New! Nature-Led Art Challenge: Collage

January 26, 2026 ~ melaniereynolds ~ Leave a comment

_{Annas Hummingbird Female, a quick snapshot 2026, By Melanie Reynolds}

Hello Nature-Led Friends!

It’s been a while since we’ve done something interactive! A few weeks ago, I learned about a “Learn Blender 100-hour Challenge.” (Blender is a free open-source 3D creation tool for making digital art.) As much as I would love to do the 100-hour Blender challenge, I need to focus on learning or refreshing other skills right now. We only have so many hours in the day, right?

If you have the time and inclination, I encourage you to make your own “challenges” to learn something new that you’ve been thinking about. I think a 100-hour commitment challenge sounds reasonable but write your own rules in a way that helps you break down a task into however many units of measure it takes for you to reach your goals.

Here’s my Nature-led Challenge to you/us:

Make a nature inspired art collage preferably using found bits found outside, but if you want to do a “classic collage” of cutting pictures out of a magazine or painting or whatnot that works too. If you would like to share your collage here, (I hope you will!) please email it to me no later than Friday, February 27.

No AI, the purpose is in the physical art of doing.

Below are two collages I’ve made as examples. I collected bits of twigs, moss, and other plant bits from around my yard. Collecting the bits took about fifteen minutes, the physical composition (playing with ideas and photographing took about a half hour.) Final processing included editing in Microsoft picture by playing with adjustments like Brightness, Exposure, Contrast and Sharpness. You’re welcome to play with picture settings too, of course. It’s part of the process. Since I didn’t use any glue, I was able to compost all my little bits when I was done which felt like an added bonus.

Collage 1: Fences

Collage 2: Islands

Are these the most beautiful collages ever? No, no they’re not. I could have worked on the formatting more and done better with the lighting to get rid of the shadows, but I’m working on not overthinking things so much. I decided I didn’t want to focus on perfecting the technicalities, I wanted to focus on the doing and the sharing. Sometimes you make “bad” art for the sake of making any art at all. Getting stuck in the weeds in the pursuit of perfection has not been a good return on my investment in time. The internal argument of “why make bad art” pulled lose an old memory about “Ralph Waldo Emerson and hobgoblins” and that was all I could remember. Once I stopped laughing at the visualization the thought brought to mind, I found the quote on ye olde internet:

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today. — ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Essays: First Series (1841) – Self-Reliance

What do you think? I’m always open to suggestions!

Another idea is to create a Nature-led version of Mad Libs. Mad Libs is a story game where people offer nouns, adjectives, verbs etc to be plugged into a pre-scripted story. I would pre-script the story, then ask for key nouns, descriptors and actions. If you volunteer a word, you may even find yourself in the story! I used to do this often when I did ESL tutoring to make money in college and for friends and family just for fun. You can even make it fancy and offer it as a low cost, personalized gift!

Have a wonderful week!

~Final note: If you click on the hypertext link of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s name above it will take you to more of his great quotes.~

Dandelion Wine Experiment Result

January 11, 2026 ~ melaniereynolds ~ 10 Comments

Hello Nature-led Friends!

As promised, I uncorked the Dandelion wine last night that my son had helped me harvest for three years ago!

Smell

Upon uncorking the bottle, the smell was strong. Not a bad smell, just very strong and we worried we might be taking sips of vinegar instead of wine.

Color

A beautiful color. I had expected pale yellow or maybe a pale-yellow green color similar to the color of a faded dandelion flower, but in liquid form. This amber brown was really a nice surprise!

Taste

Strong! It has a unique taste and the best way I can describe it is somewhere between whisky and amaretto. It was very much like the kind of liqueur one might add to baked goods or cakes by the teaspoon. After a few sips I had a headache. I suspect the alcohol content might be on the high side. There was no way to test it that I know of without buying a special alcoholmeter. I’m convinced it could clean the sticker residue off a window though.

Final Thoughts:

I’ve affectionately nicknamed it “Pacific Northwest Hooch” or “PNW Moonshine.” It’s my first time trying to make something fermented. I’m still flirting with the idea of try to make Kombucha, but I would be the only one in the house interested in drinking it. We don’t have the fridge or storage space for me to go making any large selfish experiments. I’ll have to find an equally interested co-conspirator who could provide the storage space to work with!

As for Dandelion Wine, it was a lot of work to pull all of those tiny flowers off the heads and then to wait a minimum of a year before trying it after filtering it through two bottles over a matter of months. I’m curious how it would have tasted at the one-year mark, but not enough to go through the whole process again. I’m not much of a drinker to begin, so I’ll still to buying a bottle of wine or spirits from the professionals, as needed. This does answer my question of why Dandelion Wine is not a common wine option.

May you have a wonderful and pleasantly interesting week! Remember to get outside and remain curious about the world around you!

What’s a crazy or interesting thing that you’ve tried? How did it turn out?

