Nature Notebook Revisited

I posted about this beautiful first edition book I found at the thrift store a few weeks ago and quite a few of you asked if you might see a few pages from the inside. I am almost always willing to oblige but it sometimes takes me a while. Here are a few scanned pictures including the front and back cover artwork. I love the way it is written almost like they are taking you along for a nature discovery journey, very similar to the way some of us blog. The illustrations are really phenomenal.

I saw that there are a few used copies available on Amazon and one identical to mine on ebay if anyone is interested.  I decided to intermingle these pages with a few of my own photographs of similar things. I saw some really large deer in the forest yesterday but they were in a hurry and I didn't manage to get a photograph of them.

Some of you may remember the plight of the trillium is a subject dear to my heart. The greening of the white trillium is even more pronounced in the forests I wander this spring and seems to be spreading to new areas. I asked all the botany experts and even Canada's trillium expert ( he wrote an entire book on trilliums) last year and no one could tell me for sure why this was occuring. Answers I obtained were changes in soil properties and various diseases including viral infections of the plants. I suspect it is more than that and some of the green trilliums my husband and I observed this year appear to not even have "flowers" only leaves and thus they have no plant reproductive organs. That is about as serious a problem other than immediate death that a plant can have.

Here are a few pictures I took in the same forest as last spring.

I would love to get some DNA analyses done of these plants. I fight just fire off a new series of letters to the experts again. Maybe I should go straight to the top and send it to David Suzuki. He was recently picked the most trusted Canadian in a poll done for Reader's Digest. 

Comments

[Patricia]

Thanks for the update on the trillium, though your report is very troubling. I hope you can get someone interested in getting to the root of the problem.

[melissa]

thank you for posting pictures of the naturebook- the illustrations are beautiful!

[Lisa]

Another extraordinary post Margie, I often feel like a child when I am immersed in your words, I love learning from you. You live in a magical place, I miss the larger creatures, we have no deer, foxes or badgers here. By way of compensation we do have the Red Squirrel, I have only seen a little glimpse of one. Oh and puffins too. There are a few patches of woodland which we plan to visit with Ishi at the weekend.
XXX

[Sonia]

Oh Margie, all the photos are so lovely & match the illustrations so perfectly ! It must be so thrilling to read such a book !
Thanks for keeping us updated about the poor trilliums. I'm so impressed how much you involve, you're such a model for us all. Wouldn't there be an extra problem with the bees (themselves endangered) & pollinating or spreading other diseases ? (OK, I'm no scientist but just wonder) Anyway, this is terribly sad. :(
Thank you very much Margie, you always make me keep my eyes & mind open. Much love xoxoxo

[Sonia]

um, I meant "you get involve", sorry.

[joanie]

The trilliums ares so beautiful, I hope you unlock the mystery. I'm glad someone like you cares enough to ask the right questions and not give up on them.
Your book is beautiful, lovely illustrations and old line art. It's fantastic to see the woodland flowers and fauna in your corner of the globe. Thanks for opening the book to show us some images, especially nice to see them in the context of the real environment via your photos. Happy weekend Margie :)

[andrea gutierrez]

oh dear sweet little raccoon!!

[Nanou]

Thank you very much Margie, for inviting us in your fantastic book ! I really love these vintage illustrations wonderfully and pertinently complete with your own nature discoveries. I'm sure that one day we'll find in bookstores "Margie's Nature Notebook" !
How fabulous imagining snails, rancoons, deer or black bears living close to you ...