I read the title "3 Ways to Keep a Naturalist's Notebook" and felt that buzz of inspiration. But, reading the post, it was just about other people's projects, people long gone and famous for their other writing. It wasn't what I was hoping for. I wanted something, fresh, something on the scale of in my own backyard versus famous places and perfect settings. So, what was there to do but collect my own ideas for a backyard naturalist, like myself.

First of all, if you don't have a backyard, there is a whole world out there. Take a look at a local public place like a church, cemetery, park, or get creative. Being a naturalist isn't just about walking around in a forested area. Studying urban areas is important too. Even if you walk on paved ground instead of grass, nature can be found. Not even just outdoors!

Make notes about what you see. Including illustrations. Don't try creating masterpieces with your drawings. They can just add to your words as you find more to be curious about, or make note of. If you make a digital notebook you can add digital photos. Later you can look into a magnifying glass and fancier equipment. But, the main thing is to see what you discover while its still out there to be seen. Technology and more equipment can be distracting and time consuming. To start with at least, stick to a pencil and notebook for quick notes.

What can you find in your immediate, local ecosystem? Learn to identify different plants growing in your backyard. What types of grass are in your lawn? What are the "weeds" you see? Watch for animals in your yard, not just birds. What do they find to eat and how do they eat? Do they interact or avoid each other? Add details like the location, season, the weather, time of day, colours, texture, how they move (or blow in the wind), so many details you can think to add once you get started.

Consider all your senses when making observations and notes: sight, sound, smell, hearing and touch. Include your sixth sense, your feelings, too. Avoid touching poisonous plants. Try not to disturb animals and plants in general. That doesn't mean you can't touch things around you, just learn to understand them without endangering or upsetting them. You don't want to harm life while studying life - be responsible for your actions, not a bumbling professor uncaring/ thoughtless about the chaos your actions can create.

How does the environment affect the natural world? The environment can include the location, traffic from vehicles or people, buildings, sidewalks, fences, a river, trees, everything. I think of the odd weed poking up in an otherwise pristine sidewalk. There is the natural world surviving in the environment it finds itself in.

Take time and return. You may see something interesting while busy and make quick notes before moving along. But, plan ahead and choose a time and location where you are not rushed and can return to again and again. Things change in the natural world. You need more than one visit. Try a sunny day and later a rainy day, even in the same week.

You could make a study of just one weed growing where it manages to get a start. What changes day by day? What struggles does that weed have? Does it grow to full height or remain stunted? Does it produce flowers or seeds? If someone pulls it out, does it have enough root to grow back? Endless questions and observations.

Don't forget the motto (used by urban explorers) "take only photographs, leave only footprints". Whatever you bring with you should leave with you, no littering. On the other hand, don't remove things from their environment. Instead hope you will see them/it again next time you visit. I make an exception for seeds and clippings from plants which you could add to your notes. But, don't harm the plants, make sure there is enough of it to keep thriving. In some locations you may need to stay on trails, especially in fragile ecosystems. Think of it as the butterfly effect without the time machine.

Dress appropriately. Think about insects (bees and mosquitos). Think about the weather. Bright colours or anything flashy will make it harder to watch animals, no matter how patiently you wait. Bring everything with you in an easy to haul around backpack or something else that works well for you.

Give yourself credit for what you have learned, progress you have made in understanding the ecosystem and new discoveries you make. Celebrate your discoveries. Add to your research by looking into history and lore about the plants and animals in your own backyard. Which plants are edible? Find out about foraging and cooking/ baking with wild plants. Learn tracking skills for seeing where the animals came from and where they go.

Here are some reflection questions to help you choose your next outdoor adventure: What am I excited to learn outside? What would be easy for me to do in the amount of time I have? What would be easy for me to do in the locations I have nearby? What areas of nature study am I most passionate about? What areas of nature study have I not done in awhile? If you ever get stuck and unable to go deeper in a particular area of naturalist curricullum… simply take a break and go study something else for awhile!

Quoted from Brian Mertins, Nova Scotia.

• Discover the World Around You: Your Guide to Becoming an Amateur Naturalist
• Citizen Science 101: What It Is and Why It Matters
• Backyard Naturalist podcast (US based).
• Backyard Naturalist (Australia)

I found a group online about keeping the old railroads running, not just one in particular but all of them around the world. It wasn't a hugely active site but I agreed with the idea. Not only do we already have (or still have some) of the original tracks but railways aren't just an alternative or romantic way to travel. The modern trains are fast and use less fossil fuels.

Today I found an online magazine about graffiti in Eastern Europe with a campaign #SavetheSteel and images of streetcars on coffee mugs. One reminds me of the streetcars as I remember them in Toronto when I was skipping school to go downtown for the day instead. Traveling by TTC bus, subway and sometimes the streetcars too. There were no streetcars in my area, only when I was right downtown in Toronto. #SavetheSteel from Concrete magazine.

I tried to find the railroad group I remember, but I don't know the exact name any more. I hope its in an old post somewhere. I haven't got all of them back online yet. Meanwhile, I did find a few other links worth keeping. I hope the Canadian group is more active than it looks. I'll send them a note.

• The Canadian Railway Preservation and Restoration Association
• The Canadian National Railways Historical Association
• Heritage Rail Alliance
• Ahead of the Torch

An editorial about exploring and documenting history. This comes from a forgotten (no posts since 2020) site of a Manitoba, Canada, explorer. I couldn't find a name or anything like social media to help find who they are.

