It was lots of fun. We have a lot of trilliums in our woods, red and white, and I wanted to spot differences and similarities between them. I wrote down some questions that I thought of while doing it. 

Cottontree Esplanade Park is alongside the river mouth and has many native trees.  They get lots of salt spray and sea breezes.  I chose two that looked different and sat for 40 minutes.  I was pleased I didn't feel nearly as self-conscious sitting there as I thought I might.  Also I was surprised how many differences I discovered in the detail of the trees and how looking for those differences improved my knowledge of them both.  What a great exercise!

Backyard garden viewing of two brilliant flowers, plus an unexpected visit from a flying friend.

• I saw a downy woodpecker when I was on my last hike and took a picture.  We have hairy woodpeckers in our area but I have  never seen one.  Although this was a study done at home, I asked and tried to answer questions.  It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot too.  Although my favorite medium is watercolor, I tried out a new one after watching a video by Liz Clayton Fuller—gouache!  I like it!  This course is great and although I am progressing slowly, I am learning a lot and having fun too!
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I compared two citrus trees in my yard.  I have a lemon tree and bitter orange tree. I was able to notice subtle differences in the leaves, the thorniness of the trees, and how the fruits clump.  I am not very good at sitting still or drawing, but I suppose I will improve.  It's interesting how my senses started to tune into your surroundings while doing this.  I started to notice the sweet smell of citrus and an uncharacteristic warm breeze.

I planted two types of kale last year and it has wintered through -10 degree C temperatures and still produces delicious leaves. Right now the plants are flowering and there is an abundance of yellow. So, I decided to compare the two types. I have really taken them for granted. I know one plant provides small, 1 - 1.5 inch leaves, which are tougher, serrated, and the other provides leaves sometimes between 5 - 7 inches long. These are soft, papery leaves with tough leaf stems. Spending time allowed me to closely look at the leaf design and how each attaches to the main stalk. It also allowed me to compare the flowers and how the buds form then open. There were some similarities in flowers and both types had flowers of similar size and were yellow with only slight variation in colour. I know the pollinators like the flowers because I have seen some on there before. I looked carefully and saw the stamens in the centre, four in each flower on each plant. I laid out my page the same as Liz had done in her demonstration and this seemed to work well when comparing two plants.

I did several comparison activities. I quite enjoyed doing them. In all cases they were birds I saw in my yard. I did use what I saw in real time along with my pictures and pictures in a bird book for the drawings. Birds move so fast it was hard for me to do a good comparison quickly. I hope this gets easier with practice. I am not sure how I will balance my drawing, writing, etc in my journal. I have taken a hiatus from my course and journal but am now back at it. I am assuming that my journal will evolve with more time using it.

For my comparison study I chose to compare the Daisy and Dandelion which are around the same size and very often found next to one another in fields and parks. 1.) I learned that my two specimens have a lot in common and yet they can easily be differentiated. 2.) Because I had a fair amount of text I omitted numerical data. Although I kept the vertical division of the page I decided to arrange everything on the right as a mirror image of what I had on the left. This helped bring an even greater balance between all the elements, textual and illustrative.

I learn a great deal from scrolling down through what other participants are showing of their work. Seeing such variation and originality is both encouraging and helpful to me. I loved this last exercise (the comparison study) and was pleasantly surprised by how many questions I now have about the trees growing in my back yard.  Seeking the answers will keep me returning again and again to better understand the nature at my doorstep.

Two, majestic heritage conifers grow in my yard. I have enjoyed watching and photographing wildlife fly/climb in and around these trees for the last 30 years. However, I’ve not taken the opportunity to “climb” onto a branch… until today. I selected a lower limb from a Western Red Cedar and a Douglas-fir to compare for this journal entry. I positioned a stool at the base of each tree to sketch en plein-aire. A sample of each was brought inside for this photo.

Overall, I quite enjoyed the experience. It was first of all fun to find two things to compare. Both Woodhouse's Scrub Jays and Black-billed Magpies visit my yard daily, and I thought it would be fun to choose them! I would balance drawing, writing, and numerical data in my journal by doing organized columns and putting data where it best fit. For example writing the number of petals near the petals themselves.

This was hard! I've lived next to the same oak tree for over 30 years and couldn't remember the shape of its leaves or identify it. Leaves have now come out and hoping to identify the species in the coming weeks.

I was lucky again, and I found a good example of comparison for my study, I think, anyway, to complete it, I tried to found (with the detail description) the scientific name of the plant in the left side, with unsuccessful results, so it´s the reason that appears with an `interrogation´.

I chose two different mushroom varieties spotted on a hike yesterday for my comparison study. I completed drawing and making observations and decided to google each one to try and learn more about it. It turns out that iNaturalist had misidentified one of the mushrooms, and it was actually a close relative of the other! I drew ochre bracket fungus (trametes ochracea) and turkey tail (trametes versicolor). Both grow on dead deciduous trees and have a bracket structure with no stem, but I believe the ochres I saw were more mature than the turkey tails because they were much larger. Taking the time to do the comparison study first made me much more confident about changing the ID and choosing the turkey tail--the white band around the outside was evident in the specimens that I saw and drew, and is one of the distinguishing characteristics. I will definitely try drawing unknown plants and fungi again before seeking out identifications. 

1.  I remembered how to look really closely and record in images and words characteristic botanical features in order to be able to correctly identify plants to species. Simple outline drawings and notes are enough to do this usually.  I don't have to use complicated drawing techniques to do this. 2.  I like the table format that someone else used below to organize the verbal information better.  While my page gets the job done it seems too busy and disorganized.