Weekly Prompt No. 18: Observing Changes Over Time
Part 3: Using numbers to craft narratives of our experience.
I’ve lived in my current home for eleven years. It’s surrounded on three sides by forest. My neighbors and I live in a manmade clearing down a small road. Some of the original forest pines were left on the property, but other trees were added as decoration long before I moved here. One such tree halfway down my road is a comparatively leafy green tree of medium height being choked by some sort of vine.
Every year in the autumn the tree’s leaves turn brown and drop to the ground before it spends the winter as a calligraphic reminder of its former self. In the spring, its green leaves burst out of its spindly branches as the tree takes on its warm weather look. Not once has this tree budded, let alone bloomed.
Until last spring…
Coming back from the mailbox one afternoon I was stopped in my tracks by something red amongst the leaves of the tree. Was that the flash of a cardinal’s tail?
Nope, it was apples! I couldn’t believe it. Apples? No, it couldn’t be. But as I got closer I could see that this tree had produced apples and quite a lot of them.
I don’t know if the people who planted this tree ever expected it to bear fruit, or even knew it was a fruit tree. No one can tell me as I’m the person who has lived in the neighborhood the longest, and all my former neighbors moved long before this tree revealed its true self.
So of course I am filled with questions. Did the people who planted it know it was an apple tree? If they did know, why didn’t they plant more? Why did it take eleven years for this tree to produce fruit? What kind of apples are they? What is the vine snaking its way up the tree? Why is it attaching itself? Did the vine prevent it from producing apples? If so, why now since the vine is still present and flourishing? All questions I put into my journal last year for later when I have time to really focus on these questions.
Well, that time has come.
For the next five months, I will spend some time each week with this tree as it bears and drops its fruit recording my observations and questions, taking measurements, counting buds and fruit – all the nature journal activities we’ve talked about so far and add quantification to my notes.
Why numbers?
Numbers reveal patterns and details over time that help to fill in the story expressed in words and pictures. Quantifying data also helps generate interesting questions. There are so many data-collecting techniques to choose from: counting, measuring, timing, and estimating. Collecting quantifying data enables you to make connections and comparisons, and can be another way of visualizing data. It supports written and visual data to deepen understanding. In this week’s prompt we will start to incorporate numerical data into our nature journaling practice.
Prompt
Choose an area to study – your sit spot, your yard, or another place you want to become familiar with, and then choose an object or phenomenon to observe over time.
Draw and write about your object on the left half of a two-page spread. Pay close attention to what you think/know will change over time.
On the right half, take baseline measurements. Record things like the weather, wind patterns, time of day, trajectory of the sun, etc – whatever you think is pertinent.
Decide on the intervals you will visit, journal, and take measurements. Use a journal page for each new entry.
Enjoy adding numerical data to your nature narratives.
xoSusannah
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Why upgrade? In addition to the monthly post and weekly prompts you’ve come to love, you’ll also receive the Tiny Owl Dispatch twice a month. It’s more personal content about nature journaling in Acadia National Park and the surrounding area, my natural history illustration projects, and telling nature stories through words, pictures, and numbers. Plus you also get demos, my “podcast” Cricklewood Campfire containing stories, folklore, and folksongs with a nature theme (of course!), and full access to the archive.
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Hello, Susannah. I discovered you yesterday through Brooke Mcalary's Slow Living Resources post, and I must say I am utterly hooked. For now, I am saving your posts to read and work through when I have more time (formal employment comes to end on 31st July).
I am going to be doing training with a woman here in England called Ali Foxon who wrote a book called Green Sketching, so your work is right up my street.
As I work through, I will pop back and give you feedback!
But I just wanted to say thank you!
What an exciting adventure! I'm eager to hear if she's a crabapple or a regular apple in dire need of some pruning and feeding. Not that you'll know either I suppose, but was it planted as a shrub, or as a seed from a kiddies experiment. Such mystery!