Some of you are aware that Canada has never been considered one of the best countries in the world to explore abandoned sites, due to Canada's national policy for demolition projects of derelict buildings or converting derelict properties over to new owners, often into the hands of non-profit organizations. Oftentimes, a non-profit revitalizes a derelict property preserving it into a historical monument for decades to come. Alternatively, many a non-profit just doesn't have the funding to make a complete conversion and a vast number of the buildings remain derelict at the site for decades longer.

These properties are wonderful opportunities for photographers and historians to explore. Unfortunately, for many of us, we don't know they're out there to explore. No one is going to advertise these histories, locations and so on unless you travel the country roads a lot or keep up with the sporadic media reports about these landmarks. Your only other resource is spending unlimited hours in historical archives.

I'm all for preservation of historical sites, but the renovation process often renders the historical artifacts and architectural features obsolete. Once lost, these are never recovered unless someone documents them first. The preservation and renovation leans more to a symbolic historical monument then anything tangible. We need to remember that often times those derelict sites contain histories our culture doesn't want to remember. And that's why we not only call those marginalized and abandoned but also the forgotten one's.

The kinds of explorations some of us do do NOT end up in our Canadian school system's text books. History is continually erased where those would like it to be erased. However, I ask a vital question about this erasure. How does a culture, a nation, whatever this may be learn from their past mistakes in this manner? Perhaps we're all prone to wanting to hide our mistakes, shove them in a deep, dark closet or up into a musky, damp attic until the day we throw it all away or demolish it out of sight and memory.

Sometimes we can't even do that, as in the cases of nuclear tragedies such as Hiroshima, Chernobyl and Fukushima. Well, as some of us know, this is when we encounter the BS campaigns, orchestrated by governments, the international media and big corporations that have an invested interest in these outcomes. And they would just like us to know they would prefer we know as little as possible. Happy, ignorant sheep continue to be consumers, and every nation needs consumers. Some of us are still waking up' and enraged that democracy seems to have very little to do with 'protecting' the people and more to do with protecting big corporation, this includes the lies and coverups to cover up all the environmental disasters throughout history due to big corporation.

This also includes the cover ups of institutionalized 'mental asylums' where those not wanted in society were suddenly labeled with a 'mental disorder'. Imagine living in a generation where parents or your husband, just thoroughly sick of you for whatever reason, you've become an emotional or financial burden, maybe your husband didn't want to suffer the public embarrassment of divorcing you? So they could just drop you off at the nearest asylum? You have to wonder if those family members slept at night considering the 'cutting edge' therapeutic technologies that went on in asylums, like lobotomies, ice baths, electric shock therapy and brutal restraints to name a few.

This is why it's so essential for some of us to document what we can before it all fades. For me, sometimes it's a fine line between truth and deception, life and death and giving honor to those who have been forgotten, most often buried in unidentified graves. Just another number. No name. Their voices muted and then demolished out of memory. Out of history. This is my passion. Follow us this year as we travel and document Manitoba's abandoned places. Sometimes haunted places. The voices of the past still speak, of our ancestors, our history, right out of their unidentified graves, if we listen closely enough.

Pressing Plants, Flowers or Leaves the Easy Way

Get a big, thick, heavy book, a dictionary is kind of traditional, but not essential. There are other hefty books you can use to squish your flowers.

You also need wax paper or tissue paper to protect the pages of your book and to keep the flowers from breaking apart and sticking to the pages as they become pressed, dried and flattened in between the pages of your book.

Some people don't put the flowers in the pages of the book, they just put the book on top of the flowers. This is fine of course, but it loses some of the history of the project I think. My Grandmother would press flowers in the pages of her diary. She would have to put something heavy on her diary (it wasn't heavy enough on it's own) but I've always liked the custom and the history to pressing flowers in this traditional, sort of romantic way.

My Grandmother pressed the flowers she was given in the pages of her diary. I've always been fond of vintage romantic notions like this. So, I have to be careful when picking up my own old diaries/ journals lest the old pressed blooms slip out from the hand-written pages.

Why press flowers?

Pressed flowers can't keep all their fresh, original colour. I always feel this is the downside of having pressed flowers versus just taking a photograph. But, if you take the time to arrange all those flowers, leaves and so on for a photograph - why not take the extra step of pressing and preserving the originals.

Of course, this means you have to find room to keep them. You can create them as a framed picture and hang it up on a wall. A smaller project could be a in a frame which you could add a photograph to and give as a gift. You might even add other souvenirs from the day or event and turn the pressed flower project into a scrapbooking sort of arts and craft.

So, why press or dry flowers and keep them?

They are a sort of living art. If you use some plants which smell nice you can also keep that scent around in the display. A nice added bonus.

Most of all, I think flowers and plants in general have a short life, it's nice to preserve a few of them - give them added years rather than becoming compost at the end of each garden season.

My Mother likes it because she spends so much of her time in the garden, working. Then at the end of the season she really just has photos and her own memories left. When we take the time to preserve some of her best blooms she can keep them much longer, the very flower she grew in her own garden.

Some gardeners enter flowers in contests. I wonder if they press them and display them in a frame or just add the winning blossoms to the compost pile, mere worm food.

Drying Plants, Flowers or Leaves the Easy Way

The simplest way to dry flowers is to gather them in a bunch, tie the stem ends together tightly and hang them upside down somewhere for at least a few days. They should be dry right through before you store them.

You can tie the bundle to a wire hanger and easier hang the whole bunch over a door knob or something else do-able. Keep them away from steam and water - hanging them in the bathroom is not the best idea. I put newspaper down under them in case petals or leaves fall off as they dry.

Store dried flowers in a sealed container until you're ready to use them. Some dried flowers can be used to make teas as well as just looking pretty.