happynaturalist

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Disturbing Images, Hopeful Messages from David Attenborough's A Life On Our Planet

Bear with me through the creepy part. The documentary A Life On Our Planet is a gorgeous, cinematographic journey across the globe, as you’d expect from David Attenborough. But unlike other shows he’s hosted, this one is a relentless trek through time. Attenborough gives us a tour through nine decades, starting when he was a young explorer. He leads us across changing times as adeptly as he…

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Back At It

I’m in the thick of it. Parenting, that is. Complete strangers keep reaching out to tell me that it gets better, that they had their kids two years apart and it was hell for a long time, but it gets better. 

So much has changed since my last entries. I’ve replaced a full-time job creating nature-infused programs with a full-time job bringing up two humans. Does it sound ungrateful to say I’m…

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Broken bottles so thick you couldn’t walk – that’s how he remembers the lot that’s now a thriving farm in south Dallas.

Q is giving us a tour of Bonton Farm-Works, or at least of the life-packed 2 acre portion of it where the organization first bloomed (…excuse the pun).

People didn’t want to come to this area, and now look, he says, gesturing to our small group. This is how the community should’ve been all along; people of all races and walks of life enjoying a place. He touches his chest when he talks about his youth in the area.

He lived the struggle, he says.

Now he’s grateful to have a different trajectory, but in the same location, a place that’s dear to him. Home.

This community is being transformed by a little farm, a green space, a place to grow food and connect with the earth and with other humans.

Even as I grappled with my stroller, pushing it over mulch and through the chicken yard, the goat pen, and rows and rows of produce — Even in the June heat and humidity as I sought shade under short fruit trees or against fences — Despite these distractions, I noticed how green, how beautiful, how happy a little space can be. A few acres and a few simple ideas, put to the right use, can bring life to a community and change individual lives.

Transformations. Q said it was so inspiring – nothing like it in the world – to plant a few seeds and in a few weeks or a few seasons see so much progress, so much change.

That inspires me. How would I feel if I gardened regularly? How much would my kids learn if they planted seeds and saw the results? (My oldest is only 2, but I still think lots of the lessons are available to him.) How would the world be different if more people saw that kind of positive change and knew they were able to be part of the change?

On the way home, we drove through neighborhoods that are actively being bulldozed to make way for more expensive housing – housing the current residents won’t be able to afford.

Is the handwriting on the wall for urban centers in the crosshairs of gentrification? Would more urban farms and tighter communities help turn the tide against further disenfranchising the poor? I don’t know.

I do know a little more farming, a little more outdoor time, a little more connection with nature and each other, and the realization you can make a positive change can’t hurt.

…

Below are a few photos from my visit. I especially liked that the goats get exercise and enrichment during a “goat walk”, which I didn’t get to participate in but enjoyed watching. Check out Bonton Farms here.

  Field Notes Friday: Bonton Farms Broken bottles so thick you couldn’t walk - that’s how he remembers the lot that’s now a thriving farm in south Dallas.

[happynaturalist]

On Safari (Vicariously)

Wow. While I was writing about looking at the moon through my window while doing laundry, my sister was on safari in South Africa… with National Geographic! Luckily for us, NatGeo filmed the whole thing and you can watch it here.

The highlight for her (and by the sound of the audio, for the guides, too) was a leopard who they watched stalk and successfully kill a warthog.

Aside from the…

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Field Notes Friday: The Moon, From Inside

Field Notes Friday: The Moon, From Inside

You don’t always have to be outside to have nature moments, I discovered just a night ago. And remember, your nature journal entry – which can easily become your #FieldNotesFriday entry – can be as simple as a few sentences or as poignantly short as a haiku.

Here’s a picture of my latest entry. I’ve typed it out below.

Thursday, May 24, 2018

9:30pm

Our courtyard

weather: 81, warm, humid, sticky,…

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Something Different This Year

Something Different This Year

Was there something different about the Bradford pears this year? Did you see it, too?

