Flandrum Hill

It’s been a wonder-full year for getting outdoors and learning about the natural world around Flandrum Hill.  Keeping a nature journal certainly made me more aware of the seasonal changes that take place throughout the year.  Writing about the plants and wild creatures I saw encouraged me to look deeper into field guides in an effort to learn more.  It’s been quite an adventure in discovery.

I wrote about all kinds of things.  As long as it had to do with nature in my neck of the woods in Nova Scotia, it was game.  Some posts received more views than others.  Two in particular, October’s Complementary Palette and December’s Days of Enchantment topped the list, as they were featured on WordPress.com’s homepage. 

A few others posts were found over and over again by students doing research for projects and essays, or people wanting to find out more about an odd subject, such as whether or not it’s safe to eat slugs: 

• Spirals in Nature
• Blue Jay Feathers
• Faerie Quarrels and the Weather
• Eating Slugs and Snails

My favorite posts were those that expressed how I feel, more so than what I know about nature…

• In Praise of the Imperfect, the Ephemeral and the Incomplete
• In This My Green World
• Up Close and Personal
• Holiness at Dawn
• All Flesh is Grass
• Sunrise, Sunset
• The Earth Remembers
• The Deepest Secret

Or that gave everyone something to smile about…

• A Tale of Two Squirrels
• How Couples Build Nests

A Midsummer’s Scavenger Hunt produced a great deal of excitement as readers engaged in finding images in their part of the world that interpreted nature’s shapes and elements.  Posts from the beginning to the end of this hunt can be found here. 

The best part of blogging in 2009 was connecting with others both locally and around the world, and sharing the excitement of discovering something new in nature that I hadn’t seen before. 

With all best wishes for peace and happy trails in 2010 to everyone, and regular readers especially.

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This week marks a year of living vicariouly… through Nature.  What she’s experienced, I’ve experienced.  Her springtime has meant hope and wonder, delight and new discoveries for me.  Her fall has brought colour to my life in ways I barely noticed or thought possible before.

This is what happens when you keep a nature journal.  Although you might experience the same natural events year after year, you see everything in a clearer light when you take the time to reflect on what you’ve seen.  Once you learn the name of a common weed, it becomes more difficult to ignore it the next time you see it in bloom on the lawn.  You think twice about mowing it down. 

Over the past year I’ve spent a lot of time outdoors and taken more photographs than at at any other time in my life.  Field guides have become regular reading material and I’ve drawn numerous images of wildlife in an effort to illustrate what I couldn’t capture in a photograph.

My favorite posts are those that surrounded the theme of shapes in nature and the natural elements during our Midsummer Scavenger Hunt.  Thank you again to everyone who participated.  The whole was definitely greater than the sum of the parts.

The Midsummer Scavenger Hunt Series

Despite all the page views I received last week while on WordPress’ front page (just under a thousand in one day!) it’s the feedback from regular visitors from around the world through comments and email that make the process all the more worthwhile.  My goal has not just been to share what beauty is here in my neck of the woods, but to encourage readers to take a closer look at the wonders waiting to be discovered in your own backyard.  Living vicariously through Nature is a way of life that’s all the more enjoyable when it’s shared.

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Crows are common scavengers around Flandrum Hill.  The sound of their caws is in the background as I write.  Like other scavengers throughout the world, they are adept at making the most of opportunities that present themselves in their environment.

Crows are able to sustain themselves on what others might discard or overlook.  Besides intelligence, they are gifted with adaptability to their environment and possess a highly developed language for communication.  Like most scavengers, they are especially successful when working together in groups.

Though the crows will keep scavenging until it’s time to fly south, our Midsummer Scavenger Hunt has come to an end and now it’s time to celebrate.

The great thing about blogging is that it’s a culture of cooperation, not a culture of competition.

~ Leo Babauta, Zen Habits

Thank you so much to everyone who participated and also to those who kindly offered comments.  The photos were amazingly good and made the theme of the elements come alive in a way that I just could not have imagined.  Each submision seemed to be a marvel in itself and were collectively awesome.

During the spring hunt, Kathy at Opening the Door, Walking Outside managed to find something prize-worthy in each submission, which I had hoped to be able to continue (as long as the number of submitters wasn’t too great).  So, let’s celebrate…

The Best of Each Element:
EARTH: Jessica’s seashore at Jessica’s Nature Blog
FIRE: Dawn’s Australian flower at Sahlah Photos and Thoughts
METAL: Joan’s Canadian silver hair at Midsummer’s Scavenger Hunt Submissions
WATER: Kathy’s rain splattered fern at Opening the Door, Walking Outside
WOOD: JoAnn’s elder growing out of an old car at Scene Through My Eyes

The Fastest Speed:
EARLIEST SUBMISSION: Jessica at The Magical Mundane

Thanks also to Jessica for bravely going first and explaining the elements in more detail for everyone’s benefit.

