Penelopedia's on Facebook

The Penelopedia blog now has a Facebook page: www.facebook.com/penelopediablog. It'll be a place where I'll share new Penelopedia posts, but it's also a less formal space for sharing photos, sightings and thoughts that don't make it into full blog posts. I'll also share photos, updates and articles from other sources that I think are beautiful, thought-provoking or newsworthy.

The focus will be, much like that of the blog, on birdwatching and other encounters with nature in Northfield, southern Minnesota and beyond, supporting an ethic of awareness, respect and stewardship.

An alternative way I sometimes describe this focus is, "Noticing the natural world around me, and trying to tread lightly on it." It's much the same thing. What we notice, we start to really see. What we see, we can't help but take some interest in. What we take an interest in, we learn more about -- and care more about. And I think that's so important. You don't miss what you've never noticed. I'm determined to notice as much as I can, while it's here and I can make a difference.

If you're on Facebook, I hope you'll "like" the new page. I look forward to expanding the conversation into that space. If you're not on Facebook, don't worry. Penelopedia will continue to be what it's been -- perhaps with the addition of occasional blog posts about something that came up on the Facebook page!

As always, thanks so much for reading and for your comments and emails, which I treasure.

Holiday Greetings

Merry Christmas and warmest wishes at this special time of year, when the light begins to return but months of cold still lie ahead for those of us in the northern realms. I so appreciate my readers, and I love getting your notes. Thank you for following Penelopedia and letting me share my observations with you.

May your days be merry and bright, and may all your Christmases be white!

Five-year Blogiversary for Penelopedia

An earlier header image for Penelopedia

Five years ago today Penelopedia was born, with the inaugural post This Is My Garden. From its initial focus on the local food movement and vegetable gardening to the birds-and-nature blog it tends most often to be these days, this project has led me, more than anything else it has done, to learn about the things that I observe so that I can write about them.

Later header image

The blog has carried me through five pivotal years personally:

• A stint as a single mother living with my young son in a rented duplex with a patio garden (the subject of that first post)
• My eldest daughter leaving for college and emerging a beautiful, independent, competent young woman with a passion for art
• Joining Facebook and greatly expanding the circle of people I feel connected or reconnected to
• Getting married again and acquiring two cats along with my birdwatching, cat-loving husband, Dave
• Moving back into my former house with said husband and son
• My second daughter moving with her Dad to St. Paul so she could attend a performing arts high school there, then eventually graduating and going off to college herself to further develop her musical gifts, which were showing themselves by the time she was two
• Deciding to adopt a kitten for my son and coming home from the shelter with not one but two young cats, for a crazy total of four, without whom life would be far duller
• Saying goodbye soon afterward to my dear dog, Jennie
• My son finishing elementary school, suddenly shooting up and developing a man's voice, and completing a year of middle school (and becoming quite a good birdwatcher along the way).

Current header image

Over the course of 618 blog posts, I have become a more knowledgeable birdwatcher myself, and a somewhat better photographer with my simple point-and-shoot compact camera. I've also made "blog friends" I've never or rarely met in person.

I have had the delight of people occasionally letting me know that they get pleasure from my blog, or learn from it, or both. I generally write without thinking too much of who may read my words or see my images, so it is beautiful to know that they do sometimes land where they are appreciated. Thank you for that.

The main point of this blog is to celebrate that which is all around us but apart from the human routine. Combat nature deficit disorder. Walk in the woods. Hear the dawn chorus. Hear an owl. Observe patterns. Stretch your legs. Put up a bird feeder and see who comes. Breathe clean air. Watch the ever-changing sky and feel the wind on your face. Marvel at the web of the garden spider and the migration of the birds. Smell the sweet meadow and the ozone of the rainstorm. Touch the rough bark and the smooth stone. Walk in the softly falling snow. Blow the dandelion fluff. Taste the ripe berry by the side of the trail.

Notice, and learn, and celebrate, and respect, and tread lightly. That's what I'm trying in my small way to do.

Gasping -- and Feeling Lucky (Still)

Mourning Cloak: photo by Richard of "At the Water"

A post about the mourning cloak butterfly on my friend Richard's At the Water blog today reminded me of one I'd written just about four years ago, in the early days of Penelopedia. It still sums up my views on noticing and appreciating the natural world around us, and my great pleasure that my 11-year-old son seems to share some of this appreciation, so I am re-posting it today (thanks, Richard!).

