Today’s Photo Scavenger Hunt theme from Go Explore Nature: Green!
We are still noticing all the greens of our garden so this was the perfect assignment for us to do this month. You can see more about spring greens in our nature journal: Spring Green Nature Journal Ideas.
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| Lemon thyme, Oregano, Garlic chives, and Strawberry Blossoms |
It is time for our early spring garden clean up where we start to tidy up the beds in anticipation of a new growing season. Mr. B and I spent a few hours in the garden trimming, weeding, raking, and enjoying the sights and smells of early spring.
Our front yard habitat is full of insects and flowers. The first of the season’s yarrow is blossoming and the plants look super healthy. We weren’t sure these would over-winter but they did beautifully…may add some more to fill in the spaces.
Hello little creature! These insects (some sort of beetle?) are showing their faces now that the rocks are warming up.
I love this image with my lavender and the bee! It seems like you are peering down into a whole different world. The lavender is alive with bees with their humming and buzzing. Go bees!
I know most of you real gardeners will shudder when I tell you that I keep part of my yard just for the dandelions. I love these happy yellow flowers and the bees agree with me too!
The bee balm is springing to life in the side yard and we pruned the neighboring bushes back to allow some more sunlight. I look forward to seeing the red blooms of this flower in the summer.
This is actually my neighbor’s flowering quince that is blooming. I am sharing it here because it has inspired me to plant a few of these in our yard for next spring’s color. Aren’t they gorgeous? I am actually wavering between this bush and the redbud….haven’t totally made up my mind yet.
So there is a little garden update from a sunny afternoon’s walk in the garden.
It is not too late to print and complete the First Day of Spring printable or complete the Spring Splendor Walk challenge. Join us!
Jami’s Tuesday Garden Party meme is open from Tuesday to Thursday so there is still time for you to jump in and participate!
Have you tried forcing twigs to blossom? It is the perfect easy late winter nature study project for any family.
This is an activity that we enjoy every year. In February, we cut and bring in forsythia twigs to force the buds to bloom indoors. This year we added some additional twigs and buds to our collection and they are starting to unfold. The project is so easy and it is not too late to try your hand at some twigs from your yard.
This birch leaf is from our Twig Study earlier this winter. It has little spring green leaves opening…love the texture and the shape.
We also collected twigs from one of our hiking trails and even though they all looked a little different at the beginning, we realized now that they are opening that they are all from buckeye trees.
It is such a simple project with some fascinating results. We cut the twig, placed it in a jar of water, and then set it in the window sill. After that, you just need to be patient.
We have had such amazing results that we are going to cut some more twigs today. I think the plum tree would be a great candidate for this project. I will post our results when we see some blossoms. 🙂
So did you start a tabletop garden of your own? We have been watching our carrot first grow roots and now it is putting lots of energy into making leaves. This is another simple and fun project that your family can try at any time.
Cooler weather means more time spent outside during the day….we went from really hot weather to cool weather in the span of a day or two. I am so pleased with these late blooming sunflowers and I am going to plant more of them next year. The insects have been visiting them every day and when I went out to snip a few flowers for the kitchen table, I saw this big guy!
This praying mantis decided to hang out on my stove one morning. It must have been pretty funny watching me try to scoop him up while he was hopping from side to side. I would try to scoop him up and he would hop just out of my reach. I would try again and he would hop too fast. Finally I got a bowl and set it over him and then slid a piece of paper under the bowl. Success! I transplanted him outside to my potted plants and he was happy to pose for a few minutes on the allysum.
Our butterfly bushes are still blooming, in white, lavender, and deep purple. I see the hummingbirds, bees, and butterflies all buzzing in and around in the morning sunshine. Makes me happy to see such a busy community right in my flowerbeds. We have spotted a few monarchs lately…none captured with the camera yet. They are fast!
We were out for a drive and took a back road only to find a pear orchard within about two miles of my house! It is tucked away off the beaten path and as we slowly drove down the lane I tried to snap a few images…..glorious fall pears to enjoy!
We are going out and about tomorrow so stay tuned for some more back roads loveliness.
My Prairie Sunflowers are now blooming…took all summer but they are now showing their very cheery faces. I am sort of glad they waited so long to bloom because all the other sunflowers are done and in the compost.
How would you like a great link to a some coloring book pages?
Celebrate Wildflowers
Apparently, flowers have a “biological clock”. I have been fascinated with this idea all summer and I think it makes for an interesting read: How To Make A Flower Clock. On that note, my Four O’Clocks are just about ready to bloom. I have been nursing them along all summer and I think they finally are getting some flower buds…need to watch for the bloom time.
