We returned to our milkweed observation spot at Yosemite Valley….and it was full of maturing milkweed! I have included lots of photos below so enjoy our summertime observations, complete with Monarch butterflies!
Depending on where the milkweed was, it would have blossoms or pods and blossoms. Above you can see the growing seed pods with a few old flower blossoms.
Here is some Showy Milkweed in blossom. I can even see some buds still waiting to bloom near the top.
We saw many Monarchs over the few days we were there but this one was willing to pose for us right on the milkweed. What fun to watch these beautiful insects doing there thing!
This plant had the leaf broken off and you can see the milky sap dripping down the plant. You can also see if you look closely a Cobalt Milkweed Beetle, a shiny blue metallic insect that is common on the milkweed.
We found this sign out in the meadow where our milkweed is growing which shows the complete life cycle of the Monarch butterfly. What a great sign…hope more people stop and read it and learn how fascinating the life of a Monarch is and what part the milkweed plays even there at Yosemite Valley.
We will be updating our study in the autumn and of course I will share.
Gigantic Ebook Bundle – Includes My More Nature Study Autumn Outdoor Hour Challenge Ebook! (Also includes 3 of my Harmony Fine Arts Mini-Units.)
This is a fantastic deal for all parents who want an ebook library of resources for all kinds of learning and fun. This ebook Omnibus bundle includes over $590 worth of ebooks for just $25. Act fast because this Omnibus is only going to be available until August 25, 2013…that is next Sunday.
Don’t miss the other nature study related ebooks included in this ebook bundle!
Here are all the ebooks you get with this bundle for $25!
Additional Resources: Codes and Links Provided After Purchase
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Step By Step Instructions for the Outdoor Hour Challenge
Starting September 1, 2013
Receive the monthly newsletter on the 1st of the month (subscribers to the Handbook of Nature Study blog).
In the newsletter, view the printable Challenge Grid for the four topics for the up-coming month. If the topic is from the archives, I provide the link to the challenge on my blog and the link to the ebook it is from if applicable.This way you can prepare for the challenges ahead of time if you wish.
If you own the applicable ebooks, you can open those and print the coordinating notebook pages to use during the month. This is not required but would supplement the current month’s work.
Print and cut out the newsletter Study Grid or other printable for use during the month.
Complete the challenges at your own pace and create your blog entries as you have time.
Submit your blog entries to the Outdoor Hour Challenge blog carnival.Become part of the global community of nature study families that participates in the monthly carnival of entries sharing how you spent time outdoors with your family.
Big Picture for the Outdoor Hour Challenge
Seasonal Studies: Each month from September 2013 to August 2014 – I am going to be recycling challenges from the archives, pulling them from older nature study series and ebooks. Each month will not be topical but have a variety of nature study ideas that fit the season (Northern Hemisphere). I will also give you ideas from the Getting Started Ebook if you already own that and would like to use it instead or in addition to the seasonal ebooks.
Monthly Newsletter so you have the topic, the challenge ideas ahead of time, and the newsletter printables. The newsletter is free to all who subscribe to my Handbook of Nature Study blog.
Handbook of Nature Study book by Anna Botsford Comstock – I recommend the edition linked on the sidebar of my blog.
Optional but recommended: The seasonal series or ebook that coordinates with the season we are currently experiencing (see schedule below). All of the challenges are available for free here on the blog (see the seasonal tabs at the top of the blog) but each ebook gathers the challenges and includes coordinating printable notebook pages.
Optional: A copy of the Outdoor Hour Challenge Getting Started ebook. Of course, the challenges in the ebook are available on the Handbook of Nature Study blog for free but if you want the notebook pages you will need to purchase the ebook.
Early morning in the garden is my favorite time to stroll the boxes looking for what treasures are to be found…you are welcome to view some images from the last week. Above hangs my new birdfeeder, a gift from my husband and my gift to my backyard birds. They love this new feeder and I love that it is larger than my last one so that means less times filling it each week.
Sunflowers and morning glories are the in the main box this year and they seem to like living together. The vines creep up the poles as well as the sunflower stalks and each morning I have a new blue flower waiting for me to enjoy.
This is the Mailbox Mix from Renee’s Garden and her heirloom collection. This is a winner in my yard!