Gasping -- and Feeling Lucky

My quote of the week [I used to include a quote in my sidebar each week] is an excerpt from Barbara Kingsolver's 1995 collection of essays, High Tide in Tucson. Here it is:

Someone in my childhood gave me the impression that fiddleheads [a type of fern] and mourning cloaks [a type of butterfly] were rare and precious. Now I realize they are fairly ordinary members of eastern woodland fauna and flora, but I still feel lucky and even virtuous -- a gifted observer -- when I see them. For that matter, they probably are rare, in the scope of human experience. A great many people will live out their days without ever seeing such sights, or if they do, never gasping. My parents taught me this -- to gasp, and feel lucky. They gave me the gift of making mountains out of nature's exquisite molehills. ... My heart stops for a second, even now..., as Camille and I wait for the butterfly to light and fold its purple, gold-bordered wings. "That's a mourning cloak," I tell her. "It's very rare."

The gift Kingsolver was given and gives to her daughter in turn is one that I was also given by my mother. Not, perhaps, the gift exactly of gasping, but of being on the lookout -- noticing and appreciating the beauty and importance of a hawk circling high overhead, a heron at the edge of a pond, a purple Siberian iris, a pair of squirrels in a backyard tree. It was she who, after I'd had an unnerving encounter with bats in my first Northfield basement, said, "But Pen, bats are interesting!" It was she who, having lived for several years where I was born, near a game reserve outside Nairobi, Kenya, agonized over the threats to the survival of the great wild animals of Africa and the prospect that one day they might be no more.

It is because of my mother that I scan the sky for raptors, pay attention to birds while I'm supposed to be paying attention to my tennis game, and at least now and then take my son (and my daughters in their day) to look for turtles and hawk feathers and creeks and footprints and berries in the woods. I hope, even though they may seem baffled by some of these passions (and perhaps more than a bit alarmed by my propensity for bird-watching at 70 mph on the interstate), I have planted seeds in them that will send down deepening roots and grow throughout their lives, enabling them to marvel at the beauties and complexities of nature and know that, no matter how seemingly commonplace their manifestations, they are very rare indeed.

Year in Review and What's New at Penelopedia

I had to write a new post to get the white-breasted nuthatch off the top post, because I have just adopted him or her as my new header photo. What do you think?

Also, I added up our 2010 bird list (see tab at top of page) and we saw 95 species -- to which announcement Dave replied, "Is that all? We'll have to do better in 2011." So there we have it: a challenge for the new year.

Another new thing on the blog is a page to track our 2011 Project Feederwatch counts. The idea there is to track the largest number of a particular species that you see together at one time during a given count period (we'll try to count each week). That way you know for sure there are that many individuals, rather than adding up birds you see at different times of the day. House finches are the leaders so far, with as many as seven visible at one time at or near our feeders.

I've also added a Book List page with some of the books that have influenced me or that I refer to regularly. As always, I truly encourage you to patronize your local bookseller if you are interested in any of these, but for convenience there are links to Amazon.com. 

Penelopedia has been getting a lot of hits recently from people looking for images of animal tracks in the snow. With all the snow in the UK and elsewhere this December, my post about that subject from a couple of years ago, which features a track chart from the Ohio DNR, has had 754 page views in the last month and more than 1,700 since May. The Northfield flooding in September also brought about 1,500 visitors to the blog (that's the big spike you see in the graph at left).

Thanks for stopping by, whether you are a one-time visitor looking for information on a particular topic or a regular reader of Penelopedia. I look forward to sharing more birding and nature adventures and discoveries with you in 2011. And I WILL be planting a vegetable garden this year, so stay tuned for some gardening moments as well. Peace.

Favorite photos from 2010

Western Minnesota road trip, May

Busy day at the feeders, December

Great blue heron in the treetop, October

Grey crowned crane at the Int'l Crane Foundation, September

Argiope spider, September

Dog day cicada, August

Monarch butterfly on coneflower, July

Green heron at St. Olaf nature area, June

Larger photos -- what do you think?

Update, December 6: I have decided to revert to a smaller size photo and have adjusted all the previous big ones back to a more moderate size.. One reason was that I was reminded that some people subscribe via e-mail, and the big photos seemed really too much. Also, I liked the balance of the page better with the smaller photos. When I've got one that looks really great big, I'll beg people to click on it to see it larger, but I don't need to make them all big.
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I adjusted my blog template to provide room to show the photos at a larger size. That means a lot more scrolling, but more impact for each photo. I'd like to know whether or not you find this format more appealing. Here's a photo from last winter to serve as an example. If you click back through earlier posts, you'll see I've enlarged the photos in the two or three most recent posts, but the earlier posts will show the size the photos were displayed at before I expanded the template width. Thanks for letting me know what you think!

