As of the 1 October 2022, I have completed 189 drawings on my scroll and I have 2811 days and drawings to go.
It certainly is a challenge trying to do one “good” drawing/painting a day, particularly on busy days. First, I need to find a plant, and then quarantine the time to draw and paint it. Sometimes I am very happy with what I do, sometimes not. Because of the nature of the scroll, there can be little planning of the positioning of the plants. I just have to do one drawing after the other. Having said that, when I show the live scroll to people, the response I get is still a big intake of breath. Everything just blends into everything else.
And that blending is what occurs in nature – in a healthy biodiverse habitat, all the plants just find their spot and grow. There is no formal landscaping and planning. Mother Nature just throws it out there and lets the plants and animals create their own little worlds … and it works very well indeed.
Each plant or animal or insect finds its own space and the type of habitat that suits its needs for food shelter and survival. They establish mutually beneficial relationships with the other living things around them – not only on the surface of the soil but beneath it as well. And it works.
Even in disturbed environments plants and animals and insects make the best of a bad thing. The problem is that people have pushed their human requirements for change and control a little too hard in some places, so the natural world has collapsed. Add climate change to that loss of habitat and we have a serious struggle for survival.
With staff from the Ginninderry Conservation Trust in the Australian Capital Territory I have just run a two day workshop for a small group of children between the ages of 7 and 11 on nature journaling. We had great fun – looking, listening, touching and hearing about the Conservation Corridor which runs adjacent to the Murrumbidgee River. They were so engaged in exploring the bush and then drawing and painting what they saw. They even made their own paintbrushes from the grasses they collected.
I hope that, in 2811 days time, we can say to those children, who will be teenagers by then– we have looked after your future in terms of keeping this natural environment safe. It is now yours to continue to treasure.