Skip to main content

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.



Yet another sunny day, but at least this one started out with a few clouds in the sky making for a beautiful sunrise. Early this morning I opened our back door to listen to the woodpecker which has been a steady presence over the last week and heard an incessant cheeping. I peaked around the corner of the house and found a Bewick’s Wren at the entrance of one of our nest boxes and it sounded like the cheeping was coming from inside the box. I was excited to finally see some activity around the nest boxes, aside from wasps. I’d be thrilled to have a nest in our yard this year.

As the day progressed the sun persisted and we worked on the veggie garden again. We finished the fencing and planted a lot of seeds and starts including peas, parsnips, carrots, spinach, radishes, various greens and probably something else I’ve forgotten. I also cleaned out and weeded part of the flower meadow we planted last year as parts of it were already being taken over by clover, grass and dandelions. As I removed the weeds, I added a bunch of sunflower seeds to the area near the front door hoping to repeat the bright entrance of last year, only with more this year. Last year they were a steady source of many types of bees all summer long and in the autumn, the birds were constantly flocking to them.

The nice thing about weeding – and gardening in general – are the insects I turn up. The bare ground which had been recently raked were buzzing with solitary bees while every time I pulled a weed up I seemed to find a larva of some kind or another. My favorite was a bright, orange larva.

 

Liked this? Take a second to support Kelly Brenner on Patreon!
Become a patron at Patreon!
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.

Leave a Reply