A thread on noticing
Things to look for.
The small things that are already in your patch, if you can see them.
Most of what's alive in a backyard is invisible to the person who lives there. Not because it's hidden, but because we stopped looking. The eye drifts past the plant we don't have a name for. The bird call gets filed under some bird. The bee on the dandelion gets called a bee when it's actually one of forty species that all look almost but not quite the same.
These notes are about looking. Slowing down enough to register what's actually in front of you. The first bee of the year. The plant nobody named for you in elementary school. The leaf you've been walking past for a decade.
Once you start naming things, you can't stop seeing them. That's the whole trick.
Start here
Smaller than a honeybee. Barely fuzzy. Came out of a hole in the ground in the gravel by the driveway.
Read the full note →More in this thread
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What's blooming in March
Crocus, snowdrop, witch-hazel, red maple, the very first dandelions. A small, careful inventory of what's actually open in late March.
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Goldenrod is innocent. Ragweed is the one that makes you sneeze.
For decades it has been blamed for autumn allergies it does not cause. The actual culprit is ragweed.
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A child's first magnifier
It takes about ten minutes for a kid with a hand lens to start seeing the world differently. We tested.