Lately, I haven't been doing art or getting out into nature as much as I used to. I see this as a way that inspires me to do both in a new way. I'm not feeling a need to choose a particular journalistic style at all. I'm approaching this as an experiment of discovery. I often let art emerge and surprise me. Of course, trying to capture what some natural object looks like is quite different than the more free-form art I've done in the past. But perhaps I will find a way to converge them. My aim isn't necessarily to create a field guide but rather to capture my own feelings and observations of nature. It will be interesting to see what evolves.
This course has given me some helpful ideas and also confirmed some of the steps I've already taken. We live on 7.5 acres in southwest Michigan most of which is wooded. The house is surrounded by a about an acre of lawn and formal gardens. We are working in a two-pronged effort to remove invasives and migrate lawn areas to native plants. There is a teardrop shaped area of lawn in the middle of a driveway turn-around with a couple of trees and bushes in it that we selected as our first native plant area. Beginning 2 years ago, we stopped mowing it and are planting natives a little at a time. There is an organization in our area that has a native plant sale every spring so we've purchased some each year and worked hard with Liquid Fence applications to keep the deer and rabbits from eating them! Most have survived and the ones planted last year are now blooming. We're also experimenting with various ways to kill off the grass. Meanwhile I've been on a campaign to pull garlic mustard and oriental bittersweet when I go for my daily walk through the woods. My husband cuts down the larger bittersweet vines that had already wrapped their way around tree trunks. We also have multiflora rose to not in as great a quantity. We're in our 70's and only have so much energy to devote to this each day! I'm starting to wonder where we could hire a part-time gardener/forester.
We are lucky to live on a small lake in Michigan surrounded by about 6 acres of woods. There is about an acre of lawn immediately around the house so our current goal is to transition some of the lawn to native wildflowers. We've decided to start with a teardrop shaped area in the middle of the driveway.