Category: Blog

Rendezvous 2022 is on! After no meeting in 2020 and only a virtual meeting in 2021, the LMNA state board is excited and delighted to invite Louisiana Master Naturalists to Rendezvous in person, April 1-3, 2022.

Our headquarters will be the Country Inn & Suites in Pineville, La., and our workshops and meetings in the Pineville Convention Center connected to the hotel. A bloc of rooms has been reserved for us at the convention rate of $89 per night.

Our program is looking very good, with sessions on doing citizen science, the LDWF’s Wildlife Diversity program, the Native Plant Society’s Certified Habitat program, Louisiana’s whooping cranes, the wasting disease threat to our deer population, the Louisiana black bear conservation success story… and much, much more.

In addition to educational workshops, field trips are offered, with one lead by botanist Dr. Charles Allen and another by the state’s red-cockaded woodpecker expert. Our own Stephanie Herrmann is leading a “canoe and haiku” adventure. I will devote a future blog post to the program.

For now, LMNA Communications Officer Charles Paxton is constantly updating the Rendezvous 2022 website here. He us also running a Facebook group that serves as a communication hub for the event here and a Facebook photo contest here. Please be aware that you must be registered and paid for Rendezvous 2022 before you can join the Facebook groups.

Please give Rendezvous 2022 some serious consideration. I have gone to every Rendezvous since about 2015. My only regret/complaint is that it impossible to do and see everything on the program!

Need to complete your certification requirements? Need to begin accumulating continuing ed hours? LMN-NE has a lot to offer!

January 25, Basic Field Skills – Nova Clark, Amy Ouchley and Bette Kauffman will reprise their basic field skills workshop but with some important differences. Amy will present a draft of her certification project on observing, writing and sketching. Bette will demonstrate how photography and iNaturalist can enhance your knowledge. Nova will present on interpretation, which is what we all must do for our certification projects.

Although this workshop will contain some new material, if you used the first one we offered in early 2018 toward certification, this one will count as continuing ed credit.

March 14, Phenology – Dr. Joydeep Bhattacharjee has developed a new specialty and is anxious to present it to us! This is an entirely new topic, thus will count for certification credit even if you took one of Dr. Joydeep’s ecology workshops. If you are already certified, it will count as continuing ed.

As some of you recall, Dr. Joydeep is a big fan of citizen science. When I asked him to pick a date for this workshop, he picked early March because he wants to get us started collecting data ASAP.

April 11, Bugs – We are going to make this happen. Yay! When the Trammells were here to participate in our graduation, they gave me a new lead and I am happy to report that Stacy Blomquist eagerly accepted my invitation. She works for the National Forest Service, developed her workshop for the CENLA chapter, and–icing on the cake–has a relative living in our corner of the state. We win!

Judging by the photo she sent me, she’s going to fit right in with our chapter! 🙂

Again, this is a brand new one for us, so…. if you’re working toward certification, be there! And if you’re already certified, continuing ed, of course.

April 25, Mammals – Back by popular demand, Dr. Kim Tolson is looking forward to repeating her workshop with us, but she too is thinking about some new ways to create a learning experience for us. Whatever she comes up with, I’m sure it will be fun and informative.

Soooo….. there you have it, folks! Get these dates into your planner now. It’s going to be a great spring series, and I hope to continue it into May and June. A few general reminders:

1. Details will be forthcoming on all of these. Stay tuned!

2. Our workshops cost $25 each. They are for adults only. Although non-members can attend, members seeking certification will get priority.

3. Your 7th workshop is free, so if I forget to let you know that it’s your 7th, please remind me.

Louisiana Master Naturalists – Northeast will have its biggest presence ever at Fall Celebration this coming Saturday, Oct. 12, 9 a.m. – 2 p.m.

This is our third year to be at Friends of Black Bayou’s annual event. But this year, instead of one table, we will have two, plus not only displays and information, but t-shirts to sell and coloring pages for the kids.

Kim Paxton’s tri-fold of her certification project, Healing Nature, along with a tri-fold brochure we had made of the key content, will share a table with our long-sleeved blue Louisiana water thrush t-shirts. I can’t wait for weather cool enough to wear mine again!

The other table will feature our organizational tri-fold and our organizational brochure, plus the yellow black bear t-shirts. This is the t-shirt I’ll be wearing Saturday, and I love it, too.

Along the front of both tables, we’ll have assorted crayons and color pencils, plus individual coloring pages. Kids of all ages will be welcome to color a page and either take it with them or let us tape it to the edges of our tables for others to see.

And now I must share the saga of the coloring pages. Would you believe purchasing a coloring book of nature-themed images of good quality but easy enough for kids of all ages is currently impossible in Monroe and West Monroe, La.? I couldn’t even find anything online except “free” pages that you had to download someone’s app to get! No, thank you.

Now, you want unicorns or mermaids? Or cartoon characters? Pile them in your cart! But what are we teaching our kids? That a fake creature is more interesting than the wonderland we live in? I was soooo disgusted and have concluded that we need to create a “Master Naturalist Coloring Book.” We’ll be talking about it….

In the meantime, I found ONE very nice coloring book for adults that had quality, but way too complicated images. So I bought it and traced selected pages, leaving out the excess complexity, and ending up a lovely set of drawings suitable for kids. This will do for this time, but it is probably questionable under copyright law. Again, in the long run, we need our own coloring book!

I, Suzanne, Kalem and at least one of the Paxton’s will be on duty at our tables, but it would be wonderful if others would come by and help out from time to time. And if you’re not yet a Master Naturalist, we’ll sign you up on the spot!

See you Saturday.