The Natural Heritage Of Indiana

My fellow Hoosier Blogging friends. I caught a great program on PBS last night that I highly recommend. It’s called The Natural Heritage of Indiana. Yes, it’s a nature documentary and some of you might start having 5th grade Indiana History flash backs watching it, but it is a really well done show. I learned a great deal and discovered several new places around my fair state that I just have to visit now. Looks like the next air date is March 25th at 4:30AM on WFYI. So set that DVR or Tivo and enjoy this great state of ours!

Here’s a blurb from PBS’s web site:

Marion Jackson described his vision for the book The
Natural Heritage of Indiana as “a celebration of Indiana’s natural
heritage – its natural and human history, its landscape and its life – what
it once was, what it is now, and what it promises to be.” He emphasizes the
importance of understanding the past to prepare “us better to mold Indiana’s
future.” He issued this challenge: “if you feel moved to help protect what
remains of Indiana’s natural heritage, our objective will have been
fulfilled.”

This series shares that mission. Documentary filmmaker
Samuel Orr is creating a series of programs that combine breathtaking
videography with scientific accuracy.

Here’s a link to the web site:

http://www.wfyi.org/naturalheritageindiana.asp

After a Long Winter’s Nap…

Last years garden covered in straw

The land is waking and so am I. This has been a long winter and has drug on and on. We didn’t really get much snow this year. The temps however, rarely approached 40 F and the sky has stayed gray for most of 4 months.

A week or so ago, I stood on our patio holding the leash while our dog “took care of business”. I watched as an old leaf floated lazily around our backyard before finally landing in our garden. Right after that a flock of geese flew over our house heading north. I took this as a sign that spring was on it’s way.

A couple of days later, I noticed the sky was more blue than gray and there was a strange yellow globe in the sky. I stared at it dumbly until finally a word came to me from the winter-adled recesses of my mind. “Sun!”

So, spring is almost here and I am ready to shed my winter’s coat of corpulence and spend as much time outside as possible. Here are some of my immediate plans:

• Garden. We had a small garden last year with the usual sort of plants. This year though, we are going to expand the size of the garden and grow a wide range of fruits and vegetables. I’ve ordered a variety of organic seeds, so we should have a great garden with very healthy food. I will post updates as the spring/summer progress.
• Backpacking. I’ve ordered some new sleeping bags and repaired some broken gear. My oldest son and I can’t wait to hit the Tecumseh and Knobstone trails this summer!

There are other aspects of my psyche that are also “waking to a new day”. But I’ll share more about those in future posts. Stay tuned…