The Most Creative:
MOST CREATIVE APPROACH: Robin at Robin Eye Photography (Elementary Edibles – now THAT’S scavenging!)
MOST CREATIVE THEME: Gerry at Torch Lake Views (Recycling and the Cycles of the Elements)

Heartfelt Pride of Place:
STRONGEST SENSE OF PLACE: Pamela at Books in Northport (Don’t we all want to visit Leelanau, Michigan?)

If anyone would like to coordinate an autumn scavenger hunt, please feel free to let us all know in the comments section.  It can be simple or complex, with as much or as little organization as you’d like.  I, for one, would look forward to participating.

All prize winners will be receiving a Limited Edition print of a Spiral Shell.  Let me know of your preference of a pink or brown shell (as shown below) by email, along with your mailing address.

Image credit:  American Crow by John James Audubon

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Strong, solid, brilliant, inflexible and reflective are all words used to describe metal as an element.  Its mood is melancholic and serious.  Metal is also a conductor and can represent bright ideas and  communication.  In nature, metal is associated with white, grey, silver and gold.

Although green in the daylight, the leaves on the trees at left shimmer silver in the moonlight.  Their eerie look was made even more so by the presence of bats flying above me as I took photos along the Salt Marsh Trail in the minutes before dawn.

The metal images from our scavenger hunt reflect the greatest diversity of interpretations of an element yet.  Despite metal’s quality of rigidity, two animals, a frog and donkey,  and a human scalp were featured as subjects in our set.

An iron buoy, wrought metal, bone and flowers add to the mix.  These images left me with such questions as… Which is more important, shape or color, in helping us determine what something is?  At what point does yellow become gold or grey become silver?  What role does white play in revealing a subject’s reflective quality?

An excellent man, like precious metal, is in every way invariable;  a villain like the beams of a balance, is always varying, upwards and downwards.

~ John Locke

This montage is the last of our five elements.  Tomorrow, I’ll offer a summary of our scavenger hunt.

Images in the montage were taken from submissions to a Midsummer’s Scavenger Hunt.

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Even when it’s raining and the days are cloudy, the sun is still blazing in the sky.  Its presence is vital to our survival and that of every other living thing on the planet.  It’s no surprise that so many cultures throughout the ages have worshipped this ball of flames. Though we shouldn’t look into the sun (see here for some good reasons why), we can look into the flames of a fire.

Like us, fire requires oxygen.  It can provide warmth and cook food or be a destructive force like no other.  Visually, it can be mesmerizing.  Back in the 1800s, Henry David Thoreau was already lamenting the growing absence of open flames in hearths due to the introduction of wood stoves.  He believed that you could always see a face in the flames, and that gazing into a fire at the end of a long day of hard work was both warming and relaxing.

What is fire?  It’s a mystery.  Scientists give us gobbledegook about friction and molecules, but they don’t really know.

~ Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Who would have thought that fiery reds and oranges could be found so easily in the summer landscape?  A Pileated Woodpecker, berries, seaweed, flowers and leaves are all examples of the fire element in nature at this time of year.  It’s no wonder that the fire element is often associated with the summer sun.

Images in the montage were taken from submissions to a Midsummer’s Scavenger Hunt.

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It’s so easy for us to take the earth beneath our feet for granted. It demands nothing of us. We know it has nowhere else to go. It’s here to stay.

The earth nourishes. Its stability enables seeds to grow. Animals dig in it and make tunnels and dens for shelter.  The sand at left was dug out of dunes by foxes at Rainbow Haven Beach.

The colors of the earth are varying shades of brown, oranges and yellows.  This element is found in nature in the light sand on the beach, rich dark soil and compost in gardens, shifting desert sands, clay, mud and stones.

An agricultural adage says the tiny animals that live below the surface of a healthy pasture weigh more than the cows grazing above it.   In a catalogue selling composting equipment I read that two handfuls of healthy soil contain more living organisms than there are people on the earth.  What these beings are and what they can be doing is difficult to even begin to comprehend,  but it helps to realize that even though they are many,  they work as one.
~Carol Williams
Bringing a Garden to Life, 1998

Images from our scavenger hunt illustrate earth’s many forms, from the red Australian sand to the wet seashore in England and beautiful fields in British Columbia and Michigan.  The image of a cave entrance from Scene Through My Eyes reveals earth’s mysterious qualities of depth and hidden strength.

Earth images in the montage above were taken from submissions to a Midsummer’s Scavenger Hunt.

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The living room window is covered with a curtain of green vines at this time of year.  I feel like I am looking out into the world from the shelter of a forest cover of green.  The layers of Boston Ivy leaves insulate the house from the outdoor heat during these summer months. Later in the autumn, they’ll turn a brilliant red.

To humans, the green wood element refreshes the spirit in springtime and provides food in the summer and fall.   It represents growth and life, attracting and nurturing living creatures within its environment.

