LET NATURE IN

  Enamored with Nature my entire life, it came as no surprise that my love deepened when we moved to twelve glorious acres. We did what we could previously, living on a tiny lot off the center of town, with bird feeders and birdbaths, compost piles and raised bed gardens, and many nature activities like catching fireflies, watching butterflies emerge, making ant and worm homes and more.


 We always had a Nature Table that was filled to the brim with collections and natural objects of our desire. We began to run out of room and needed to rotate the collections.

 One of the first tasks on my agenda ,when we moved to our new house, was to re-purpose a glass curio cabinet to use in addition to a nature table. Creative Recycling! 

It looked like this picture except with solid wood shelves not glass. Although looking at this makes me think glass would be wonderful and allow us to see underneath each specimen just by looking in.

   I painted the inside back a light green , just a hint of natural color so as not to upstage the beauty of the collections themselves, and soon the cabinet was filled to the brim with Nature....and a quote or two. 
  
 Friends came to visit and said  "Oh I brought something for your nature cabinet", and we would add it to the menagerie with delight.
  
 You can see a yellow plastic egg on the bottom shelf and while the plastic egg is not *natural*, the creature who bit through it trying to get at the treat inside that was left undiscovered after an egg hunt, was. It is a reminder of the day that all children love and always ask about.

The cabinet allows us to keep a great many items and to see them easily through the glass, and most of all, everything stays dust free. And it's easy to take something out to hold by just opening the door.
Here is just a sampling of the contents:

 "In all things of Nature there is something of the marvelous"  

~Aristotle