The zucchini box is full of gorgeous plants and squash this year. We planted Renee’s Garden Tricolor Mix so we have dark green, light green, and yellow squash to enjoy just about every day.
Our tomatoes are starting to produce lovely red fruit and just a few at a time so we can enjoy them in our sandwiches and salads. Tonight…bruschetta!
Our fig tree has another crop of figs to pick. I am not a fig lover but I share with my friends and family that are…they love me for sharing.
Our pear tree has just a handful of pears this year but they are beautiful to look at and hopefully tasty to eat. Our apple tree dropped its apples last month which was weird. My sister said hers did the same thing.
I love the bright orange squash flowers and apparently so do the bees in my yard.
More squash to come!
My dad and I have both found that our green beans are not producing even though we have blossoms. My dad called Renee’s Garden customer service to see if they had some tips on getting our plants to set fruit. They suggested we add some fish fertilizer which I had on the shelf. I mixed up a couple batches and fertilized all my veggies in the garden so we shall see if it helps.
Someone had emailed me asked what I use in my garden for fertilizer so here is a photo of the bottle.
This is my dad’s flower garden which I am envious of. His lantana and dahlias are amazing! Up above he has his fenced in veggie garden which is producing lots of okra, corn, zucchini, eggplant, strawberries, and peppers. I have been helping him a bit in the garden since he had a fall last week and was not moving around too well. What a joy to help him in his garden.
These are just a few of his sunflowers which are Chocolate Cherry variety from Renee’s Garden.
I better stop there…so many garden delights this time of year to share with you. Until next week and the Tuesday Garden Party.
During our last trip to Yosemite National Park, we made a stop on the way there at Mono Lake. There at the Visitor Center they have a display of local rocks right out in front of the building. There were three large specimens to really look at closely and two of them are on my list of rocks from my nature study goals.
As a side note: This is an awesome Visitor Center and it does a lot of things right in my opinion. There is an interesting display of natural as well as cultural items. They have a video that they play that gives you a great sense of just how special a place Mono Lake is in so many way. It is also a fantastic birding spot! If you happen to find yourself on the east side of the Sierra Nevada, don’t miss this stop at the eastern entrance to Yosemite National Park.
Rhyolite is a volcanic rock that can be pale gray, pink, or yellow. The chunk they had at the Visitor Center was reddish with gray and black.
In this area there is a large rhyolite dome that we are anxious to go back and see up close. We were unable to collect a rock here so the photos will have to make due for this time around. I did look in the gift shop for a rock to purchase but they didn’t have anything but a small collection of rocks for the Sierra Nevada….which I bought and am enjoying a lot.
Interesting facts
(which makes sense now that I have done some reading)
The glassy rhyolites include obsidian, pitchstone, perlite, and pumice.
Obsidian is the pure volcanic glass formed from rhyolite
Pumice a volcanic rhyolite glass that has cooled in the form of bubbles.
We are planning on going back to this area again and exploring the differences between rhyolite, obsidian, and pumice. The specimen above is a large hunk of obsidian found at the Visitor Center.
Now that I know the relationship between these three kinds of rocks it makes it much more interesting.
The photo above shows obsidian on the top and rhyolite on the bottom with a very different texture. The photo was taken at Panum Crater which is near Mono Lake.
So even though we didn’t actually collect a samples this time, we feel like we can check this rock off the list. We are continuing to work our way through the Rocks, Fossils, and Arrowheads book.
Yosemite National Park in the summertime is an outdoor adventureland. There is so much to do! This trip was very different from our usual summer trips because it ended up only being my husband and I that were able to go. It is a far different experience to have just the two of us as opposed to having all six of us hiking around the Sierra. Both of us love this place so spending time together here is a pleasure and a delight.
There was a large wildfire further south from Yosemite but the smoke laid thick all three days of our trip. It was worse in the mornings but afternoon breezes swept some of it away. Yosemite Falls was dry! The park rangers were calling it “Yosemite Wall” instead. I am so glad that we had visited last May and enjoyed the cooling mists of the waterfalls then and for this trip it changed the focus from the valley to the surrounding areas of Tioga Road and Glacier Point.
