Nature Notes: Why you should check it out

Visit Michelle at the home of Nature Notes.

I've been doing Nature Notes for quite awhile now as a testimony to the friendship I feel for the creator, Michelle.

Years ago, the people in my real life learned of Michelle when I started to refer to her regarding anything to do with birds and wildlife. Rescuing an animal? I run to her blog. Can't identify a bird? I run to her blog. Have a question about ... anything? I run to her blog.

She's my expert.

But there's more to it than that. I believe people like Michelle have a love within them that not everyone can claim. Not every teacher has this love, but this sort of love makes them teachers. She's the kind of teacher who will change your life in some way if you pay attention. For those of you who know me in real life, she's like Lois M. Jones: You can imagine how fond I am of Michelle.

When I say you should check out her blog on my Nature Notes posts, I'm doing you a big favor. Do yourself a favor and poke around. On her blog, look at the links at the top and along the right side for more information about something that interests you. Read her posts and get to know her. You won't be sorry.

Michelle and Rose are two people I consider friends and they both became my first contributors to support my summer-long project of raising money for AIDS orphans in Tanzania. I didn't ask them to do that, so I'm thinking they must count me as a friend in return.

For that, the internet is worth everything.

Now for Nature Notes Thursday, which I've found get away from me before I blink.

When we bought this house, there were roses on the south side. I really figured they'd die over that first winter because I think of roses as being fussy and not worth the trouble and way too much work. Then after years of neglecting them and realizing they had enough pluck to live without me, I tried something.

I brewed some coffee and I 'watered' the roses with the coffee. I rinsed, dried and ground up egg shells and mixed them into the soil. The results are below:

I have looked at ALL my photos and I don't have a "before" photo, so that should probably tell you something about how the plant looked in years past. I have photos of every. single. thing. that grows in my backyard, but not this plant.