Stay Tuned!

I’m planning a proposal on a new, low stakes, interactive Nature-led project together and a post about AI’s impact on Society and Nature. Hold my coat, I’ve got thoughts!

Past, Present, & Future

January 4, 2026January 4, 2026 ~ melaniereynolds ~ 8 Comments

_{Fall Leaves Taken on Nov 3, 2025 By Melanie Reynolds}

Hello Nature-led friends!

It’s January 2026 already and there’s a lot going on in the world! While I have many concerns about the fate of humanity and the fate of the planet itself, I’m still hopeful and excited about the year to come! There will always be opposing forces at work because of physics, but also because ideologically there is no one-sizes-fits-all utopia. A dog’s heaven is a squirrel’s hell. I will always be a voice for nature and the unseen. I hope you will too! Only 1/8 of my thoughts and ideas ever make it to this space but if it ignites even a fraction of passion in you to be part of the living world and lead with empathy beyond yourself. That’s good enough for me. We should all strive to remain slightly feral.

In 2024, I didn’t know how to tell you I had cancer or that I was fighting to get my mom out of a terrible rehabilitation center that she was involuntarily sent to by the hospital mafia in my hometown. So, I’m telling you now. Those things happened and I fought like hell and I’m missing a few spare parts, but I’m still here and I’m cancer-free and my mom is still here and in a much better place. I couldn’t have made it through either of those things without the support of my friends and family and the community at large. I’ve never been the kind of person who likes to do things by phone, but I called and called anyone and everyone that could help me. I wore out the pavement on a four-hour drive to and from my hometown and my home. I made new friends and allies. I was forced to learn, grow, adapt and innovate when all I wanted to do was sleep.

In 2025, I had to continue strengthening my body and mind to new realities. No one wants to talk about how long recovery because it’s boring and it can sound a lot like whining. It’s hard to give our bodies time to adjust to the slow process of healing when our brains are living in societies that offer next day delivery and 24-hour conveniences. In short, I messed up my feet trying to do a lot of walking for exercise and then I had that to also recover from. Sigh.

_{Autumn Alder Tree Taken on Nov 3, 2025 By Melanie Reynolds}

All these pictures of fall tree colors I took in November. It had been raining a lot like it always does this time of year, but then it started raining harder for longer. By the second week of December, we got hit with two back-to-back and one smaller atmospheric river hit that caused multiple rivers to surpass flood stage in Western Washington. Several valleys flooded including the Skagit valley, Snoqualmie valley, and the Fraser River valley in southern British Columbia. Levees failed and over 100,000 people had to evacuate throughout the region. One person died after driving into flood waters in Snohomish and around 1,000 water rescues were performed.

We experienced flooding in the region before, so people are really good at coming together for those in need. When the Everett Animal shelter was in threat of being flooded people were quick to show up and take all 120 animals to their homes to be safe. I’d like to hope that a few adoptions happened as a result of the awareness that so many animals are available for adoption at just one shelter.

Below are pictures of the Snoqualmie Valley flooding that cutoff the city of Duvall from Redmond and Woodinville.

Flooded Farm in Snoqualmie Valley Dec 11, 2025. Mike Jagla

Flooded Wood-Duvall Rd Dec 11, 2025. Mike Jagla

Morning Mist Snoqualmie Valley Dec 11, 2025 Mike Jagla

I’m thankful that the casualty number for this disaster as it currently stands is one person as far as we know. My heart goes out to the people who have lost their homes and cherished possessions to the flood waters. Some of the people recently flooded were flooded back in 2021 and the lack of funding and affordable housing means that people cannot “just move” out of harm’s way. No one can predict that a 100-year flood event is going to happen twice in five years while the government argues what they will and won’t pay for and when.

One of the things that bothered me most is the amount of AI videos and pictures I saw that quickly popped up on Facebook and other social media sites that callously exploited the disaster for peoples’ own amusement and greedy dopamine hits that had nothing to do with what was actually going on. Really people and animals were affected and when other people start to question what’s true and what’s not true, it can impact disaster response and the amount of aid and donations that people and organizations could receive for recovery.

I’m currently volunteering four hours a week at a youth shelter and advocacy organization because I believe that when you don’t know what else to do with yourself and you want to help others, you should start with the people closest to you. Show up for your community in a way that works for you. It can be one-time, it can be once a month, or it can be once or twice a week. The level of commitment is up to you. Just reach out to organizations that support causes you care about and see how you can help. I find it fun and rewarding because I know I’m doing something that matters. It’s cathartic to help others even when I feel like a walking disaster on the inside.

Now, go play outside and/or go read a book to shelter animals!

Stay Tuned….

Next Sunday January 11th I’ll be posting the resulting taste test of the Dandelion wine I bottled back on Jan 10, 2022! (See post: https://nature-led.org/2021/04/22/happy-earth-day-2021-may-hope-persist-like-dandelions/ )