COVID19 Lock Down Daily Nature Notes.

I started writing some daily nature notes almost at the beginning of lock down, a little like the government I was late with the idea! I actually can’t recall if it was late March or 1st April when I decided it would be nice to do, and I thought I would hang them in the window of the front room so they could be seen from the street by those taking the ‘coronawalks’. Anyway let’s say I started on April Fool’s Day, just because I'm a fool for not remembering!


At first I hung up up a piece of cardboard, wrote the notes on paper and pinned them to the cardboard.

 






It wasn’t long before I realised it would be better to do them on a small blackboard, and since my birthday pops up quite soon into April, I asked for a blackboard & some coloured chalks. Luckily they came! And not only that, I received a card from a family who I didn’t know, that had been reading the paper notes and saying how much they had learned. I did a little fist pump, it was all I wanted to hear that people were reading them, enjoying them and perhaps engaging with nature either for the first time or a little more.

I started to embellish the notes once I got going on the blackboard, it's actually quite nice to sketch in chalks.

Towards the end of April I mentioned my notes on a group WhatsApp chat with my fellow football buddies. They said, "we need to see these notes, we’re missing out!" So the next thing was to also post the notes on WhatsApp every morning, if they were late, I knew about it!

When we got to June and lock down was starting to ease, I thought it would be nice to carry on through the annual #30DaysWild challenge until the end of the month. So here we are:

Pictures posted from 21 April 2020….


The first is terrible; spelling mistake & blurry photo (bad night?).





 






On in to May:

























And so to June, and 30 Days Wild, an initiative created by The Wildlife Trusts that I have taken part in each year. The notes occasionally contained something to try as a 'random act of wildness'.

























.... a few more to come!

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