By Cat Jackson | Have you always wanted a native plant garden? Now is the time to start! You can help the Sourland ecosystem and beautify your backyard this winter! Welcome to harvest season! Autumn isn't just for corn, apples, and winter squash. The whole ecosystem...

By Yvonne Kunz.Does anyone remember the old nursery rhyme that involves a little girl, a low stool, some runny cottage cheese, and a spider? Miss M’s reaction is pretty typical. However, my view of spiders, when they are not sitting beside me, is that they are...

By Yvonne Kunz.Some pollinators can be quite beautiful and glamorous, like the movie stars of the insect world. Take Monarchs and Swallowtails for instance. I never tire of watching them float from one flower to another. Even the diminutive skippers are sort of cute...

By Yvonne Kunz. Who remembers Sesame Street and the Muppets’ One of These Things song? I do. How does this apply to my morning walk? You’ll see. I was on my own that morning, so I took my camera along for company. It was a beautiful clear, cool day. The birds were...

By Dave Cucchiara Consumption, production, expansion – the principles of modern-day capitalism and how success is measured in our own free market economy. In that signature survival-of-the-fittest model we know all too well, the entity that extracts, collects, and...

By Samantha Bean. Originally published on Flutter By Meadows.When talking plants, Latin names may be painfully hard to pronounce, but they are helpful once you get to know them Buck, buck, and buck. A deer with antlers, one dollar, a horse kicking out their back legs....

By Yvonne Kunz. When I get a new lens, I often take it to a park to try it out. There’s one just down the road from where I live. I gathered up my gear and headed off. It was a fine sunny day, perfect for walking. Once I reached the park, I started shooting this and...

I was on my morning walk, a 2-mile round trip along my road. I stopped near what I like to call the five-acre woods and waited for my subject to arrive – birds in flight. I had been practicing lately and any subject would do. I noticed a bunch of titmice (or is it...

By Laurie Cleveland |  Am I a tree-hugger? No. I haven’t earned that title. I’ve never tied myself to a tree, bulldozer, or chain link fence. I’ve never put my life in mortal danger for any cause. Though I’m a child of the 60’s, I’ve never even been arrested! I try to...

By Laurie Cleveland | One day last summer I was walking my dog on a Sourland Region trail when we noticed a large dog barreling down the trail without a human in sight. “Hello!” I shouted. “Is this your dog?” No answer. “Hellooooo!” At this point, my dog (who had been...