Native Nurseries

Bloggers usually don't blog about work.  Blogging is about what you do with your life outside of work.  But sometimes (often) my work is pretty cool (especially now that Bob is going with me sometimes--so now there are pictures)

Last Saturday we spent the morning at Native Nurseries--as the name suggests, they specialize in native plants.  One a year they have a birdseed sale, and are kind enough to donate some of the profit to the Museum.  In exchange, we go there with some native animals.

I've been doing outreaches like this, and animal encounters, for about 12 years now.  And I still love it.  I love the fact that I can handle these guys, I love giving people a chance to see them up close, I love the exchange when people tell me things they've observed, and I really love sometimes being able to change people's minds about the sometimes less-popular animals (like opossums).

And notice--even in Florida we sometimes have to wear hats and jackets! 

And we even made an impulse buy while we were there.  Usually we resist those--we've all had the experience of seeing something, loving it, getting it, then back at home wondering why we liked it so much and now what are we going to do with it.  And neither Bob nor I are good at letting something out of the house once it's in, so we *really* try to avoid bringing anything home.  But this we couldn't resist--some sets of beautiful rainbow Swiss chard.  But we knew where it would go (the garden) and what we would do with it (eat it).  Besides--it was just so darned pretty!

 

(and my inner child is wondering what happened to me--at what point did I decide that vegetables were (a) pretty, and (b) tasty?