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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.


I spent a good portion of the morning running around trying to find lock hardware for our new backdoor and iit was a relief to get home and back outside to our habitat garden. After navigating through the center of the city our backyard feels like the old cliche, a haven. When we got out back I immediately saw the young hummingbird I watched yesterday on Day 126. The Bewick’s Wrens were both going in and out of the nest with food in their beaks, one still with the wonky tail feather.

As I watched the bees and flies on the Pacific Ninebark continue buzzing like I did on Day 124 I noticed an orange butterfly again. I think it was a return of the Brown Elfin that I first spotted on Day 122. I’ve been watching some brown and yellow bees over the last few days that continually buzz around the Pacific Ninebark flowers, particularly the ones near the top. They rarely land however and I’ve not captured any good photos of them. When they do finally land, they usually bury their heads into the flowers so all that’s showing is their backsides sticking up in the air. With some patience today I finally caught a few shots of them when they landed.

As I continue transplanting the many plants from the back flowerbed, our yard is really starting to come together and my visions slowly becoming a reality. In hindsight it was quite a nice push to transplant everything because now I have so many more plants by dividing them all. So far everything is doing fairly well, the lupine that was so droopy yesterday regained a certain amount of vitality. Even the Tiger Lily that was just about to bloom seems a little more chipper. The Columbine I transplanted late yesterday is still looking very droopy, but I’m hoping it recovers. The Inside-out Flowers barely look disturbed at all.

This weekend will see a lot more transplanting, I still have to make room for the new stairs and small deck, but with a chance of rain, hopefully that’ll make it easier on the plants. Next ambitious project is creating a flagstone patio and then the wildlife pond! All in good time. The motivation of so much wildlife already in our yard is excellent.

 

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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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