The Bookcase that Became a Blog

To accompany my latest blog redesign, I was moved to write a kind of "About This Blog" page for Penelopedia, called The Bookcase that Became a Blog. You can see it as a new tab at the top of the page.

Whoops, I Did It Again

... I played with my blog. It's only a few months since I changed the look, but I was never entirely happy with it. This look feels more "me." Let me know if anything doesn't look right...

New Design for Penelopedia(?)

Blogger has a new template design feature, and I have spent much of the evening playing around with it. Right now it won't let me upload my own background image, which I would prefer, but of the nature-themed options this seemed to suit me best. It gives me more width to work with, too, which is an improvement over my old style.

I saved the old template so I can revert to it, but change can be good.

What do you think?

Addendum: Since posting this, I've reconsidered and found a very different format that I think is easier on the eyes. Who knows, I may make more changes tomorrow. It's like trying on new clothes.

Blog Milestone

As I did my usual morning check-in on my blog, I noticed that by chance my visit had triggered the hit-counter to register 25,000. This isn't an accurate count of visits to the site, as it records every page-view anywhere on the site, including my own. Still, because we have ten fingers and so tend to find multiples of ten compelling, 25,000 still seems a significant milestone. Thanks for all who have visited, and especially to my modest cadre of regular readers. Penelopedia has been one of the most enjoyable and meaningful things I've ever done. It's inspired and enabled me to learn a lot in the interest of being accurate here, and it's given me an ongoing reason to get out there and notice things. Because that's essentially what this blog is all about: the excitement to be found in noticing the world around us.

Guest Blogger at Eat Local: Just Food

Along with several other Northfield-area local food advocates, I'll be contributing to the Eat Local: Just Food blog being launched this week by the Just Food Co-op to support the Winter Eat Local Challenge, coming up the second week in March. My first post, Getting What We Pay For, explores the idea that price is not always the most important thing to consider when shopping for food, and that putting our food dollars where our values are can be extremely satisfying.

Check out the blog, and consider participating in the Challenge, which encourages you to eat 50% of your food from the five-state area from March 7 to the 13th. The blog includes a helpful list of locally produced foods that are available now at the co-op.

New on Penelopedia's Bookshelf... and a yummy snack

This Christmas Dave and I received two beautiful books from my daughters which I am delighted to add to that special bookcase where I keep books about nature, gardening, cooking, and eating locally... the bookcase that, in the end, was really the inspiration for the Penelopedia blog.

I'm not a WCCO listener, but those who are will, I understand, probably be familiar with Jim Gilbert, who hosts a weekly call-in show called Nature Notes. (You can subscribe to podcasts here -- look for Nature Notes about two-thirds of the way down the page -- and I plan to do that.)

Gilbert has taken years of his observations and those shared by his regular contributors and put together a substantial and beautifully illustrated paperback guide to Minnesota phenology called Jim Gilbert's Minnesota Nature Notes: what to look for, week by week throughout the year, with respect to birds, animals, flowers, foliage, crops, precipitation, temperatures, ice-out dates on the lakes, and much more. I love the little downward-tilting nuthatch perching on the "M" of Minnesota on the cover. I look forward to reading this book straight through and then returning to it again and again for reminders of what can be observed around us if we just take the time to notice.

The Farm to Table Cookbook: The Art of Eating Locally, by Ivy Manning, is a gorgeous hardcover that would look wonderful sitting on a coffee table. Organized seasonally, the book is intended to help those who buy what is fresh and in season and are looking for new and delicious ways to serve those early spring greens, wild mushrooms, orchard fruits or winter squash. As a winter meal, how about Twice Baked Irish Potatoes with Stout [as in Guinness] Onions & Kale?

Yet another treat on Christmas day was a snack I bought on a whim at Just Food co-op during its recent anniversary open house: Sing Buri Cashews with dried pineapple, peanuts, lemongrass and Chinese chili, from Sahale Snacks. To tell the truth, I had just about OD'd on nuts this holiday season, and my waistline shows it, but these brought a tangy, zingy, sweet, chewy new quality to rich but heart-healthy nuts, and the pouch is not so big that anyone will go too far overboard on them. Definitely recommended.

Time for a New Header

It's the same impulse that used to lead me to rearrange my room every once in a while when I was growing up... The background photo shows wild bergamot (monarda) and unspecified grasses as seen in late July.

