One of the neatest things about living close to to Washington DC–and along the Metro line–is being able to drop down to the National Mall and take advantage of free events. Last night, my husband, a good friend and I watched the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum’s #GoForTheMoon production honoring Apollo 11’s 50th anniversary. The […]
I’ve had my head down on my upcoming book release, but not so much that I missed this: The first swallowtail I’ve seen in our townhouse yard–or habitat as I like to refer to it. I’m dismayed by how few butterflies there are this season, but then the Joe Pye Weed has just begun to […]
What’s going on with planet Earth is so out of reach of my control, that I’m left feeling helpless most days. I grew up playing in the national parks my dad worked in. I made my own career in environmental education for decades. I raised my kids to care for nature. I write novels about […]
Whatever I was going to write about flew out the window when I discovered mason bees are using our new house. Honestly, I never expected this to work so quickly. First, the photos I managed to take! These bees know exactly where they are going. They land in a tube and quickly disappear. They may […]
I love nature and can’t imagine living apart from it. I know people do and the idea saddens me. I’d rather not face what’s happening to our earth, but we all need to, and make any and every change we are capable of making. Before kids, I worked as a naturalist doing environmental education programs […]
Sadly, we lost one of our beehives last week. We were feeding them sugar blocks through the winter, but it was not enough given the size of the hive and they starved. A more experienced beekeeper from our club came to help with a postmortem. Not to get into too many details, but we […]
That was Friday (I’ve been at two events since). Work resumes on Monday for our furloughed employees. Yay, with a bit of wariness…we’ll see. In the meantime, I hope this brings many people relief. It has for us. Dare I say, stay tuned for the next installment? My fun news: Friday, I volunteered at our […]
I meant to post over the weekend, but blood-wolf-etc lunar eclipse disrupted things (see photos on my Facebook page!) First off, apologies. My niece chastised me for getting the day count wrong in my last shutdown post, but hey, I looked it up. Everyone has a different date. Or no date. Or the news articles […]
A flashback to our family’s October’s visit to a place we love, Rocky Mountain National Park. I’m feeling frustrated, sad and worried about the government’s attitude and treatment of our nation’s people, wildlife and places.
It has not been the holiday I imagined. Our family income comes from Federal Government employment. Aside from a few part-time positions I’ve worked, it’s been that way for 25 years. I quit my nature center manager job to stay home with the kids, then homeschool one, got bitten by my imagination and began writing […]