We still have an abundance of insects in our late summer/early autumn garden. In fact, they are even more active from what I have observed. These bees were loving the trumpet vines…sharing at times with the hummingbirds. Make your own Bee Observations (free printable from HomeschoolShare.Com – Click the Bee Lapbook and then print Observation Cards and Pocket).
Our zinnias are such great performers and are relatively maintenance free except for cutting the flowers and enjoying them in a vase on your kitchen table. 🙂
We have enjoyed our container dahlias this year…seeds from Rene’s Garden. I found this paper craft for dahlias…so very pretty and fun. Then again, I may just pull out the watercolors later and made an entry in my journal.
We are working on cleaning up the garden … lots of trimming, raking, pruning, harvesting, picking, and composting going on here. Garden update next week.
Have a wonderful first day of autumn.
It feels like fall and the front yard is starting to change and take on the colors of autumn. The leaves are starting to drop from the Tulip tree, blanketing the ground with a riot of yellows, oranges, and browns.
Time for a front yard update! I can hardly believe this is the same yard that we planted last fall and saw come alive last spring. You can see my July Update post for several images of the garden. We have been able to cut our watering down to twice a week and I anticipate even less next summer once the plants are all established. It is amazing the color and variety you get even within drought resistance plants. I love this yard so much more than the old ordinary lawn we replaced.
Note: We live in a dry place. Normal summers mean NO rain at all and this was a dry summer. We have had somewhat cooler than normal temperatures up until the last ten days. The heat turned on and I have been closely watching the yard for signs that I needed to water a bit but the only thing I pulled the hose out for was to fill up the birdbath.
One of my favorite aspects of this garden is the many textures and the movement that you notice when you watch it from the window. The grasses sway in the slightest breezes.
Here is a close-up of the pink fountain grass. It is so very delicate and feathery.
One of our goals in plant choices was to have the yard become a habitat for living things….like these butterflies.
We also wanted fragrances and with the lavender, sage, and butterfly bushes all in bloom we have a yard that smells inviting to humans and other creatures.
If you look closely at the left bloom, there are two skipper butterflies stopping by to enjoy the flower this morning. The plantings also encourage the birds to visit and the hummingbirds can be seen daily in and out of this garden.
Everything about this yard inspires me to be creative….the delicate pinks of the butterfly bush, the lavender of the sage, the crimson of the crepe myrtle. I just want to snap as many photos as I can so on a cold winter afternoon I can pull them out and paint some in my journal to cheer me up, reminders of warmer days.
One last butterfly on the sage….this plant didn’t look very healthy at the beginning of the season but it loved the heat and sunshine. It made an amazing comeback. (I like the shadow of the sage on the rock below the butterfly…just like lace.)
Another great update showing the progress in our frontyard remodel. It has been a year since we underwent the big change and I have no regrets.
Jami’s Tuesday Garden Party meme is open from Tuesday to Thursday so there is still time for you to jump in and participate!
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| Garden Sampler – September 7, 2011 |
This is it….the 1000th post on this blog! Can you believe it???
I know that this blog has brought some great things into my life…people, experiences, and inspiration. I will just say thank you to all of my readers for all you have done to encourage our family since I started this blog in May 2009. I am so glad that I decided to start this blog and share our nature study adventures. The far-reaching affects of this decision are immeasurable.
Now for a garden update!
I was thinking that I have not done any garden updates for a very long time. My vegetable garden this year has been a huge disappointment and I know from talking to other gardeners in my local area that they have experienced the same thing in their home gardens. The daytime weather, the nighttime lower than average temperatures, and the long spring and extra rains made our gardens very confused. The tomatoes are all green still and the rest just never produced. The one thing we have had in abundance is green beans…those are plentiful.
Our Three Sisters Garden started off great but the pumpkins never really did anything but grow vines, the beans have been scrawny, and the corn has been okay. The colors are pretty anyway. I have pulled up the pumpkins and left the rest for a bit.
We have had some success in other areas. The grapes this year are abundant even if the grapes are sort of on the small side. Tasty and sweet….yummy and enough to share with family and friends.
The figs are on a second crop! Too bad I am not a big fan of figs but I pick and share with those in my life that adore them. They say they are delicious.
Our pear tree has done well this year and I went ahead and harvested our crop today. I usually wait until it is too late and they get ripe on the tree and fall on the ground before I get one of the boys to climb the ladder to pick them. This year we have enough to share. We also have our own pears for the pear challenge in the new More Nature Study ebook series. 🙂
We had ONE plum on our tree…usually we are up to our ears in plums but we had snow on the blossoms and I guess that ruined the crop. There is always next year.
