Liz’s Example Post

My sit-spot (pardon the rough drawing!).

LIZ’S EXAMPLE: BLOG 1 – 9/3/19, 6:31 – 7:56PM

I knew I wanted to pick a sit-spot that would be in my backyard because a) I love my yard, and b) I wanted it to be somewhere convenient that I could get to easily and as much as I was tempted to pick a more “exotic” location, I knew I’d curse that decision after the first few weeks due to my limited time this semester. Once I decided that, I had to figure out where in my yard I wanted to be. Most of my yard is landscaped with lots of beds with perennials, tons of shrubs, mature trees, and a vegetable garden. At first, I contemplated watching a perennial bed or the vegetable garden as I knew those would change dramatically over the course of the semester and would be a boon for insects. Then I contemplated certain shrubs on my property where I see birds frequent. However, I finally decided that I wanted to be in a truly natural setting and for that, I went to the back of my property which borders some woods. Part of those woods are in my property and so I decided that I wanted a spot somewhere in there; but where?! I walked around, keeping an eye out for downed trees / logs and/or rocks as I figured this things would be great habitat for moss, lichen, insects, and perhaps the occasional animal and thus I’d be able to see those things change as the weather turns cold. I at first was also hoping to avoid evergreen shrubs and trees because they don’t change much during the fall. However, I finally decided that some evergreens would be good as they’ll provide shelter for birds and other wildlife and thus could prove interesting once the trees have lost their leaves.

I finally picked a spot on the edge of the woods that I thought was the most interesting spot and faced SW so that I’d be looking into the woods. So what makes my spot interesting you might ask? Well, the first thing I was drawn to was a pile of rocks (the pile was manmade but the rocks, of course, natural for the most part) that were covered in lichen and fungi. Some of the rocks had the most beautiful layers—presumably limestone (a type of sedimentary rock). I thought this rock pile was the perfect place for spiders and other bugs that love cracks and crevices and that if I was lucky, I might even see a snake (probably not though). It also had some downed wood and a large downed tree which had moss growing on it—added interest. There was also a fern (fairly uncommon in these woods) and I thought that would be especially interesting to watch as it starts to get cold. In terms of trees and shrubs, you could tell that a) we were on the edge of a forest

The beautiful orange-tinged bark of the bush honeysuckle (one of the 3 things I’ll be watching).

and b) that this had likely been a part of my yard at some point as most of the trees were fairly young and there were some non-native plants that I suspect had been planted there. Specifically, my chair is sitting under a large bush honeysuckle (non-native & invasive, sadly)In terms of things I saw during my observations, one of the first things I noticed was several ants crawling across the stones and wood on the ground. There weren’t many, probably only 5-6 over the course of the observation and sadly they would appear for a few seconds only to disappear again into the leaf litter or rock crevice. The cycads were also calling in force tonight! That has to be one of my favorite sounds. Although I never saw one (granted, I’ve seen a few around the yard the last few days), I enjoyed their

The berries are starting to ripen on the bush honeysuckle. 

chorus. One last “animal” observation I’ll mention is that the mosquitoes were abundant! I saw at least 2 different species as one was much larger than the others, probably about 1 cm in length. Thankfully I had come prepared and worn long sleeves and pants but definitely still got a few bites. Not surprising given that it was dusk and thus many mosquito species are active at this time of day.

Overall, I’m very excited about this project. It’s going to be nice to have some forced solitude and time in nature—too often we get so bust that we don’t make time for things like this. I must confess that even for this first blog going into it I felt like I was rushing off to try to relax—cramming it into an otherwise jam-packed day. Probably not ideal but I know that others will likely be struggling with this too. It made me want to plan ahead for the next blog post and try to remember to do the sit-spot perhaps on a day when I have a more leisurely schedule and can more easily “turn my brain off.” That said, perhaps it was perfect that it was on such a busy day—arguably when you need to do this sort of thing the most! Regardless, once I got to my spot, I really enjoyed my time there. I confess that thoughts about work or things to do did occasionally try to creep into my mind, but I just pushed them back out and tried to refocus on the present and what all of my senses were experiencing NOW. I also had fun identifying all of the plants in the area as that was an area that I actually haven’t spent a lot of time.

For my 3 things, I decided that I would pick, 1) the fern, 2) the moss on the stick on the ground, and 3) the bush honeysuckle. I mentioned all of these things previously but in short, I picked the fern and the moss because I feel like it will likely change as the season does. The bush honeysuckle I thought might be interesting because it’s just starting to fruit (beautiful bright red, round berries) so it will be fun to see the shrub transform over time.

Beautiful layers on this sedimentary rock.

The moss on this piece of wood that I’ll be watching.

The fern I plan to watch.