Today for the SLJ I did the nature collage. I’ve wanted to do this task for awhile but I am stuck at home with COVID and not feeling well at all and because today is the last day to upload I thought I would do it in our backyard.
I didn’t think there were many interesting thing as we don’t have many flowers, just a lot of trees, and our veggies garden is overgrown but when I used the macro lens in my mums phone I actually found a lot of interesting things! I zoomed in on tiny flowers, interesting leaves, rocks, tree bark and lichen, seed pods, fruits, and even spider webs. Also my cats eye! We’ve got a lot of cicadas in our backyard at the moment but unfortunately I couldn’t find any close enough to photograph. The picture at the end is my view and here is a paragraph about the history:
I live in North New Brighton close to the beach in Otautahi and although I’ve lived on this property since I was born it’s the second house I’ve lived in. Our first house was badly damaged by the Christchurch earthquakes so it got bulldozed down and we built a new one! My dad took my twin sister Indi to Bottle Lake Forest for her nature walk (she doesn’t have COVID) so her paragraph and photos might be a bit more interesting but I did my best. Here is the link to see it in higher resolution too.
and my view 
What is your favourite image in the collage?
Kia ora Emilie,
I think you have done a marvellous job connecting with your whenua, especially considering you haven’t been feeling well. Your backyard is definitely your whenua, it’s where you live, eat from and relax in. I like how you said your backyard is a bit boring but when you stopped and really looked around you found things to look at. I think that’s nature in general. There is beauty all around us, we just have to stop and have a look. There is a whole ecosystem of insects we can’t hear. You mentioned the cicada for example. The sound of the cicada’s ring all day long but you very rarely see them because they are so good at hiding or camouflaging themselves. Sometimes you see their old skin from after they shed them. Have you seen those before?
I noticed you have so many fun fruits in your garden. You’ve got blueberries (I think they are blueberries), raspberries and grapes. It would have been cool if you included a picture of your whole garden so people could try and spot these close up photos. I’m most impressed with the photo of the spiderweb. How did you capture it so clearly? They can be hard to see at times, especially on a camera.
What was the most beautiful thing you saw in your garden?
Anna
SLJ