Tag: classes

Of Blankets and Birds

I’m too tired to write much. Well, honestly, my back hurts too much to concentrate. Spending 3.5 hours in the seating at the place where our Master Naturalist meetings are held is too much, even with cushions. However, it’s good that we started a new member class and that I got going on borders for my temperature blanket from last year. Here it is in its lengthy glory:

Last January is at the top, and the last row is December 31-January 12.

I’m not sure how I didn’t realize the year would end with one day on the last row. So I added the beginning of January. At least that put a few cold days on that end of the blanket. I plan to do the black border wider on the long side to make it more balanced. we will see.

Close-up of summer through winter. You can at least tell it cooled off a bit.

It was another pretty cool bird day. The highlight came when I was standing in the back yard of the house we are incredibly slowly renovating. Suddenly a Red-Shouldered Hawk landed on the old clothesline support, just a few yards away. We were impressed! And she stayed there. We left, not her.

This perch is perfect.

It’s really fun to share an interest in nature with a family member!

Maybe tomorrow I’ll be perkier! I did enjoy the class this evening. The new students are interesting people.

The Hermit Haus Hosts the Master Naturalists Again

Finally, we are daring to have a meeting at the Hermit Haus again. Our Master Naturalist class wanted to finish its sessions, so we figured out a way. Only the students who have Zoom trouble and 3 staff are in the building. Each audience member is at a separate table.

People wear masks unless eating.

The rest of the class, as well as anyone else who wanted to attend dialed into the Zoom meeting.

That took a lot of planning and figuring out our needs. I am proud of our Master Naturalist board members for hashing it all out.

Our tech guy, Don, spent a lot of time getting us a good setup for the mix of online and in person attendees. He got us some nice speakers and microphones so people can ask questions. We tested it all earlier today and it worked great.

Now I know.

There was a weird glitch with our speaker being unable to join the meeting, but I got it working by signing him into our organization account. Yes!

And the talk is going great! Sound is good. Speaker is Hilary in a Dad joke kinda way. Whew. I’m so pleased to be able to give to our community by hosting events again, while still being careful.

Loamy sand and sandy loam.

And I now know a LOT about soil. And saw some of my friends. Everyone seemed so pleased. And I got to wear my cool new mask.

Look! It has a raven and a feather.

Thanks to Robyn at Coffee and Cotton for the high quality products