I have a passion for nature in my own heart but for those also whom have preceded me!!!

I decided to add this email that I sent most of you as an invitation to read and/or join my blog. For all who access it I kind of like the idea of sharing where some of my inspiration comes from. I have met many individuals in the past 50 odd years who have imprinted a love of nature upon me...it would require volumes to go any furthur than this...maybe some of those persons will kind of slip into my journal here and there!

To all of you, both family and friends, I am really getting into this blog stuff! Special thanks to 'thebruce' my favorite dad and Paul Smith for their blessings...! You may both live to regret it! I look at this as my garden journal among other things so if none other accesses this at least I may derive the satisfaction of just writing it. There are so many events that I am sure that I will never forget yet they still have a tendancy to fade away without doing something like this!

This may sound totally crazy but I dreamed many years ago while I worked in this Olive St garden in San Diego where I still live with my wife Carole of somehow creating an active journal that I could mail out (later became email) to my friends and family through which I could share the many marvelous things that were happening all of the time! I was of course steeped with guilt because I was so horrible at consistently responding to family and friends. It never meant that I loved them any less it is just I have a strange way of showing it!

Dad (Bruce) invited me to become a member of his blog...so I did. There it was staring me in the face...this wonderful opportunity to fulfill one of my dreams! I started a blog which seemed like nothing at first until it really sunk into my computer-illiterate brain that this whole thing fit the picture that I had in my head perfectly!

You will see gradual and sometimes sporadic improvements. I do not operate like clockwork so there may be lulls just like in the seasons.

Since I am already so overextending myself blog-a-laciously I might as well add where a lot of my inspiration comes from:

First and formost, my grandmother Beth Stewart (my dad Bruce's mother) who filled me with awe for the small daily events that occur in nature no matter where you are but especially in a rural setting. She was an artist and a poet as well as a loviing grandmother. She loved to read the things that I wrote although they lacked the conciseness she brought!

Second, The naturalist and writer Edwin Way Teale who won the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for his classic 'Wandering Through Winter' I read several of his more than 30 books. 'The Grassroot Jungle" sticks out most in my memory. I found that laying upon my belly in a meadow could reveal amazing things!!!

Third but certainly not the least was an old, thick, hardcover volume of a scientist's exploration through some of the jungles of Africa. It was obviously written in the spirit of older scientific exploratiion. There was not yet the super-specialization of modern science. There was still room for DaVincis where one could not leave one stone unturned so to speak. There was a kind of awe in discovering every aspect of a square yard of jungle space, cataloguing everything plant, animal, and inanimate!

I have anguished that I have never rediscovered this book or the author! I at least retain the memory as inspiration for carrying on this kind of relation to our environment in all of us!

I have added more addresses to alert you to changes in my blog. If I have missed anybody it just because this still is a bit overwhelming. Feel free to pass on to others who would be sincerely interested (thanks Joan). Also I am in blogger kindergarten so I am open to any suggestions for layout, photos or anything else. I know I need some more editing, spelling, syntax etc. I will work on that!

I hope that you enjoy it half as much as I did writing it!

Love to you all,

Michael/ natureguy