4th Blogiversary

It's hard to believe that the very first blog post was published on the 25 March 2010! It was published by my friend, Mark, and detailed one of our camping adventures.

So much has changed in the past 4 years. This was initially a blog about camping and was called 'Camping and Outdoors' and I published many posts about camping, bushcraft, and equipment. Then I got ill in January 2012 and found that for the time being camping was out of the question.

As suddenly as illness came on, I found a real interest in plants. So, over time, the blog became more about what we can observe when we're out and about in nature and the name of the blog changed to 'Notes of Nature'. Here's one of the early layouts:

April 2012

Since then I've learned much about plants and really like trying to pass on what I've been learning. I also became interested in minimalism and as well as blog posts of my reflections about clutter and minimalism, my blog design was very minimalistic at one point:

March 2013

I feel that I have reached a happy medium with the blog design at the moment, so it'll probably stay the same for a while. My main frustration at the moment is how tired I am, so I've really had to pull right back using pacing in an attempt to ensure that I don't slip too far back. I really hope to be back blogging soon and really appreciate the messages that I've received from other bloggers. I hope that you're all well and enjoying the onset of Spring. Thanks for reading.

Taking a break

Feeling a bit tired at the moment, so I'm going to take a little break from the blog. Will be back as soon as I can. Until then, here's a lovely Alstroemeria...

Desktop Calendar - March 2014

Recently I came across The Lorax for the very first time. I'd seen the cover of the book in the film Avatar, but never knew what it was! So I finally read the book and watched the film and found them both to be very powerful. In response I wrote Friday Five: What The Lorax Taught Me. Well, yesterday Dr. Suess turned 110. So in honour of him, I've used one of his quotes with some beautiful crocuses that we recently saw at The Courts Garden in Wiltshire for this month's calendar. If you'd like to have this as your desktop photo for the month, please do! The instructions are below the photo.

Windows
1) To ensure that you get the best quality, click the photo so that lightbox opens the image.
2) Right-click the image so that the context menu appears:
Firefox: Select "Set as Desktop Background..." and choose from the position options as below (Center or Fit will generally provide the best look).

Options from Firefox

Internet Explorer: Select "Set as Background". To change position settings you will need to set the personalise settings for the desktop in Control Panel:

Control Panel settings

Mac OS10.6.8
Chrome: Command click on photo (above); it opens in a new Tab. Drag to desktop. Use "Desktop & Screensaver" in System Preferences to center and choose background color.


Thanks
To Hollis, over at In the Company of Plants and Rocks, for the Mac instructions.
To Jessica Burke from Moss Plants and More for such the idea.

Note: If anyone uses other Operating Systems and could let me know the instructions for applying the photo as a desktop image, please get in touch!