One Year of Penelopedia

Container garden, July 18, 2008

Last year's garden in mid-July

Penelopedia was launched one year ago this week with the words "This is my garden" accompanying the image on the right, above. On the left is this year's container garden, doing quite well but -- thanks to our cold spring, later planting, and pleasantly cool June -- noticeably less advanced than last year's at the same time. I've got a nice thick crop of leaf lettuce, rather crowded in its pot. I've got a container pepper that's appreciated our recent warmer weather, as have the several container-size tomatoes. My neighbors picked up some rather slim, leggy pepper plants at a garage sale and have added them to my cluster of pots; only one looks as if it might become sturdy enough to bear any fruit.

In about a month I'll be leaving this duplex, but I'll carefully transport my pots to the deck of my new residence, which is actually my former residence. It's all rather confusing really, as a character on the Goon Show used to say. My other garden, which I've blogged about recently, is there already, just waiting for me to come home again. I'll be starting a new life with a new spouse in a familiar location. Our families will blend, and my two gardens will become one. I'm looking forward to the adventure.

Navel Gazing

What's a blogger to do when she doesn't have her camera for a month, having lent it to her daughter who is on an island in Lake Superior, attending music camp? How about taking the time to look back at 10 months of Penelopedia? I started the blog in July 2007, but only have decent statistics from the time I signed on with Sitemeter at the end of last August. Sitemeter tells me the following:

• Penelopedia received between 482 and 988 unique daily visits per month; the average visitor looks at 1.5 pages while on the site
• 25-30 visitors check out the site on a typical day; currently, 28 visitors subscribe to Penelopedia through a feed reader (info supplied by Feedburner). There may be some overlap in these populations if people click through from their feed readers to the actual site.
  
• Peak readership so far has been been in April and May 2008, when I was writing and posting photos often about waterfowl migration through southern Minnesota and gearing up for the gardening season; the low points were in the heart of winter, when I had little to talk about.
  

People who found Penelopedia through a search engine in recent months were most often looking for information on:

1. box elder bugs
2. apostrophe use in phrases like "farmers' market" (one of my tangentially related rants)
   
3. wasps' nests
4. local berry farms in general or Lorence's in particular
5. the phrase "just us boys" (that'll teach me to name my posts more carefully); odd, those visitors don't seem to stick around very long
   
6. locavores and the eat-local movement
   
7. freegans
8. house sparrows
9. spirea
   

A few weeks ago I listed Penelopedia on Nature Blog Network, a compendium of blogs that deal with wildlife, birdwatching, botany, ecosystems and the like. Penelopedia is currently the 136th-most-visited of their roughly 350 ranked blogs (ranking changes daily based on a running count of average daily visits tracked through their icon).

The posts I am most pleased to have written include:

• Tormented by an Apostrophe (the rant mentioned above; I'd rewrite it now to emphasize earlier in the post the irrefutable, IMHO, logic of Stephen Wilbers, who uses irregular plurals like "children" and "women" to prove the grammatical point)
  
• Extreme Eating, Glocavores, Luddites and More (which looked beyond the local food movement to larger issues of thoughtfulness in food choice)
• Birdwatching While Playing Tennis (an early post that just begged to be written)

My favorite photo I've posted so far is probably the one of pied-billed grebes swimming through the reflection of Ames Mill in the Cannon River (I later incorporated it into my header image, though that may change next time I have a yen for a new look).

I like the fact that blogging about nature and gardening helps give me the impetus to get out and experience/do those things -- and readers have helped improve that experience. One of the high points of the year was a reader's tip (thanks, Brendon) about the presence of a loon on a pond at the southeast edge of Northfield; I would not otherwise have known we might see loons over an extended period in Northfield. I also appreciate the role the local-blog aggregator at northfield.org has played in helping me "grow" a readership. (That's a jargony expression that I can't yet use outside business hours without quotes around it, but which feels suitable for a blog that's in considerable part about gardening.)

Thank you, my core of relatively faithful readers, and welcome to any who stumble upon Penelopedia in their travels around the Web. I hope you hang around for more. To quote The Blurred Birder, a British blogger whose site I found through Nature Blog Network, "Stick with it, it might get better, you never can tell."

A Little Shake to the Path

The path gave a sudden twist and shook itself...
Through the Looking Glass -- Lewis Carroll

A slightly new look for Penelopedia reflects a little shake to the path that may already have been evident to regular readers. Rather more emphasis on wildlife, nature and gardening, in season. Rather less emphasis on tracking my participation in Eat Local challenges (though I continue to support the notion of acquiring more of our food from local sources). Continued interest in sustainable agriculture and greener living. Cheers -- and stay tuned.