Photography Friday

Today I have some images from my first outing with the Cayuga Nature Photo Club. Actually, that’s a lie because I forgot to charge my battery and had to go back later! But I did find this beautiful location because of the photo club and I had a lot of fun talking to people and seeing the different pictures we all got at the same location. Hopefully with this beautiful weather, we’ll be having more photography outings soon 🙂

Photography Friday

Last weekend I had the best time going out with the other students in my year.  First, we spent most of the afternoon at Ledges State Park, where I took all of the pictures for this weeks’ photography Friday, and then we went to see The Hunger Games together, which I reviewed earlier this week (review spoiler – it was awesome!).  Unfortunately I was the only one who had read the book, so we weren’t able to discuss the finer nuances of bits that were changed or left out, but I think everyone enjoyed the movie – although perhaps not quite as much as I did!  Definitely a good weekend 🙂  What are your plans this weekend?  If you haven’t seen The Hunger Games yet, are you planning on it?

Bookends About Conservation

Non-Project Non-Fiction

After reading about ways to attract wildlife to the garden earlier in the week, I was ready to dive into a book about an actual conservation project – Nature’s Second Chance by Steven Apfelbaum.  In this book, Apfelbaum chronicles his thirty years working to restore the pre-farming ecosystem at Stone Prairie Farm in Wisconsin.  As the introduction points out, this isn’t a book about homesteading but does include a lot of the same elements.  In particular, the author learns about the wood on his property used for the construction of his house and lives a very green, self-sufficient life style with his family constructing some of their own furniture, using solar power, and canning many of the fruits and vegetables they grow.

A Great Wildlife-Friendly Gardening Book

This week I’ve been reading Welcoming Wildlife to the Garden and I can’t wait for warm weather so I can try some of their suggestions on my balcony!  The first thing I noticed about this book was that it had a lot more in common with A Spring Without Bees than I expected, even knowing they’re neighbors in the dewey decimal system, because this book was incredibly eco-friendly.  The authors counsel against using pesticides, suggest Integrated Pest management (using natural predators to get rid of unwanted bugs, as suggested in A Spring Without Bees), and clearly love all animals – even the creepy crawly ones.  Personally, I’ve always loved all animals and even think flies are cute when they wash their faces with their legs, kind of the way cats do.  So finding a book which seemed to see the best in all animals was like finding a kindred spirit.  They even explain how to attract snakes and spiders, which I think a lot of people really wouldn’t go for.  I was ready to draw the line when they started talking about Crocodilians, but fortunately the authors didn’t suggest attracting crocodiles and alligators to your yard!  Instead they observed that if these animals visit your backyard “that may be wildlife enough”, which made me laugh 🙂