The walnuts are being eaten by the squirrels….what a mess under the tree! I may be able to harvest a few pounds of nuts for our pantry.
So there you have it…my 1000th post and a tour of my garden. See you in my 1001st post soon.
Jami’s Tuesday Garden Party meme is open from Tuesday to Thursday so there is still time for you to jump in and participate!
This is most definitely the summer of the sunflower. We have had full bloom for so long now and the last of the varieties has started to bloom.
The Lemon Sunflowers are just radiant and the bees are happy to have a new snack spot. We have been cutting them and bringing them inside to enjoy on the kitchen table.
The colorful sunflowers are amazing to look at up close. The seeds are so dark black and the petals look as if someone painted them on with watercolors…deep brown and burgandy.
Sometimes I go through a phase where I am all about words….writing, talking, sharing. Then there are times when it seems like things are just in pictures….colors, images, impressions. I think I am in one of those times right now and I just take hundreds of photos, am attracted to video, and need to make sketches and watercolors of everything I see. There just is not enough time to capture it all…..I know I will cycle around again and be ready to write more about my thoughts. My brain is certainly thinking all the time and there are many things I would like to share but in the meantime you will forgive my lack of writing and just enjoy my images instead.
I will be full of images soon…..one last hike at Yosemite coming up this weekend with a friend, a girl’s weekend. One last real month in the colors and liveliness of the summer garden. There are stacks of books waiting to be organized and enjoyed as we prepare for our homeschool year but they will wait until the last drop of summer is squeezed out of the season.
Enjoy your August day!
As part of the July Newsletter Summer Weather Challenge, we looked back to the Summer Series Weather Observation Challenge from last year.
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| Our roses love the heat and this is our Disneyland Rose…sweet fragrance. |
July weather is always hot but this year we have had alternating weeks of HOT and then cooling off to the 80’s. It makes for a nice mix of summer weather. The garden likes the heat but once the temperatures heat up we need to water our garden everyday. We don’t get much in the way of rain in the months of July and August and our heat does not bring any humidity with it.
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| The mullein this year is really TALL. |
The nights are cool so we can expect to have cool breezes sometime in the night that are our natural air conditioning. We do most of our cooking outdoors this time of year, either on the grill or our outdoor oven. This keeps the kitchen cooler and we don’t have to run the a/c.
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| The yarrow, lavender, and butterfly bushes are full of bees. |
We decided to complete these two activities from last year’s challenge:
Here are our statistics.
6 AM 59 degrees and 76% humidity
Noon 74 degrees and 52% humidity
4 PM 83 degrees and 32% humidity
Sunrise at 5:53 AM and Sunset at 8:25 PM
Don’t forget to make your own Summer Weather Observations and submit your entry to the Outdoor Hour Challenge Blog Carnival.
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| Our Sunflower Garden July 17, 2011 |
Sunflowers are the theme of our garden this year….as anticipated. We planted our seeds on May 10th and they started blooming on July 16th. That is a long time to wait but so worth the time and effort! Now with the July Newsletter focus on sunflowers using the Nature Study Grid and notebooking page, we are slowing down to do some careful observations. This is also made easy by the fact that we are participating in the Great Sunflower Project and counting bees.
Here are the first of our blooms.
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| Sunflower with lots of pollen! |
This is actually not one of the seeds that we planted but it popped up under the birdfeeder. They are a perfect complement to our little backyard feeder garden.
From Renee’s Garden Seeds – Royal Flush. I love the watercolor like colors in this bloom.
Here is another one from Renee’s Garden – Chocolate Cherry. Amazing color in the garden!
I think this is the third seed from Renee’s Garden – Van Gogh.
We found this spider crawling on a big sunflower last week…..he sure blends in.
Here is another image from the volunteer sunflowers around the birdfeeder. If you look carefully, you can see that these are actually two different kinds of sunflowers.
Another bee favorite in our yard is the coneflower. They are rather tall this year and always full of buzzing bees. Coneflowers are on the list of bee attractive plants that you can use as part of the Great Sunflower Project this summer.
How about that bee? He is in our bee balm and loving it. I decided this is a plant that I need to add to more of my flower garden next year.
We have been busy learning some new things and making lots of detailed observations using all of our sunflowers. How about your family? Have you done your July Newsletter sunflower study? I look forward to seeing your entries in the Outdoor Hour Challenge Blog Carnival.
Jami’s Tuesday Garden Party meme is open from Tuesday to Thursday so there is still time for you to jump in and participate!
