hwise01

Joined: Apr 24, 2019 Last Active: Mar 27, 2024 iNaturalist

First, thank you to everyone who has confirmed an ID for one of my observations. I really appreciate you taking the time to do so. For anyone who disagrees with an ID of mine, thanks even more! Those spots the are places where I really need the help, and I’m grateful for it!
As far as who I am? From the time I can remember, I was always that kid who didn’t care very much about stuff inside. So, whenever possible I went OUTSIDE. I tried to be quiet and still, so I could watch the natural world just be itself. Climbing fruiting trees to watch the birds that came in, perching my scrawny self on downed trees to see the little creatures in the vernal ponds, begging birds to come to my hand for food, in an area where birds had never, ever done that before, but could happily learn. Feeding mice and chipmunks by hand....Boy! Mom was really not happy about the mice and chipmunks! (or the Butternuts we had picked and I was not so secretly donating to the mammal diversity fun club!🤣)
She forbid me to feed them. I agreed. But, I was flat out lying. Not on purpose. I didn't know it when I was saying it, but later? Those hungry eyes...I made myself a liar and wasn't much sorry. I fed them more seeds!

At age 55, I still go outside and sit quiet. Only now, I don’t have to come in when my Mom yells or honks the car horn. YESSSS!!! My first love was birds, then butterflies, moths, dragonflies, damselflies....Edit: a couple years: It's everything. Absolutely everything.
I’ve started really working at dragonflies and damselflies. I love herps, when I can get them. I have started placing coverboards for snakes in my low lying mid-Michigan 10 acre homeplace. Got a snake under one already! :) I’m even starting to like spiders. Edit to 2023-I like almost all spiders, and I'm working on the rest. Can't believe it. (I had phobia-it was embarrassing and lifelong, and it's gone.)

Frankly, any living thing is interesting to me, now that spiders aren't an issue. Well. I’m not all that crazy about humans. I tend to mentally divide the world's human population into Nature People, and....not. I have to bear the "not", like a continuous natural disaster.
When I’m not out looking at the natural world, and using iNaturalist to learn more about it, my biggest passions are fostering dogs, making my yard rock with native diversity goodness, and growing heirloom tomatoes. I’ve been selecting for taste and productivity, saving seed, and growing 4 different colored old tomato varieties for over 20 years. I make juice with a hand mill, freeze it sub zero, and I hardly ever share any! I started fostering dogs in 2016, and I have fosters 35, 36 and 37 in my home right now . Of all those dogs I’ve only kept one, the 4th foster. He’s got issues, (oh boy!) but since he’s small and looks like a stuffed toy, the cops haven’t been called on me, yet!

I’m now able to leave the north for 6 months of the year, avoiding the cold. Michigan in the summer, South Texas in the winter.
Motorhome life! I originally thought I would hate it, but it turns out I’m crazy about it. Eight winters and counting. Absolutely just Love it.
I’m also very much a foodie. I’ll try anything once! I love to cook, and I love when others make great food for me. I drink more wine (edit: down to 5% stuff now with my ADVACED AGE) than I probably should.

Life is GOOD! I plan on "observing" it obsessively!

-Major fan of INaturalist, humble citizen scientist, loving it all!

“We are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you any different.”
--Kurt Vonnegut

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