Once each month, meet a naturalist at a county park for an introduction to what’s going on with plants, animals and insects as summer progresses. Then head out for a naturalist-led hike to look and listen for nature in action. Dates and locations: June 20 at Spicer Lake Nature Preserve; July 18 at St. Patrick's Park Harvest Room; August 22 at Spicer Lake Nature Preserve. All dates meet 9-11 am.

We will briefly cover the events and processes that lead to the topography and geological features we find in the Great Lakes area. We will focus on geological methods we employ today that help us to understand the events that occurred in the distant past. This means that entire epochs must be covered in a matter of minutes, however, understanding these events may well help you to visualize how the earth's surface continues to be reshaped.

The May and June selections from the 2025 Fernwood Botanical Garden Book Club are Extraordinary Insects (2018) by Anne Sverdrup-Thygesson, a professor at Norway's University of Life Sciences, and Horizon (2019) by Barry Lopez, a member of the Notre Dame 'Great class of 1968'. Our long form reading, a Gen Z term for book, page count over our 6 week group discussion class will be 778 pages. 202 for Norway and 576 for Notre Dame. Here is a recommendation from The Guardian in favor of reading Lopez, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/mar/14/horizon-by-barry-lopez-review.