It’s no surprise that we’re into photography. We love the art of taking photos and we appreciate it as a form of documentation. We use photos (and this blog) as a instrument for recording everything from favorite meals and drinks to vacations and the mundane.
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Today I’m excited to share with you a new piece of equipment that’s helping me to document (and spy on) the wildlife in our backyard.
Each month we share our Seasoned View. Snapshots of nature taken by the Seasoned sisters and shared with you for use as desktop or cellphone screen savers.
You can upload one or all of these photos to use as your desktop background or even as phone and tablet wallpapers. These images were all shot near the tiny coastal town of Tofino in British Columbia on Vancouver Island this past month. To use the images, simply right-click on the photo, save it, and set it as your background. Enjoy!
Happy Friday from the road! We’re both headed off on adventures today and I can tell by our exclamation laden texts that we’re feeling full, happy, and content with how our days are being spent lately.
Kate’s off to the Lake Tahoe area and I’m headed to Bend, Oregon for the first time. I’m amped to explore a new city, but also terrified of falling in love with yet another place. Oh the struggle.
Happy Friyay! There’s a party goin’ on around these parts as we celebrate the kiddos’ April birthdays with their little buds. Mimosas for the moms, a kid corner for cupcake decorating, this delicious cashew dip for fruits, some veggies and hummus, lox and bagels all around. That’s really all it takes for a good time. We think that the less you try to coordinate, the easier and more enjoyable the event. Some simple prep beforehand leaves you with very little ‘to do’ during party time giving you the time and energy you need to chat with guests and actually enjoy yourself.
Tonight I’ll catch a redeye to Philly, arrive Saturday morning, and finally see my pup, Cash, after more than forty days away. Hooooray! I’m excited to feel the air in Pennsylvania and see what’s in bloom, but I’ll head right down to my bug bungalow in North Carolina.
Sunday is Earth Day and I plan on spending a sunny afternoon kayaking on Jordan Lake followed by a long hike through the mountain laurels with Cash. While I normally encourage disconnecting in nature, now is a great time to snap some photos of the natural changes you witness and any wildlife you may see to upload to iNaturalist. Being a citizen scientist is helpful any day of the year, but what better day than Earth Day?! If you’re wanting a bit of mindfulness, check out the video above and get a primer on flower gazing, a form of meditation that you can take to the trails or your garden.
Feeling cooped up? We know it’s technically Spring now, but if you’re wondering what to do with your last few weeks of what feels like winter, we have a solution for you. Go visit a National Park or Monument before they get hella hot and busy. Here are five reasons why you should visit a national park this winter. Added bonus? We included all the info on Devil’s Garden located in The Grand Staircase of Escalante, Utah. It’s the perfect place to head off to before it gets too hot.
On the first (or second) Wednesday of every most months, you can find us checking in with what’s coming up on the calendar, both literally and figuratively.
Spring is officially here, but have you seen the signs in your own backyard or city? According to the National Phenology Network, the Spring leaf out continues to arrive early in the West, Southwest, Ohio Valley, and parts of the Mid-Atlantic, compared to a long-term averages (1981-2010). In parts of the Midwest and Great Plains, we’re about a week behind schedule and conversely parts of Nevada and eastern Washington, Oregon, and California are 4-5 weeks early.
Each month we share our Seasoned View. Snapshots of nature taken by the Seasoned sisters.
Happy last day of the first month 🙂 Hopefully, 2018 came about gently, without too much hesitation. I find I can become overwhelmed at the beginning of each year. So many possibilities and dreams and wants, where to start, ya know? I only had a few days like that this January, but each time I felt overwhelmed I turned to my meditation practice. Meditation allows me to put some space in between my thoughts and emotions and myself. It’s my mental health medicine and I cannot thrive without it. If you’d like to join, I send out a Meditative Monday email each week with a guided meditation. Sign up here. But, back to the images…
You can upload one or all of these photos to use as your desktop background or even as phone and tablet wallpapers. Katie captured all of these in Colorado this past month. To use the images, simply right-click on the photo, save it, and set it as your background. Enjoy!
If you dislike reading, tune out now because this is the third post about books in two weeks. #Nerdalert OR get into it man! Now’s the time. Okay, I’ll shut up. Last week I touched on the positives of reading and clued you in on the books I was reading. You can see them all on our sidebar to the right and just FYI anything that you buy from Amazon by clicking through from our website kicks back a few cents to us at no additional cost to you. Pretty cool, huh?
Florence Williams does an excellent job of setting the scene for each city, park, and wilderness space she spends time in. She also lays out the scientific process and experiments as well as potential knowledge gaps in an understandable and often comedic manner. It’s easy to process without being bogged down by too many details and yet she’s not just skimming over the science stuff. She’s not skimming at all actually, this entire book focuses on our mental and physical health and yet it doesn’t read like a textbook. Ahem. You can also tell that Florence is doing her due diligence to not just feed you the success stories. She’s honest and she mentions the less than perfect results of some studies, again I point to the background in journalism. Overall, I really enjoyed reading this book. I was learning something page after page, positives about spending time in nature that I could share with my Schu Tours adventure groups and friends alike.
I want to introduce you to our semi-permanent weaving tree.
We have a fairly large “backyard”. It doesn’t have grass, and it’s fairly steep in parts. But while it lacks a traditional yard, it comes with a whole lot of adventure.
This isn’t the first time we’ve discussed making observations and participating in citizen scientist projects. Check out our first phenology post! And if you know a little bug lover, then this post is for you. And definitely this one.
Are you using iNaturalist yet? We’ve mentioned the app a few times in other posts, but thought that a formal introduction was in order.
iNaturalist provides both app and website forums for sharing your wildlife observations. These observations can be seen by other wildlife enthusiasts, naturalists, and scientists. Basically, it’s creating an amazing forum for collecting data about wildlife across the world, and the best part is that you don’t have to be an expert to contribute data. This is citizen science at its finest!
Having many observations across a wide geographic area and over a number of years help scientists track data about the location, movement, and timing of biological activity. For example: is the range of a species changing? are they migrating earlier or later in the season? is the timing of plant budding out/flowering/fruiting changing? Simple observations across a large group of people help to collect the data that will answer these questions.
