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In 2016 I’m doing a 365 Nature project. Each day of the year I will post something here about nature. It may be any format, a photo, video, audio, sketch or entry from my nature journal. It could be a written piece. Each day I will connect to nature in some way and share it here by the end of that day. You can keep up-to-date by subscribing to the RSS feed or be notified by email. See all the 365 Nature posts.


Native plants could easily be the theme of the day. First thing this morning we headed to the native plant society’s spring plant sale and loaded up our wagon with plants. We took a few of them, all shade-loving plants, to our daughter’s forest preschool for a work party. We planted them in her classroom for the kids to take care of. We planted Maidenhair Fern, Smith’s Fairy Bells, False Lily-of-the-Valley, Star Solomon’s Seal, Wild Ginger and one other I’ve forgotten. At the work party I also pulled many weeds like ivy, Stinky Bob, and lots of blackberry.

We also bought some new plants for our own yard including a second Indian Plum so we will hopefully get more cross pollination next year for more berries. I also got a new Vine Maple to replace the one I lost in the drought, another Shooting Star, violet, and other things I’ve also forgotten without looking at the tags. Next we get to go plant them this afternoon. It’s really exciting seeing our backyard habitat coming together and the constant discovery of different wildlife, like nesting robins and wrens, cuckoo wasps and a Spring Azure butterfly only motivate me to keep improving our yard for wildlife.

 

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Kelly Brenner

Kelly Brenner

Kelly Brenner is a naturalist, writer and artist based in Seattle. She is the author of THE NATURALIST AT HOME: Projects for Discovering the Hidden World Around Us and NATURE OBSCURA: A City’s Hidden Natural World from Mountaineers Books, a finalist for the Washington State Book Awards and Pacific Northwest Book Awards. She writes articles about natural history and has bylines in Crosscut, Popular Science, National Wildlife Magazine and others. On the side she writes fiction.

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