Wow, it felt really good to disconnect from the tech for at least half a day! One day I'll make it for whole days at a time, lol. But today was not that day. Today the main goal was to spend some undistracted time with my husband. We're always both so busy even when at home, working on our separate to-do lists. When he needs help, I help on his list but mine rarely need outside help. Today we worked together on my list instead. We transplanted seedlings from small pots to larger pots, made another retaining bed in the garden so I could put one of the squash seedlings out, rode down the road on the side by side to look around, and hiked over to where the showy orchid lives so I could see if it had started putting up leaves yet... it has!! So I will go back out to get some video of it and will add that to the orchid watch course this eve or tomorrow. I enjoyed being totally in nature and will set aside at least half a day a week, I think, to leave my phone on the bedside shelf and disconnect from it for a little while. Highly recommend!

Nature journaling doesn't have to be with paper journals or sketching. Here's mine from yesterday via video. You'll get to see the horses at the end of the video, which is why I went out there to begin with. I needed to check their hooves to make sure they weren't getting hot from eating too much grass. The video is in my free Nature Journaling course (March 30). May still be uploading for the next few minutes, though.

Today I took some new video of mayapple, blue cohosh, bellwort, and goldenseal. As soon as I get the video edited I'll upload that to the course. And speaking of courses, I've changed the 'price' to be participation levels now. You move up levels by interacting with others and I think by clicking the check mark on the free courses. Once we hit 50 members, I'm going to change the group to subscription based model and all of the original 50 will be considered Founding Members and have free memberships still. If you had already paid for one of the courses and would like a refund, let me know and I'll send that out asap. I wasn't sure how to set up the group at first and thought pay-per-course would be the way that would work best. That's not working out so well and I need to find another way to fund myself to be able to stay here, so we'll try the other way. I love this community and the sharing that you do, and intend to stay for the long haul. Thank you for being part of this journey! ~ Madison

Another new member :D This time it's my real live sister! Jennifer, when you get a chance, drop an introduction here and tell people about you. She lives near a swamp with real alligators swimming around, y'all. So she gets some nature in her everyday life, too!

I'm working on a project in my garden, an experiment as most things I do are, and it is turning into a fascinating rabbit hole. I'm going down it, y'all. I can't resist. It all started with a little test to see if I could make a woven fence in my garden so I could use an otherwise almost unusable spot. I'm going to plant potatoes behind my little fence. As the potatoes grow, I'll make the fence taller and add more straw to cover the potatoes so they'll continue to grow taller. Anyway, while what I have now doesn't look all that impressive, it has sure given me encouragement enough to do more. I'm going to start working on fencing my entire garden this way now. And I'm going to try putting a clay/daub mixture on the fence to see if it holds up even through our rainy seasons. My garden is on the hill behind our house. I use the rocks to make retaining walls and terraces, stone stairs, and walk paths. While it's a work in progress it looks pretty messy, but once I'm finished it should be beautiful. It's like doing a painting, really. Starts with an idea, gets to looking terrible, and then finally pulls itself together to look great, lol. Now I have plans to finish the potato wall/fence, start on the perimeter fence, and even build a little garden shed with the same design, although I'll put a tin roof on it. I'm using natural, local, abundant resources here just like the rocks- willow and other tree saplings or branches. And a mallet for hammering my stakes down. Here's the small bit of fence I have done (excuse the feed sacks, that's going to keep the weeds down and will eventually get covered with straw):