In an effort to overcome some of our Nature Deficit Disorder, my oldest son and I have begun keeping Nature Journals. We’ve been using Keeping a Nature Journal: Discover a Whole New Way of Seeing the World Around You by Clare Walker Leslie and Charles E. Roth and I highly recommend it. I am no artist, but it turns out that it doesn’t matter. We each have a hard-bound book and we share a packet of pencils and erasers and other paraphernalia and we’re having a really good time jotting down details and impressions and sketching what we see. I will admit to cheating once, though. It seems that the snakes (harmless Garter Snakes ’round these parts) come up from the ravine in the first few really warm days, and after basking and warming on the asphalt for a while, skitter (because, really, snakes skitter more than they slither) off into the ditches. We saw several on one short section of the path. Jordan had his sketch book in hand and followed silently behind a snake, sketching furiously trying to get it all down. I, on the other hand, tossed my notebook in the basket under the stroller, then reached in and grabbed my camera and took photos. Jordan’s sketches are better.

But I’m also going to keep a Nature Journal here, on Suburban Green Is People. This online Nature Journal will have the added restriction that ALL content must come from within a subdivision - no forays into the parks or woods nearby. It might be a challenge… But it might not. I encourage you to join me.

Here is the first Online Nature Journal photo entry…

Lovage. Rain. Setting Sun.

Raindrops on Chives.

Water droplets on Birch tree branches.

Can you see the robin? She’s boldly sitting on a nest that’s been built in an backyard feeder. It was so close to the fence I could have reached over and touched it. They yard was full of children’s toys. I can’t imagine the Robin gets much privacy, yet there she sat. Waiting for her eggs to hatch.