Backyard Nature Journaling Series

This is Gage. I’m so excited to announce I am starting a new series, a Nature Journal series! I will be sharing about all the flowers, plants, trees, animals, and insects (nature) we find in our backyard… and teaching you how to do nature journaling.This will probably be the last year we spend here because we are getting our house ready to sell. So this series will be a way to help me remember where I grew up. 

I have really loved living here. I enjoy being able to keep and care for farm animals.  We used to have a bunch of dairy cows, I really enjoyed them. We had many calves born here on the farm and have had many funny escapades with them. Here is Bullophagus — one of our frisky baby bulls, out investigating if the grass really is greener on the other side!

Now, we are down to just chickens and a horse, but mom sometimes feels like they are too much too! You can see why. When we took everything off our porch to paint, the chickens thought they had found new roosting places!

I am 13, almost 14, and am the middle child of the family. I used to attend the La Grange Montessori School. In 2008 it closed due to lack of funds. And I have been homeschooled ever since. I love to go out and just listen to nature sometimes. I’m not going to call myself a nature guy, but I do enjoy spending time outdoors. 

Let me tell you about my home. I have lived in La Grange, TN all my life. We live on 40 acres of land. During the summer, it is normally around 80-92 degrees and it doesn’t rain that often. Our house is on a hill so our backyard has a slight slope. The grass is normally cut but is not a manicured yard. Out the front door is a mostly flat yard that slightly slopes down towards our ditch then back up to the main road, there are many trees as it starts to slope down. Beside our driveway is the horse’s pasture and the driveway doesn’t stop at the house, it continues down to our barn. Behind the barn is the woods, and down from the barn through the pasture is the Pond (where we let our turtles loose.) The backyard is met with trees as you get closer to the barn.

Since this area is very rural we can find and study lots of interesting animals, birds, and plants around here. Just three days ago when I was walking with my mom picking Dandelions, we saw a snake. Have I mentioned mom hates snakes?

Another great thing about living in a rural area is the fact that we can keep certain animals we find. For example, in TN you can not buy red-eared sliders. But we found two in our pool after we had shocked it — we had those two for quite a while but they got too big and we let them live in our pond. 

One of the things I enjoy most is trying to find animals. I’m not sure why, I just really love finding them. Once we found a small snake, very small, about 4 inches long with an orange belly and grey/tan back, I just kept watching it while we kept it in a jar with air holes. Oh yeah, have I mentioned mom hates snakes? There was no keeping that find! So we released the tiny snake.

I also enjoy listening to the sound of nature around me. I usually bring my school work outside on nice days… especially the messy experiments! 

Next time I will be talking about Lyreleaf sage aka Cancer weed and in the future we will cover a plant everyone knows, the Dandelion!

I have linked up with other teen/tween writers at ClaraBlevins.com. If you are a Teen/Tween writer join the link up!

Until next time…