Seattle-area nature photography classes & workshops

This winter and early spring were certainly...challenging for many of us who tired of the constant rain and grayness. But now that the sun is out, so many of us are once again totally besotted with the beauty of the Pacific Northwest.

If you're interesting in improving your skills at capturing the natural beauty via photograph, check out the below calendar of nature photography classes scheduled in coming months. (Eager to get started? There's a class at Discovery Park this Saturday, May 19, through REI. Details here.)

I'll continue to add to the calendar throughout the summer, so bookmark this post for even more events. 

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Seattle Mother's Day 2012 nature & outdoor events

Is your mother a nature lover? Is she a fan of wildlife, big or small?  Or maybe she's a green thumb and loves to be around plants and flowers.

If so, here's a calendar of mom-focused nature and outdoor events over Mom's Day Weekend to consider. I'll continue to add more through the week!

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Mushroom Maynia at the Burke Museum on Sunday

Looking to learn more about mushrooms? Head to the Burke this Sunday for Mushroom Maynia. All day, there will be talks, crafts, mushroom ID and more.

Check out the details of the event below and see the Burke's website for information on entry costs, etc. For more wild food events, see the Wild Food page. 

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Stuff to check out on SNS sister sites

Time for a little cross-promotion! Check out some of these posts on sister sites Fresh-Picked Seattle and Freeattle that might be of interest to Seattle Natural Selection readers.

• Free wild food events this week
• Pacific Northwest summer seaweed foraging classes and trips
• Get your garden ready: spring plant sales
• Two free events on reducing your environmental impact
• Free gardening classes this week

Native Plant Appreciation Week, wildflower walks, lichen and more botany events

Readers of this site and Fresh-Picked might have noticed that I tend to cover and attend a lot of wild food and ethnobotany-related events. These events helped me begin to make sense of, as I’ve called it, the Green Monolith of the outdoors, breaking it down in things that I could identify as being something tasty or useful.

Over the past few months, though, I decided that I wanted to expand my ability beyond that kind of folk identification to actually learn more about how to identify plants according to scientific classification. So I just wrapped up an excellent 6-week plant identification class through the UW Arboretum, and have just started a class on mosses. I’m a long way from being fluent in this new language of families and species, but at least I’m getting started.

If you would like to learn more about botany, check out some of these upcoming events, including the Washington Native Plant Society’s Native Plant Appreciation Week next week (with all kinds of events planned in counties throughout the state), an upcoming lichen class also offered through the UW Arboretum, a free wildflower walk at Discovery Park, and a weekend botany foray coming up this summer.

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