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We all looked at different areas in our woods to draw plans of what we could see. It was quite hard because the wood has a lot of trees and we couldn't draw them all!

I went outside and it rained last night so I checked the grass it was wet and dewy and I thought it looked nice

I saw these lovely flowers in my Gran's garden yesterday.

As part of their award the children took some photographs of our outdoor area to create pieces of art from. Finished pieces to follow.

After cancellations due to Covid in 2021, it was an absolute joy to hold the first of our January bird ID sessions in the run-up to the RSPB Birdwatch. For 8 years now Sustrans has been encouraging people to do this survey on the National Cycle Network, where traffic-free routes provide great habitat for birds, with cover, food, songposts and habitat connection. Sometimes we start with indoor sessions, but this year we are staying outside and holding four bird walks with our friend Scott Paterson - yesterday's was in Almondbank on route 77. We saw 24 species in all, as we wandered through the massive trees that line the river Almond. Scott has a knack for imaginative descriptions that stick in your mind....when we saw a Grey Wagtail, its tail plumage was compared to the yellow of Lemon Puff biscuits. When a flock of geese flew over we were able to identify them as pink-footed from the 'wink wink' instead of the greylag's 'honk honk' and assured that even from the ground we were likely to be able to spot the great big carrot of a beak on the greylag's face. Excited crows, the bike-pump call of the coal tit and messy mergansers - I could feel that everyone on the walk was delighted at what they were seeing and hearing and all Scott's facts and ways to remember different species. Three more to go, and I can't wait.

There was a John Muir quote on the first wall of the exhibition 'Petticoats and Pinnacles' at the National Library in Edinburgh - the one about going to the mountains being going home. But this was an exhibition about pioneering Scottish women who walked and climbed mountains all over the world, and so it was another quote that I liked best from Constance Frederica ('Eka') Gordon-Cumming, who was born in Moray in 1837 and travelled all over the world to paint and write, including to Muir's beloved Yosemite. The exhibition highlighted how these nineteenth century women were subject to derision from men, but I'm sure John Muir would have agreed with Eka on this statement. "All verbal descriptions must be full of sameness, while nature is always varied; and we may use up all the superlatives expressive of beauty without conveying the ghost of an idea of what the reality was."