We came into the park from the Tioga Pass side (east) and stopped just inside the gates to hike up to Gaylor Lake. This new to us hike (part of my nature study goals for 2013) was at a high elevation which always adds an element of breathlessness as you climb the trail. This is the view back down the trail…we listened to thunder and watched the clouds closely to make sure we would not be caught in a thunderstorm.
The landscape was green and there were quite a few wildflowers to enjoy from my resting spot along the trail. There were few other hikers on the trail which makes it seem as if you own the place as you hike along. We did see a man hiking back from the lake with a sack full of fish he had caught.
The trail crests and you look down over a beautiful basin where Gaylor Lakes have formed. I was still a little nervous about the thunderstorm but it seemed to be moving off in another direction.
Here at the top of the trail the trees are growing slanted and I can imagine how the wind must howl over the top of the mountain in the winter.
This is the Middle Gaylor Lake and on this day we didn’t go any farther. We sat for a long time enjoying the view before heading back to the car and on down Tioga Road.
We stopped along the way and took a quick hike over to Lukens Lake to see if there were any wildflowers but the conditions are much like you would find in mid-September and there were no wildflowers at all. It was still a nice hike and we did see lots of Bluet dragonflies along the edge of the lake.
The next day we decided to hike up at Glacier Point, taking the Panorama Trail as far as Illilouette Falls and then back. What were we thinking? We have done this hike before and it is a killer! The sign at the trailhead says two miles one way but both of us registered 3.5 miles on our Fitbits. That wouldn’t be bad but it is a steep, steep hike back up that 3.5 miles and in the hot sun exposed for most of the way. Guess what? It was worth the effort!
Along the trail we saw this wasp nest in a decaying tree. The insects were flying in and out but I got just close enough to take a good photo.
Here is a view of the whole tree and nest. The nest is quite beautiful and amazing to see…we were wondering how long it took to build this work of art.
Here is my victory shot after making it to the top of Illilouette Falls. The bridge behind me is just back from where the falls spill over the edge and down a 340 foot drop. We stayed on the upside of the falls for a long time just enjoying the beauty with our eyes and ears.
I sat on the top of a rock where the water was running down and swirling into the pool below. I was a little sad that my kids weren’t there this time to jump in or dangle bare feet in the cold water. My boys have even slid down the rocks here like a big slide into a deep pool where there are fish swimming in the crystal clear water. Great memories.
That evening we walked through the meadows in Yosemite Valley which is my favorite time of day to view the granite walls. The golden sunlight makes them come alive and the cooling air is filled with the sounds of the twilight creatures like crickets. Later that night we sat and watched the bats dart overhead. There is just so much to take in…
Here is another sunset visitor to Cook’s Meadow.
Early in the morning the smoke was filtering the sunlight and obscuring an otherwise glorious view of Half Dome from Tunnel View Turn Out.
Our last day we rented bikes from Curry Village and took off to explore the bike trails. The path is nearly flat or at least a gentle up and down so going is easy. This is such a wonderful way to explore Yosemite Valley away from the crowds and hustle of the popular areas. We had a nice pedal around the whole loop which includes several bridges over the Merced River where you can stop to take a break.
I of course stop to take a few photos of wildflowers. The goldenrod was so brilliantly yellow pretty.
This was something new to me…yet to be identified so if you have any suggestions they would be greatly appreciated.
So there ends another glorious trip to Yosemite, the second in my goal to visit every season. We have a camping trip planned for late September and I am already looking forward to that time in a season of changes.
These topics I will be adding to my nature journal and hopefully sharing here on the blog as part of my nature study goals:
1. Mountain chickadee
2. Rhyolite
3. Obsidian
4. Chinquapin (shrub)
5. Unidentified shrub with berries the squirrels were eating
I helped my dad in his garden today…picking corn! He has so much of it that he is tired of eating corn so our family was obliged to take some ears for our dinner. 🙂
He purchased Renee’s Garden seeds and planted three rows and all of it came up and is producing lots of sweet corn.
I was wishing I had some kids that could do a corn nature study using the Corn Study from the archives here on the Handbook of Nature Studyas part of the Crop Plants series we did several years ago.
For now, I will just eat corn until we are tired of it!
