year in reaching my nature study goals. A few areas I could have done a better job but those goals can rollover into 2015. We were able to do some amazing traveling during 2014 which was very unexpected and exciting. So, what started out as a rather wacky idea to make nature study goals way back at the beginning of 2013 has actually been just what I needed to push me in creating the opportunity to grow and learn as a person deeply interested in discovering and then learning more about what I see in my natural surroundings.
December 2014 Final Results
#1- Visit two new national parks in 2014. Complete.
#2- Identify and journal three new birds. Complete.
Completed the Bewick’s Wren, the Clark’s Nutcracker, and now the Killdeer.
#3- Identify and journal three new rocks. Completed only one but will continue on again in 2015.
#4- Three new hikes. Complete!
#5 Visit a new-to-me nature center. Complete.
#6- Post a nature photo of the week for the entire year. I came really close to accomplishing this goal! I did 48 of the 52 prompts. If you are interested in seeing the Pinterest board with all of the images from the year, you can pop over to Nature Photo of the Week 2014.
#7- Camping in all four seasons.
We made summer and autumn camping trips easily. After much thought and discussion with my husband, we decided we really don’t have any desire to go camping in the winter. Call it wimping out or whatever you want but we would rather go camping when the conditions are warmer and the days are longer. Our spring camping trip will happen in 2015!
My daughter and I had our cross country road trip.Our family had some time in New York, Vermont, and Connecticut! This was at Shelving Rock Falls in New York.
My boys climbed Half Dome!My son went on an extended trip to Peru.
I will be posting my 2015 after the new year rolls in and I get them down on paper.
Mica has been our rock seeking list for the past two years. Remember when I was trying to find, collect, and journal about all the rocks in the book Rocks, Fossils & Arrowheads ?
I wasn’t completely successful in 2013 and now in 2014 I finally pushed us to get out and find some mica close to home. It is actually muscovite which is abundant in California and in the county where I live. I can’t believe how much time I have spent looking into this rock. I am just not a confident rockhound.
So some sources said we have muscovite mica and some say mica schist. I am not completely sure what the difference is between the two (if any). I will just call it mica.
We visited our cattail site and took a look at the changes to the plants during the past few months. You may wish to start or continue your own year-long cattail study. Make sure to mark your weekly planner for a date coming up soon.
We were able to spy some cool bracket fungi.. a little late for our official bracket fungi studybut still so very interesting.
There was water collected in the top that was shaped like a cup.
Well, that was our mica rock walk and study. I am still trying to come up with a better way to identify rocks without taking hours and hours. Any suggestions are appreciated!
Just a note to all my faithful readers.
I will be sharing how my Nature Study Goals for 2014 turned out and posting my 2015 goals soon. Look for a printable for your to use to record you nature study goals here on the blog soon.
In October I wrote about our autumn trip to Yosemite National Parkwith my three sons. I gave you a bit of information about their hike but I wanted to share some of their amazing and gorgeous photos from that Half Dome hike that they accomplished on a sparkling blue sky day.
Half Dome Permits for Day Hikers – information on getting a permit. We had to put their names in for a lottery and they were able to get permits that way.
Hiking Half Dome – YouTube video from the National Park Service. I found this super helpful! You may just wish to watch this to see what it would be like if you could hike this trail to the top.
My two youngest sons have been cooking up this hike for awhile. It took some planning because one of my sons lives in New York now and has limited time to visit us here in California. Hiking the trail in October before the cables are down, they found the trail was pretty much empty and there were only half a dozen people up there when they arrived at the summit.
They started out before sunrise in the dark with flashlights, making their way along the trail from Curry Village to the base of Vernal Falls. Then as the sun rose, they summited the top of Nevada Falls. I have never done this hike because of my fear of heights. Obviously, my boys have not inherited my fear and they thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
These boys hiked fast and were up to the top in a few hours. These two boys have inherited my love for the outdoors and spent lots of time telling me afterwards about the many highlights of the day.
I am so proud of these two boys for reaching their goal of hiking together to the top of Half Dome. They are such good friends and are so supportive of each other even though they are very different people with very different talents. What a blessing to have perfect weather for this hike! I hope they make new goals to hike something else in the near future.
They are both now living in New York so maybe we will summit something in the Adirondacks next year when I visit. My daughter just recently hike to the top of Gertrude’s Nose in New York and I am up for trying that hike maybe next spring. No matter what, I am enjoying my children’s adventures and views of the world.
Honestly, we have had very little opportunity to view any kind of fungus lately. The weather has just not created conditions needed to allow for much fungal growth. This means our bracket fungus nature study and our stinkhorn nature studywill just have to be postponed.
I have looked in all the normal places and still no bracket fungi or stinkhorns to observe for this Outdoor Hour Challenge.
Does that mean we couldn’t learn anything? Not at all. Reading the pages in the Handbook of Nature Study help prepare us for future opportunities to see these amazing structures up close. I am confident that we will find some bracket fungi and some kind of stinkhorn to see in person in the near future.
In the meantime, we enjoyed a great afternoon of hiking on a beautiful autumn day. I am thankful today for being able to see the wonderful and amazing creation around us with open and appreciative eyes.
Here in California we do not have a witch hazel to study up close. We decided to do a more general tree study and take a trip to the U.C. Davis Arboretumsince it is just an hour drive from our home. For those that are not familiar with arboretums, they are botanical gardens devoted to trees. This particular arboretum has a three and half mile loop you can walk adjacent to Putah Creek.
Just a note: In doing some researching even after I wrote the Autumn Nature Study Continues ebook, I discovered that the sweetgum tree is in the same family as the witch hazel (Hamamelidaceae). Although it isn’t a late fall bloomer like witch hazel, we do enjoy our sweetgum trees and their autumn color. I will be creating a page in my nature journal for this tree instead of the witch hazel.
Back to our arboretum visit…
In several sections there are walkways on both sides of the creek with picturesque bridges connecting the two sides. On the afternoon we visited, there were few people and it was calming to stroll along taking in the beautiful surroundings.
Each section of the arboretum has a theme, a collection of trees from various parts of the world like Australia or South America. My favorite area was the Redwood Grove where there were many coast redwoods and sequoia trees planted like a small forest. There were benches and picnic tables at which there were people sitting and enjoying a quiet afternoon. I wish I could share with you the delightful aroma of the warm redwoods in the sun.
Many of the trees had small signs that gave you their name, family, and native habitat. I always like to know what I am looking at so this added to my enjoyment of the walk. The valley oaks are plentiful in this area and there were some majestic specimens to enjoy with their large sometimes colorful leaves and acorns scattered all around the trunks.
This made a perfect habitat for lots and lots of squirrels. Watch out for squirrels darting across the trail or sitting in trees above and chattering at you as you walk.
Here’s an image looking up at the valley oak…we wondered how old these trees were.
We truly enjoyed this afternoon at the arboretum. Not only the trees, but the ducks and turtles in the water. From the bridges you could get a clear view of the many Western pond turtles that were swimming and basking on this particular day.
I always find it interesting to take a few close ups of the ground in different places. Here are two of my images from our walk.
Can you tell it is autumn? Look at all those acorns!
Finally, I collected a few leaves to sketch into my nature journal….love the colors all together!
We continue to have warm sunny weather and we are trying to take advantage of the opportunity to enjoy walks to note the autumn trees.