Think back – back 8 weeks ago, when the nights were still chilly and the mornings were cool, but the days were warm and you thought Spring is here. There were no leaves on the oaks, but you saw the Bradford pears doing what Bradford pears do: bursting into white blooms to decorate suburban roadsides (and some…

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Field Notes Friday: Frost and Sun

One day it’s freezing precipitation, the next it’s sunshine and playing outside. I’m embracing the highly variable winter weather we get here in North Texas. If it’s warm and sunny, I enjoy the chance to get out without having to layer up much. If it’s frosty and cold and windy and maybe even wet, I appreciate that it actually feels like winter. Some people say “if you don’t like the weather in…

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Field Notes Friday: Fake It Til Ya Make It

I’m not in the mood to write right now. But I’m doing it anyway. I wasn’t in the mood, or didn’t prioritize the time, to jot a few notes over the week about my time outdoors. But I did it today. This week I was, however, in the mood to be outdoors, and that was nice after last week’s cold snap. So this week is about success (including several good times outdoors with my kiddo) and a significant…

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Field Notes Friday: Cosmic Connection

Happy New Year! Hopefully, you’ve been enjoying your local climate, flora, and fauna whenever you can. I hope you’ve also been participating in #FieldNotesFriday, but if you haven’t, consider this entry a little nudge of encouragement. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to take myself and my son out on a trail at least once a week. I started things off right by visiting one of my favorite trails…

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Botany inspired a #protestsign at the #internationalwomensday2017 event in #dentontx. #plantnerd #scienceftw #thepoetryofreality (at Denton County Courthouse-on-the-Square Museum)

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#StillwellRanch near #BigBendNationalPark in #WestTexas.

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ZOMG! I just found my photos from #BigBend in 2015! Be expecting a lot of throwback photos comin atcha soon. This place is awe-inspiring, and I was there during one of the biggest blooms in recent memory. Man, I've been needing wild open spaces lately... #bigbendnationalpark #wildtexas #texassky #texaslandscape #texaswilderness (at Big Bend National Park)

[happynaturalist]

I just found an AMAZING nature journaler. This artist's got some gall.

Two different types of gall on a blue oak (Quercus douglasii) leaf at Stebbins Cold Canyon in September: urchin galls housing eggs/larvae of the urchin gall wasp (Antron quercusechinus) and crystalline galls (Andricus crystallinus).  Gall morphology is species-specific, and wasps are often also specialized to a single oak species.  More at Wildfire to Wildflowers.

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Silver waves.

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A little photo negative fun with a fine old Post oak.

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Whether you have approved of the Obama presidency as a matter of policy or not, it is impossible to argue that Obama was not a man of principle. Whether you agree with individual decisions or the content of his rhetoric, it is impossible to argue that he did not conduct himself with dignity and respect and that he did not lead the country with those values as a guiding light. I have not always agreed with the president’s positions or tactics, and this feels normal to me. Freethinking people are bound to disagree occasionally, even if a vast majority of their values align. I was particularly frustrated with what I believed was his misreading and underestimation of the intensity of the opposition he faced, and his approach of being a gentleman soldier in a guerrilla war. I was harsh in my critique; some would say too harsh. In 2009, I wrote: “The president wears outrage like another man’s suit. It doesn’t quite fit.” In 2011, I called him “a robotic Sustainer-in-Chief.” But none of those differences in opinions about strategy injured in any way my profound respect for the characteristics of the man we came to take for granted: bracingly smart, exceptionally well educated, literate in the grand tradition of the great men of letters. He was scholarly, erudite, well read and an adroit writer. And he was an orator for the ages. We got so used to elegant, sometimes masterly speechifying, that I will admit I sometimes tuned it out. We had an abundance of riches in that regard. But listening to the president’s farewell address, I was hit with the force of a brawler that the decency and dignity, the solemnity and splendor, the loftiness and literacy that Obama brought to the office was extraordinary and anomalous, the kind of thing that each generation may only hope to have in a president.

Ode to Obama - The New York Times (via dendroica)

[happynaturalist]

Take a second to notice how real this moment is. 

You will die. All of this will end just as randomly as it began. 

Yet right now, in this moment, there is some reality. 

Right now you are experiencing consciousness and it is real. 

Just dwell on that and let it freak you out a little bit.