I became interested in nature early in life, and soon focused on plants, especially collecting and assigning names to them. This led to a formal education in systematic botany and a 30 year university teaching and research career in that field. Since retirement in 2005, I have been traveling throughout Oregon, photographically documenting its highly diverse flora. My wife and I have also kept a monthly record of the birds visiting feeders in our backyard over the past 19 years and I will pursue posting some of the images of those as well as some of the more interesting plants I have digitally captured.