Video link of Digging Deeper Into Gardening.
During the last year many of us have discovered the hidden benefits of gardening and the myriad ways that nature lifts our spirits. In this talk we will discuss some of those benefits, how to use our gardens to engage all the senses, and dive into some simple garden assessment to explore ways – both large and small – to increase our enjoyment of our outdoor spaces.
Read moreWe are pleased to announce that periodically we will be featuring one of our members. We thought it was appropriate to feature our past BRNN President and one of the founding board members of our non-profit.
Ken Czarnomski is a seasoned architect, artist and educator. He has spent much of his life exploring the natural world with adventures in National Parks and Forests throughout all fifty states and foreign countries, creating artistic visions from these. As he expanded his travels, he discovered illustrated maps in Ireland, which inspired his final project for his North Carolina Arboretum Blue Ridge Naturalist certification in 2013. He donated that Purchase Knob map to Haywood County Tourist Development Authority, where they continue to do ten thousand printings at a time. To date, he has reached over 100,000 people through various publications.
Read moreby Linda Martinson
“Everything is connected, absolutely everything.”
Sm’hayetsk Teresa Ryan, forest ecologist, The Mother Tree Project
I read dozens of books last year running the gamut from Ben Okri’s poetry (oh my!) to Code Girls, a surprising book about the brilliant, dogged women who accomplished most of the critical code breaking efforts that helped the U.S. win World War II, to several excellent environmental/naturalist books, many recently published.
So here are some recommendations for Pandemic winter reading. Start with Code Girls. It’s a quick and compelling read and a good lesson that freedom isn’t a given and that the significant efforts that helped us win World War II were not straightforward or obvious! When you finish the book, ponder whether World War II could have been won without the Code Girls?
Next, I recommend diving in and out of Wild, a book of poetry by Ben Okri which is also about freedom. One review of the book noted that, “Freedom is the most precious commodity in the world…” and that in his book, Okri “explores the freedom of our spirit, the child within.”
“So long as you start with your chaos. Order from the chaos you find. The chaos of now, today; of which the order and standards and classics of the past are a part. The way a ruin is part of a forest.”
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