Stop to Smell the Flowers and Admire the Weeds

The natural world surrounds us even in the heart of the city.  Earth Day is the perfect reminder to appreciate our beautiful urban environment.  Not sure what you are looking at?  The following books from DC Public Library can help satisfy the amateur naturalist in you:

• City of Trees:  the Complete Field Guide to the Trees of Washington, D.C.  by Melanie Choukas-Bradley
• A Field Guide to Your Own Back Yard: a Seasonal Guide to the Flora and Fauna of the Eastern U.S. by John Hanson Mitchell
• Suburban Safari:  A Year on the Lawn by Hannah Holmes
• A Weed by Any Other Name:  the Virtues of a Messy Lawn or Learning to Love the Plants We Don’t Plant by Nancy Gift

Prefer to armchair ramble further afield?  These classics also await you at the library:

Walden by Henry Thoreau

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

The Illustrated Natural History of Selborne by Gilbert White

A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold

Dinosaur in a Haystack:  Reflections in Natural History by Stephen Jay Gould