Sarah Courchesne

The cold months mete out a sensory deprivation, but the laws of conservation of matter cannot be disobeyed, and insects have to have gone somewhere…

Squirrels live as I live, their fates entwined with the trees’ capricious whim. Come winter, I try to accept their fate: live by the oak, die by the oak.

I had a student a few years ago who joined me on my annual field research trip. Soft-spoken and kind, she also possessed an almost…

Online, we can choose to be foodies, techies, dog people, cat people, paleo or vegan, but the decision is final, and you’d best stick with it for followers.

Lawns and Lawn Alternatives – Broad swathes of my yard are covered in something that might once have been a lawn. The middle section is devoted…

The comings and goings of mushrooms are inscrutable. At least to the untrained eye, which mine is. There was the tuft of alcohol inkies that…

I’ve been on more than a few nature walks in my time. Bog walks, woods walks, swamp walks, sometimes leading them myself but mostly trailing along…

Gardening is always a strange temporal exercise. Tasks need to be done that require attention in the present moment, and not on a human schedule….

Sarah Courchesne follows the winter crows from 495 to their roosts in Lawrence.

Air Plants do not need to root in soil, living instead as epiphytes or aerophytes — they’re plants that draw water and nutrients through their leaves.

I love reading field guides. Brimming with information and diagrams helpfully labeled with arrows to the important bits of a bird, or snake, or ragweed…

You can tell a lot about people’s feelings toward an animal from how they oversee its death. Pet dogs and cats are ushered out in…