Hopefully you all get the link to the newsletter with today’s post if you are a subscriber. If you don’t get the link, let me know. I can’t figure out why some didn’t get it yesterday.
Contents of this edition of the newsletter include:
5 awesome night sky related articles/reviews
August Study Grid and extra printables
Night nature study ideas from the OHC archives
Recommended study links
I have attached the newsletter download link to the bottom of my blog feed so if you are a subscriber you will receive the link to the latest newsletter at the bottom of every post for the month of January. If you haven’t subscribed yet, you can still subscribe and receive the newsletter link in the next post that comes to your email box. You can subscribe to my blog by filling in your email address in the subscription box on my sidebar.
Note: You can download your newsletter from the link in two ways:
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This was probably the hardest month of nature study for our family……the topic, a busy life, and HOT weather really did keep us from tackling the fish theme with our usual vigor. But, that is what is wonderful about nature study – we can always pick it up again when the opportunity arises. Thank you so much for all of your entries this month to the blog carnival. I think each entry is a special glimpse into how your family kept nature study at the forefront and I know they will inspire us all to get outside with our children.
Our families fish entries from this month’s study (in case you missed one): Hawaiian Fish
Be inspired. Be encouraged. Get outdoors!
Fish Study Grid
Angie from Petra School shares her entry Are There Fish In The Lake? with the carnival. She does a great job of showing how to find some fish…look for birds!
Shirley from Under An English Sky writes up their OHC – Grid Study observations for this edition of the carnival.This is such an encouraging entry and I know you will love taking a look at the beginnings of their fish nature study.
Eva’s daughter had the opportunity to attend Fish Camp this year and what a wonderful experience for her! This is a great entry showing how a child’s passion can be nurtured.
Jennifer from Royal Little Lambs submits their Fish Nature Study entry for you to read. Their family has been busy with their fish study!
Alex from Life on a Canadian Island has written up and sent in their entry for the carnival: Atlantic Bluefin Tuna. They had a rough start to their study but it looks like they did an excellent job on their subject fish.
Goldfish
Shirley from Under An English Sky submits their excellent entry, OHC Goldfish for you to enjoy. You don’t want to miss their fish kite project too!
Drawing Fish
Angie from Petra School shares their Lesson 37 Bullhead nature study entry for you to enjoy. She shares their observational questions and nature journal.
Potpourri
Eva Varga shares their family’s river trip and some wonderful reflections on nature in her entry to the carnival: Nature’s Lesson Plans.
Eva Varga also shares her The Secret of The Tides entry with you with some wonderful ideas for learning about the tides and the moon. Stay tuned for the August Newsletter where she shares a wonderful article to go along with this entry.
Don’t forget to share your blog entries with the Outdoor Hour Challenge Blog Carnival. All entries done in August are eligible for the next edition. The deadline for entries is 8/30/13 and you can send them directly to me: harmonyfinearts@yahoo.com or submit them at the blog carnival site (link on the sidebar of my blog).
For this challenge, start a seasonal year-long study of cattails. This challenge from the archives will help your child learn the life cycle of the cattail in your neighborhood. Find a patch of cattails that you can observe in each season. Starting your study in the summer will be easy because they will be very recognizable. See the suggested nature study ideas in this 2010 Challenge: Year-Long Cattail Study.
“It is an interesting process to take apart a cattail plant; the lower, shorter leaves surround the base of the plant, giving it size and strength. All the leaves have the same general shape, but vary in length. Each leaf consists of two parts; the free portion, which is long and narrow and flat toward its tapering tip but is bent into a trough as it nears the plant, and the lower portion, which clasps the plant entirely or partially, depending upon whether it is an outer or inner leaf.” Handbook of Nature Study, page 500
Printable Notebook Page – Seasonal Cattail Nature Study
Use this notebook page to start your Year-Long Cattail Study with the summer season. Complete a new notebooking page in autumn, winter, and spring to see the complete life cycle of the cattail. You can also take photos of the cattails with your child and insert them into their nature journal.
If you already own the Getting Started ebook, complete Outdoor Hour Challenge #10. Why not enjoy a picnic during your cattail outdoor hour? We have cattails at a local park and it would be fun to eat outside after making some cattail observations. Make it simple and fun….make some memories!