EDITORletter

Your editor in a Takoma Park flower installation by Park Florist. Photo by Robert Alonso.

Watching the World Go By

In this issue, we introduce a new column about bird-watching and how to attract these winged friends to our gardens. It is a topic I had been mulling over for a few years now and finally found some time this summer to reach out to local bird groups to ask for columnist recommendations. The timing could not be better, since the hobby of birding has had a surge of interest during the pandemic period, just as gardening did, and for many of the same reasons. It is something many of us dabble in, but never had time before to really pursue. Many of us were saving this passtime for “when I retire.” Similarly, in this issue, Carol Allen, our insect columnist, share the relatively new hobby of bee-watching. I don’t think I will start a “life list” or journal of bee sightings, but I am certainly more aware of the many bee species visiting my gardens this year—from the tiny Squash bee to the lovely Blue Mason bee. This unplanned pause in our lives has allowed us to take a much-needed breather and sit back and observe our gardens more closely than ever before. The explosion of insect and plant pictures in my social media groups is astounding as many people who normally are at an office all day, find themselves wandering outside with phone camera in-hand and a curiosity about what they encounter. It is one little silver lining in this COVID-19 lockdown.

Happy gardening, Kathy Jentz Editor/Publisher Washington Gardener 826 Philadelphia Ave. Silver Spring, MD 20910 Phone: 301-588-6894 kathyjentz@gmail.com www.washingtongardener.com

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Volume 15, Number 7 ISSN 1555-8959 © 2020 Washington Gardener All rights reserved. Published monthly.

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