Nature Journaling: Santa Cruz River

13/05/2024

Getting back into Nature Journaling and inspired by the geometries in cholla.

13/05/2024

Starting to internalize the habitat conditions around Taos. A useful reference is “Habitats of the Workd” by Ian Campbell, Charley Gess, Ken Behrens and Phil Chaon

16/08/2023

😂😂😂

26/12/2022

A few people have asked about the “compass rose” on my journaling pages. I spent several months working on developing a graphic that would allow me to illustrate sun/moon rise and set as well as wind direction and observation time. So…… the ”rose” is made of 4 concentric circles. The middle ring contains a 24 hour clock. The outer ring shows sun rise/set, the inner ring moon rise/set. I can also represent the moon phase and cloud condition in the colored portions of the rings. The symbol at the center of the circles represents a compass with North pointing up. The short line represents wind direction and the numbers are wind speed and gusts in mph. The long line extends out to the 24 hr clock and points to my observation time.

This illustration takes a little while to create but it helps me settle into the moment.

25/12/2022

In Taos over the Christmas 2022 holiday

07/11/2022

Great morning journaling at Historic Canoa Ranch. The tiny palm leaf mist flower caught my attention. It’s a plant easily overlooked as it’s “rangy” with quite small flowers. It has a strikingly strong aroma-a mixture of mesquite flour and honey. It’s the smell of the desert. Could it be that desert plants share an underlying olfactory suite?

17/10/2022

26/09/2022

Nature journaling at Canoa Ranch, Az. The Datura are fully in bloom. The blossoms are such delicate looking forms. I’m fascinated how different cultures focused on different iconic attributes when naming this plant

12/09/2022

My Monday morning ritual at historic Canoa ranch continues.… this morning a moth captured my attention. I’m intruiged by the difference in eye shape and location between this moth and the giant swallowtail butterfly that I documented last week. What accounts for the differences? Also bothe species have spurs on their legs near a “knee” joint. What are these for?

05/09/2022

The continuing saga of learning about Swallowtail butterflies. I had completely forgotten about the distinction between cocoon(moths) and chrysalis ( butterflies).
I hope I can catch the emerging butterfly! There are several chrysalises on my line tree and all seem to be in the same stage of development. 🤞 that I can catch a butterfly.

29/08/2022

On the 18 August I spotted caterpillars on my south facing potted lime tree. They are referred to as bird p**p caterpillars! They will eventually become Giant Swallowtail Butterflys.
This is page 1. The next post will be of there pupating form and hopefully I will catch the metamorphosis into the butterfly.