The sight of hoar frost makes me smile because it brings a memory to mind, one with imagery that could have been ripped from the pages of a fairy tale.
Hoar frost happens when fog freezes on the trees and …
Category: Nature
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Exercising Outside on a Crispy Ozark Morning
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A crispy cold morning, great for exercising outside I did my exercising outside this morning, jog/walked to the mailbox in under 20 minutes – a milestone for me!
Exercising Outside
Feeding the critters acted as a warm-up spell, but it was
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Did you know Osage Oranges evolved with wooly mammoths?
Osage
Maclura pomifera, also known as Osage Orange, Bois d’Arc, Hedge-apple, or Horse-apple, the osage tree is native to our area. Even so, there aren’t very many of them in our particular neck of the woods.
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A bedraggled osage tree. -
With a departing roar
![[Image of a departing storm] With a departing roar the storm rolled off to the east. Clear skies between broken clouds filled the southwestern wake.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wildozark.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/storm-clearing.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&ssl=1)
With a departing roar the storm rolled off to the east. Clear skies between broken clouds filled the southwestern wake. Nature is my muse.
I’ve been working hard on my novel, trying to get the first draft finished by the …
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Winter Solstice 2015 – A Widdershin sort of Time
Winter Solstice 2015 occurs tonight at 10:03 p.m. CST
It’s a widdershin sort of time, an unwinding, a releasing. A loosening of the grip on things I need to let go of.
Actual New Year’s Eve
It’s Winter Solstice, the …
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Finding Lost Fungi
I brought the camera today to get some photos of fungi I’d spotted a few days ago.
When I rode out with Rob the other day I saw the mushrooms on a log and figured I’d come back and get …
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Looking forward to solstice
Pulled this one from the archives. It’s from when I worked in Bentonville, leaving before dawn and getting home after dusk. I hated that and am glad to be working from home now, but I still look forward to mid-winter’s …
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Killing Pretty Roosters
First I tried selling pretty roosters. Then I tried gifting pretty roosters.
Yesterday we killed pretty roosters.
It was my chore to pick which ones. I felt a bit like Kali (Goddess who is both giver of life and bringer …
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Inspired by Nature
Nature has inspired some pretty cool inventions. And lots of art. My guess is that Mother Nature is the muse to a lot of artists of all types.
How often do you see something in the natural world and marvel …
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Looking back on 10 years of roughing it in the Ozarks – Happy Thanksgiving 2015
Many would consider us still roughing it. Life is a lot more comfortable here now, but we learned a lot about survival since we moved to these wild Ozark hills.
Our Wild Ozark Origins
When we first moved here to …
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Nature Workshop with Madison Woods
What happens at a nature workshop?My nature workshop is designed to help you reconnect to nature and express your experience through art, writing, and photography. It can be tailored for whatever environment is available (even cities have nature), but …
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Wild Ozark Journal: Autumn 2015
If you’d like the collection of sketches from Autumn 2015 on your e-reader, it’s available this week (Nov 16- 20) for free at Amazon.…
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Wild Ozark Nature Journal on Kindle
What is a sketch / nature journal?
Sometimes nature writers like to doodle while they’re interpreting nature. My nature journal is a combination of art and written journal entry.
It is both nature sketching and nature journal.
Here are some sample …
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Nature Writing at Hobbs State Park
…This is a past event. If you’d like to book a workshop like this one, email madison@wildozark.com.
Nature is a treat for the senses but sometimes it takes effort to get past the immediate sensory input and experience a deeper
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First Freeze 2015 in the Ozarks
First Freeze
It was 30*F when I looked outside this morning near daybreak. Honestly, it was somewhat after daybreak. Yesterday’s fun with the grandkids wore me plumb out and I slept like a rock past my alarm.
Technically, the sun …
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Sketch in Progress
I don’t always get to finish a sketch in one sitting. When I know time is short, I’ll take the camera with me and get a photo to use when I finish the sketch later.
Here’s the photo of the …
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Symbols of Warmth and Sustenance
I brought the camera with me this foggy morning to capture some of the beauty that surrounded me in the hushed quiet of our little Wild Ozark valley.
When I came back in I sat on the porch and listened …
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Feeding critters under a gentle patter of rain
This morning I was feeding critters under a gentle patter of rain. There are times when I am tired or don’t feel like going out on my regular chore round, but for the most part I enjoy this part of …
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Oct. 22, 2015 – Two Sweetgum Leaves for the Goodreads Giveaway
Goodreads Giveaway on October 31, 2015
I wrote a fairly long post about this sketch over at my main blog. This is one I won’t get to keep because it was done in the copy of My Nature Journal that …
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Oct 18, 2015 – Old Rock Wall and Dead Leaves
I made a mistake on this one. This is an old rock wall and it continues in both directions for some length but in the sketch I didn’t give that appearance. What I should have done was draw some lines …
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Tangerine Sunrise, Goodreads Giveaway, Nature Sketching
When the sun rose high enough to top the trees it washed the hills in a tangerine glow. The trees are changing fast now and I really want to take pictures every day.
I have been drawing more often than …
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Nature Sketching Day 23- Wild Ginger
Wild ginger is one of the few remaining companions of the American ginseng habitat that are still green at this time of year.
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Nature Sketching Day 21- Down the dirt road in October
I’m not real good at trees and landscapes yet. I can do single items like leaves fairly well, but the larger view pushes outside my ability. Maybe with practice I’ll get better.
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Rain or Hallucination?
So brief it almost feels now like it was hallucination, rain fell this morning while I was out feeding the critters. The chickens were all like “what’s that wet stuff coming down from the sky?”
It’s been many weeks since …
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Nature Sketching – Day 17 “Grape Fern and Fall Leaves”
It gets hard to find a subject to draw that doesn’t include dead leaves at this time of year.
I at first wanted to draw this pretty beech leaf nestled on a darker sycamore leaf, but decided against it in …
![[Image of a departing storm] With a departing roar the storm rolled off to the east. Clear skies between broken clouds filled the southwestern wake.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wildozark.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/storm-clearing.jpg?ssl=1)
