"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are." Theodore Roosevelt said that, a man who also happened to be one of the greatest conservationists this country has ever known. It feels like exactly the right reminder for right now.

When you are feeling overwhelmed, everything can feel like too much, too big, too far beyond your reach to do anything about. The news, the world, the to-do list, the state of things, all of it pressing in at once.

Sometimes when the news feels like too much, I just need to get outside. Sometimes I go no further than the yard, finding myself standing in front of the garden, catching my breath. Even when there are weeds to pull, I start to feel better almost immediately.

But why does that happen?

The other night I was talking with a friend after a meeting we had both attended. Our cars were parked next to each other, which made it easy to just stand there and keep talking. I had noticed she seemed a little off lately, so I asked, and she began telling me about the overwhelming things she had been dealing with lately.

Do you ever feel like the news is just too much? Lately, that's been me. Some days I hold it together. Other days, I just feel overwhelmed by it all.

That's usually my sign to take a break, because overwhelm freezes me up, and I need to be able to take even small actions against the injustice I'm witnessing.

My artworks often portray specimens that are no longer alive, or as I usually call them, dead things. Even when I'm not photographing something dead, I almost always incorporate pressed dried leaves and flowers, roots, or feathers into the layers of a piece. There's just something about these earthy, finite things that draws me in and fascinates me.