Seeing a bit of nature like an odd seed pod or a bright autumn leaf, my impulse is to pick it up and bring it home so I can keep it and study it.  This means my room gets full of crumbly little bits of dusty brown things that aren't at all what first caught my eye, so I try to capture an image of the flower bud or acorn to keep forever, making a portrait of it before it fades away. 

I paint in watercolors, but in an unusual method where transparent colors are layered atop one another to get a realistic effect.  In a typical painting, there may be two to six layers of paint, with the upper layers applied in a "dry" manner, usually using pretty damned small brushes.  It can take a long time to finish a painting; luckily my subjects are mostly on the small side and very good at sitting still.