Starting a Phenology Journal

What is Phenology?

Phenology is the study and observation of seasonal natural phenomena throughout the year. These natural phenomena may be influenced by a multitude of factors, but are largely influenced by seasonal changes such as climate and weather.

My personal practice of phenology was inspired by Aldo Leopold after reading his book A Sand County Almanac, which is a must read for any herbalist, ecologist, or naturalist.

Phenology is about honing our attention to notice (and record) the subtle shifts and flow of unfolding nature. Noticing when plants emerge from the soil or begin flower, migration patterns of different birds, drought phenomena and their impacts on plants, when seeds of a certain plant ripen and are ready to collect, and when plants go dormant.

When you begin, you may wonder what you should be writing down in your phenology journal. I encourage you to just write down what you notice, no matter how insignificant or subtle, and over time you will begin to notice more, and therefore record more of your noticings. You may even begin to refine your observations with more nuance and specificity, expanding the language you have for describing–and thus experiencing–natural phenomena (for example: flowers are beginning to bloom > a few early spring ephemerals like bloodroot, cutleaf toothwort, trillium, and trout lily are beginning to bloom!).

You can see why phenology might be an important practice for medicine gatherers and foragers, as the edibility or medicinal qualities of particular plants only occur at certain stages of growth during certain times of year. Having an idea of when to expect this will help you plan your food or medicine gathering efforts.

Additionally, phenology data collected over time becomes increasingly useful for restoration efforts like invasive species control (knowing when to apply certain control methods that are time sensitive), and seed collection & dispersal. See the Invasive Species Phenology Calendar drawn from the 'Management of Invasive Plants and Pests of Illinois' document below:

In short, this practice is about honing our attention to reinvest it in more natural phenomena than we are accustomed to noticing.

Weaving together the human and nonhuman realms

For my own practice, I also like to write down some significant happenings in my own human realm (maybe noting the primary thing I worked on that day, a song that was stuck in my head, or other significant happenings), without going into too much reflection on these happenings (recording them more than interpreting or self-reflecting upon them).

The idea here is that when we go back over the week we can begin to make connections between the seemingly 'separate' human and non-human realms. Perhaps the thoughts and work that preoccupied us during the week influenced what we were able to notice in the natural world. Maybe you notice on particularly stressful weeks, you record less non-human observations, and weeks where you are less stress there is more time to pay attention to the more-than-human realm.

Getting Started:

• Buy a blank notebook and pen. While you could type your journal into a computer or your phone, I highly recommend going analog (pen/pencil and paper) to start, for a variety of reasons that I won't get into here.
• Start your entry with the date and the location (I also like to include the moon phase).
• Write down what you notice.
  • This can be simply noting a certain flower that suddenly came into bloom, or it can be a more long-hand journal entry weaving together a multiplicity of noticings.
• You can distinguish more overt phenology observations from everyday human observations by either using different color ink pins, or aligning one to the left of the page and the other to the right.
• Personally, I have recently shifted my approach to more of a prosaic journal entry reflecting on my day alongside my phenology observations. I then go back over the entry and underline plant, fungi, or animal species names I observed in my entry for ease of reference later.
• Aim for writing in your phenology journal at least once a week, if not more.

Example:

Opening up to a day from September 2023:

You can see from the example above that the human entries here are just tiny little glimpses– little things that stuck out to me. I can't remember exactly the conversation about teaching I was having with my lovely wife Stef, but something about it made me feel it was important to write down.

Taking another look at the example above, I can sense a somewhat poetic resonance between the New England Asters in full bloom (lovely purple at times with slight hues of pale grey and a golden center), and my noticing the purple-grey sky outside my window along with the golden tips of the honey locust branches.

Committing these little snippets of life to paper alongside the blooming of flowers helps to hone my perception in identifying new patterns across the human and nonhuman realms, while at the same time cultivating a poetic sensibility in what I see and notice.

Going deeper with 'Depth Phenology'

This is a practice I created for myself that organically grew out of my regular phenology practice. Inspired by Depth Psychology (which emphasizes exploring the unconscious as a rich source of psychological insight and healing) and Depth Ecology (which largely promotes the idea that every living thing has inherent value regardless of utility and that our human existence is deeply embedded within and intertwined with the more-than-human realms), I started also utilizing my phenology journal as somewhat of a personal journal, but allowing myself simply to observe rather than reflect upon what I noticed in my own life.

There is a striking impossibility to this that draws attention to how deeply embedded one is in one's own personal life and when I juxtaposed this next to the environmental phenomena I was noting in my phenology journal, I couldn't help but notice how deeply embedded I also was in my environment too. This helped to bring awareness to the impossibility of being an objective observer of nature, freeing myself to be a part of the flow of life, and allowing me to explore more of the synchronicities between the seasonal shifts happening on the outside and those happening on the 'inside'.

By acknowledging that we are a part of something so much vaster and more inscrutable than ourselves — by affirming that our own life is entirely continuous with the life of the rivers and the forests, that our intelligence is entangled with the wild intelligence of wolves and of wetlands, that our breathing bodies are simply our part of the exuberant flesh of the earth — depth ecology opens a new (and perhaps also very old) sense of the sacred.

– David Abram, 'Depth Ecology' ¹

So this practice is about building up from (or digging beneath) the steps above and seeing how the seasonal shifts and occurrences happening in the outer realms of everyday life are mirrored and echoed in one's inner world. Our inner world flows in seasons as well: noticing what inner energies are blossoming or going dormant can support us in cultivating more of a spiritual awareness of ourselves as we flow and grow with our earthly environment. If you have a solid nightwork practice going, you might consider reviewing your phenology journal from the past few weeks before your nightwork session to evoke potential connections between the outer and the inner realms.

Logging your phenology data in a digital database

If you want to take an extra step beyond the pen and paper route, you might consider logging your data into your own personal digital phenology database on a weekly basis.

I recommend a program called Notion, which allows me to create interconnected databases for my own plant and ecology study. For example, my 'Phenology Database' where I enter in all of this information below, is connected to a larger 'Herbal Monograph Database' which includes information on all of the plants and mushrooms I study. This allows me to pull in information living in the Herbal Monograph Database (like latin name of a species or plant family) and create an interconnected web of knowledge built from the ground up based upon my own explorations. This data can also be gathered over time to reveal phenology patterns over many years.

This extra step is totally optional, the pen and paper route is absolutely sufficient for beginning study – but I offer this for those digital architects like myself that love to build structures to deeply facilitate their explorations and curiosity.

References:

[1]: “Depth Ecology,” Alliance for Wild Ethics (blog), December 2, 2015, https://wildethics.org/essay/depth-ecology/.