If I keep a green bough in my heart,
the singing bird will come.
~ Chinese proverb

This montage of images from our scavenger hunt shows how beautiful wood is in all its stages of growth and decay: from young seedling or shoot, to leaf and fruit laden bush or tree, to aged tree stump and driftwood found along the seashore.  It can be pliable but also sturdy.  The wood element thrives with water, is harmed by metal, destroyed by fire and draws its strength from the earth.

Montage images were taken from the Midsummer’s Scavenger Hunt.

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Along with an image of the Bluenose schooner, our Nova Scotia license plates have ‘Canada’s Ocean Playground’ written on them. Water is everywhere here: in the sea that surrounds us almost completely, the lakes that dot the province inland and the misty bogs that are found in the spaces between. To live in Nova Scotia is to know water. Our history and lore is full of fishermen, sailors and privateers, men who made a living at sea.

But you don’t need to be a Bluenoser to know water. You just need to live on the planet. Water is everywhere and where it is most rare, there it is also most precious.

Water images from our recent scavenger hunt reveal the variety of ways water infiltrates our psyches.  Jessica from The Magical Mundane offered that “Water is a feminine, flowing element associated with patience and quiet strength, but it can also generate fear with its power.”  Dawn’s image at centre, of a fish in water, is from Australia, where water resources are highly vulnerable to climate change.

When the well is dry, we know the worth of water.

~ Benjamin Franklin

Water’s colors range from bright aqua to the darkest of blue-blacks with everything in between.  It is also transparent.  Fluid and adaptable, water conforms itself to whatever shape will hold it:  crystals in snow, or droplets in clouds and rain, fruits and flowers and swimming pools.  Water also makes up most of our human bodies.  We are water itself.

If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.

~ Loren Eiseley

License plate photo credit:  woody1778 at Flickr

Water images photo credits:  A Midsummer’s Scavenger Hunt

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The following is a list of links for submissions received to date  for the scavenger hunt:

1. Jessica at The Magical Mundane in Michigan USA
2. Kathy at Opening the Door, Walking Outside in Michigan USA
3. JoAnn at Scene Through My Eyes in Washington USA
4. Dawn at Sahlah Photos & Thoughts in Washington USA
5. Jessica at Nature in Focus in the United Kingdom
6. Robin at Robin Eye Photography in New York USA
7. Pamela at Books in Northport in Michigan USA
8. Gerry at Torch Lake Views in Michigan USA
9. Joan (see images below) in British Columbia Canada

Information about the scavenger hunt can be found in the following posts:

• A Midsummer’s Scavenger Hunt
• Nature’s Elemental Palette
• Weekly posts about Nature’s Shapes

Thank you to everyone who participated and everyone who offered comments, both here and on participants’ blogs.  I’ll be posting a recap and an announcement of winners later this week.

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The following images were submitted to the scavenger hunt by Joan in British Columbia:

FIRE–Flaming leaves reach for the sky, Sardis Park, BC  (Patterns: Branch, flame-like tips)

WATER–Evening at Harrison Lake, BC  (Pattern: Meander–the crests of the mountains)

METAL–The Canadian Silverhair, Native to BC  (Pattern: Spiral)

WOOD–Tree rings, Cultus Lake, BC  (Pattern: Circle)

EARTH–Wild grass on a misty day, Greendale, BC  (Pattern: Branch)

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Here in Nova Scotia, shellfish such as lobsters and crabs are our most famous scavengers, bottom feeders that keep the ocean clean of decaying matter.  Scavenging may be a dirty job, but somebody has to do it.   Some scavengers, such as cockroaches and vultures,  are considered quite unattractive, making the job they do seem even more lowly.   Others, such as lovely molluscs, seem to make the act of scavenging less repulsive.  However, regardless of  how they appear to the rest of us, all scavengers are skilled at making the most of whatever they can find.

A scavenger hunt is a game where the goal is to complete tasks or find items on a list. The Mid-Summer Scavenger Hunt outlined earlier this season involves taking photos showing each of 5 elements in nature: water, earth, fire, wood and metal. You take your list and your camera, go outside and do your best to find one of each. Scavenger hunting is fun and all are invited to give it a try.  The last day to submit your entry is this coming Monday, July 20th.

Although going out into nature with your eyes wide open is its own reward, there will be prizes for participants.  If you haven’t submit your entry yet, remember to…

• Be creative.
• Think outside the box.
• Be a lateral thinker.
• Engage both sides of your brain.

Prizes will take the form of color reproductions of drawings featured either on Flandrum Hill or my art blog, Drawing Conclusions.  Last season, all in good fun, Gerry of Torch Lake Views offered a virtual Goldsworthy award.  Who knows what interesting things will happen this time round!

As of this morning, two creative scavengers in Michigan have already participated and posted their results:

• Jessica at The Magical Mundane and
• Kathy at Opening the Door, Walking Outside

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