Creating a nature journal provides you with an opportunity to study and develop a greater awareness of your surroundings. Below is an example of my observations on just one day in the Great Swamp.

The excerpt above is from learning materials created by Erin Frost for the Rhode Island Wild Plant Society.

Assisted in the creation of 15 instructional web cooking videos for the Full Yield™ Online Program. The Full Yield Company offers a variety of products, foods and programs to instruct members in the art of using minimally refined, naturally healthful foods for better health. “We’ve enrolled 1200 program members and they have taken our central message to heart: the quality of the food you eat has everything to do with the quality of your life, day after day and year after year.”

Although this show never made it to the airwaves, it was my first experience on a television set. In the spirit of sharing-even your failures. I learned an important lesson, not every show makes it. Producing a television show is far more complicated than most people realize, there are lots of parts that have to come together to make it work. My part was to prepare and create sets at Fordhook Farm. I spent hours rearranging plants and polishing leaves not really knowing what I was doing. It wasn’t a very harmonious set or particularly glamorous work. But I also learned that sometimes your first experience/failure shouldn’t keep you from trying something again.

There are lots of ways to enjoy mushrooms. You can put them on your pizza, hunt for them in the woods, study them under a microscope, or make art with them.
Mushrooms are fungi. Fungi make their food by eating dead leaves and wood (organic matter). They can not make their food from the sun like plants because they do not have any chlorophyll.
In order to make more mushrooms, a mushroom will make tiny spores. These are produced on the undersides of the cap. When the conditions are right, a mushroom will release the spores from the gills. The spores will fall down and be carried away by a breeze. When the spores land, if the conditions are right, each spore will make another mushroom.
Identification of mushrooms can be very difficult. Mushrooms are not like birds or wildflowers, where everything you see was described and named some time ago. Beyond the basic features of mushroom structure, size and habitat, the most important characteristic of a mushroom to know for its identification is its spore color. Moreover, making a “spore print” for determining spore color is something fun and interesting to do.
To make a spore print, select your mushroom, preferably one that is fresh and undamaged. Decide whether the spore color is light or dark. The color of the gills may give you some clues. Select a piece of card, white or black depending on the selection as outlined above. Aluminum foil works well to.  Remove the stalk from the mushroom and place it gill side down on the piece of card or foil. Place a jar over the top. This helps to keep it moist as well stopping any air movement dispersing the spores.
While some spore prints can appear within a few hours, it’s often best to wait overnight, just to be sure. When you remove the cup and lift the mushroom cap, you should find a “print.” If you have been careful not to move the mushroom you will find that the spore print reflects the pattern of the mushroom’s gills or pores.

The excerpt above is from learning materials created by Erin Frost for the Rhode Island Wild Plant Society.

One of the main uses of sun printing was for botanical prints, used by botanists exploring the West to record their finds for posterity; many of these botanical sun prints are now in museum collections.  Sun printing fell out of practical use when replaced as a photography process by silver based photography, and replaced as a copying process by mimeography and xerography.  But today it is enjoying a revival as an art form.

To make a sunprint today, you can order the treated photographic paper online, at www.lawrencehallofscience.org.  Collect and place objects with a distinct shape on the special print paper. Make sure not to expose the paper to the sun until the objects are in place. Leave the paper with the objects on it in the sun for 2-5 minutes. You will know the print is done when the exposed paper turns almost white. Quickly take off the objects from the paper, making sure the paper is not exposed to sunlight. Then, place the paper in water. This stops the chemicals from reacting to the sunlight. The background will turn blue while the shadow of the object turns white.

The excerpt above is from learning materials created by Erin Frost for the Rhode Island Wild Plant Society.

It creeps softly across the window panes. A grayish brown branch resembling a  grandmother’s beautiful, aged hand bends inward with Time’s lean. Each granite colored digit lifts awkwardly from brown, knotted, swollen joints. As months tumble into each other, the days shorten,  then lengthen again, their changing seasons measured by this silent, waving arm.

Outside the window, fall brings flames of color that extend a foliage sunset from hours to weeks. It starts with a rich kimono red, gradually brightening to jack-o-lantern orange and then dulling to a sweet cinnamon. Then, leaves hang limply on the branch ready to drop. Back lit by the sun, they look like ancient parchment maps, veins leading off toward new territories. Eventually, they fall, joining mountainous drifts of wet leaves lining the street. You inhale the sweet, moist, earthy perfume of decaying leaves and hear the musical crunch of curling dried leaves under a pedestrian’s feet. Like little winged packages, the leaves leap into the wind, each with a mission to sink into fertile soil (B27, B28).

Winter comes, bringing Morse code messages tapped by bark fingers on the pane. Now, the gentle creak of stiff limbs moving in the wind edges nearer. Snow coats the branch with a fluffy white collar. Finally, tiny red bumps coat the smooth, gray bark. They are buds, ready to burst at the first sign of warmth.

Spring brings silhouettes of cool, steamy rain against the window. Creatures pass, busily making their way along the tree’s branched highways. Little white spring flowers in discreet lines look like ladies’ underpants dangling on a clothesline. Crinkley new leaves unfurl, shaped like fat green hands with triangles for fingers. So new and bright, they appear neon. Electric storms leave long, fuzzy, green filaments stuck to the screen.

In summer the tree’s foliage creates a moving green dome above, and skies seem dotted with green clouds. As you step to the window, the shaded outline of leaves patterns your skin, cooling your face and arms  Breezes, caught by leaf surfaces, are shuffled in; the curtains billow. No day is ever the same, even in a world as small as eight panes. This glass-framed limb reminds us that transformations occur constantly and consistently everywhere we turn.

The excerpt above is from the chapter, Change, Sanctuary, Gardening for the Soul by Erin Frost and Lauri Brunton.

]]> http://www.erinfrost.com/2011/09/11/tv-segments/feed/ 0 http://www.erinfrost.com/2011/09/11/event-invites/ http://www.erinfrost.com/2011/09/11/event-invites/#comments Sun, 11 Sep 2011 14:43:31 +0000 admin http://www.erinfrost.com/?p=631 One of the aspects of my work that I truly enjoy is creating the materials around an event. This is a small sampling of invites and posters I designed for several local events which did not have budgets for a professional designer. Despite my lack of formal design training, I think they came out pretty well.

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