A Couple Are Captivated by Nature. They Think You Should Be, Too.

Apparently the die was cast the day Matt Cohen and Elizabeth Hargrave met 25 years ago, when their first conversation turned to composting with worms. This would be a relationship between two people for whom the natural world was always front of mind.

Mr. Cohen was working for a nonprofit in Washington, D.C., facilitating community and school garden projects, and gardening in a community plot. Ms. Hargrave was working on Capitol Hill as a health policy analyst, growing things on the balcony of her sixth-floor apartment.

Much has changed since, but earthworms are still part of the story. The couple have listed more than 2,550 other species of plants, animals and fungi in their shared mattandeliz iNaturalist account; and they have sightings of 960 bird species in a joint eBird account, another community science project they contribute data to.

The accounts bear witness to all the goings-on before them — the natural life encountered in the course of daily life.

Many entries are from their travels, which are heavy on birding destinations. But more than 200 and counting in iNaturalist are organisms identified in the quarter-acre yard around their home in Silver Spring, Md., which the couple bought a few years after they married in 2002. Years of regular applications of municipal leaf mold and wood chips have transformed their clayey soil with the help of earthworms and other detritivores, allowing the creation of gardens brimming with food for insect pollinators, birds and people.