We were finally able to do a little weather study today and it was actually fun to be outdoors in the light rain.
It wasn’t too cold either so we took a few photos as we walked around the yard. The deck plants are so pretty and colorful and brighten even this rainy day.
The gray sky really brought the colors in the trees and it was interesting to watch the raindrops collect on the plants in the garden. One sweetgum tree has lost all its leaves but the other is still holding on to its bright red and green leaves…at least so far today. On the right of the photo above you can see our Giant Sequoia tree and how its evergreen boughs are still full and beautiful.
My youngest filled out the Seasonal Weather Study sheet and we filed it away in his nature journal to compare with the coming season’s pages.
This was really a great nature study and I think that watching and comparing the weather each season is going to help us notice more about each season.
Still no “weather” to report from our house. The windows and doors are still wide open and the sky is clear. We have forecasts of some rain maybe this week so we are going to wait until then to take a weather study.
In the meantime, the boys and their father decided today was the day to climb a tree. We have one really big tree in our yard that is fairly easy to climb because the limbs are close together and there are so many of them. They took a ladder to get started but then climbed up from there.
This was the first time that I have noticed cones on the ground under this tree.
I grabbed the tree identification book and here is what we came up with.
Here is what we used to identify the tree….leaflet and cone.
It looks as if we have a Giant Sequoia in our backyard, right next to our deck.
This is my best attempt to take a complete photo of the tree showing our deck at the bottom. It is a really tall tree.
“The seed cones are 4-7 cm long and mature in 18-20 months, though they typically remain green and closed for up to 20 years; each cone has 30-50 spirally arranged scales, with several seeds on each scale giving an average of 230 seeds per cone.” and “Young trees start to bear cones at the age of 12 years.” Wikipedia on the Sequoia
So what started out as tree climbing ended up with identifying our very own Giant Sequoia in our backyard. It was growing here when we moved in 21 years ago and I assume it was planted by the previous owner. It does provide great shade on our deck during the hot summer afternoons and the birds and our backyard squirrel like to use it for protection.
This tree has been hit by lightning once a long time ago in a really big storm. It sounded like something exploded in our backyard during the thunder storm and we went outside to see what it was and we saw a long black line on the trunk of the tree and it was smoking at the base. It was very memorable.
Today was *another* cloudless day but we were outside looking to see what we could find interesting in the backyard. The walnut tree now that it has just about lost all of its leaves was our subject of the day. First we started looking at the way the woodpeckers have over the years made numerous holes in the trunk and large branches. Be sure to click the photo to get a better look.
As we examined the trunk closer, we noticed the change in the texture of the bark shown in the photo below.
I was interested in what was going on with it and I somewhere in my memory have stored away that my husband had once told me that they graft the English walnut onto the black walnut tree because the black walnut is a native of California so it is a hardy tree, resistant to pests but the English walnut has a thinner shell and easier to open and eat.
We decided to ask him more about it and to look it up on the internet once we got inside from our outdoor break.
Here is what we found:
Did you know that California grows 99% of the United States’ walnuts?
That is an average of 303,000 tons of walnuts every year!
The Romans called the walnut Juglans regia or Jupiter’s royal acorn.
My husband was absolutely correct and the English walnut is grafted onto a black walnut rootstock.
Fascinating! I have never noticed the grafting before in all the twenty plus years we have lived in this same house. If you want to know more about the California(English) walnut here is a link to a simple to read explanation. California Walnut
Here is the pile of leaves under the walnut tree. So many leaves to rake but not many nuts due to the resident squirrel and the Scrub jays.
We had a terrific windstorm last Friday night which is why there were so many fires here in California. I stood outside under the moon in the warm wind and just soaking it all in. I invited my family to join me and several came out and enjoyed the time just listening to the trees blowing and the leaves as they skittered across the deck. The wind chime was really serenading us and reminding us that the wind has a whole rhythm to itself. Wind music.
All that wind left our yards littered with leaves, small twigs, big branches, seeds, cones, and needles. The above photo shows just a snapshot of how many seeds came down out of the tulip tree. If you click on the photo you will see how the tree disburses its seeds with the little “helicopter style” winged seeds.
I really should have the boys complete the one small square activity on our front grass right now with all the interesting things to be found. If you look carefully you will even see an acorn that some bird had stored somewhere and it fell out of its hiding spot during the storm. There are no oak trees anywhere near this grass so some creature had to bring it here…probably a woodpecker or a Scrub jay. The boys and I had a discussion about how the various trees in our area disperse their seeds.
You can also see the large cone from the magnolia that has already lost all of its beautiful red seeds. There are probably over a hundred of these cones in our front yard right now.
This is a perfect example of how when you examine something up close it is truly amazing. Look at the texture and the pattern! The magnolia tree is always giving us something to look at: beautiful green, glossy leaves, huge fragrant flowers, cones, red seeds. The bees love this tree when it is in bloom.
I could not help but try to capture a few of the red seeds that are left after the storm. I love the reds of the autumn and this one is a bright, cheery red.
This was a very unplanned nature study but very rewarding. We have not had any “weather” at all here except the wind. There hasn’t been a cloud in the sky to look at or an precipitation except for maybe a bit of dew a few mornings. We are experiencing unusually warm weather in the 70’s right now and very dry.
This week our challenge was to find an elm, hickory, or chestnut tree. In doing research, both in the Handbook of Nature Study and in our field guide, we discovered that a tree that we have an abundance of in our area is actually know as the California buckeye or the California horse chestnut. (Aesculus californica) This tree is more like a tall shrub that grows to between 4 and 12 feet tall.
“The Ohio buckeye is our most common native relative of the horse chestnut. Its leaves have five leaflets instead of seven. The sweet buckeye is also an American species and grows in the Allegheny Mountains.” Handbook of Nature Study, page 649
So we were off to find a buckeye tree to observe this week for our nature study.
My trusty assistant helps gather a fruit to observe and then leave on the ground.
This time of year the buckeye has no leaves so we had to look for the trunk and the fruit of the tree to identify it. In the spring this tree is covered in blossoms and fill the woods with clouds of whiteness. In the summer the trees turn brown and are not quite as lovely.
There is one big difference between a buckeye and a horse chestnut, the seed is highly poisonous so don’t eat it!
Here’s what it says on eNature.com:
“California Indians made flour from the poisonous seeds after leaching out the toxic element with boiling water. The ground, untreated seeds were thrown into pools of water to stupefy fish, which then rose to the surface and were easily caught. Chipmunks and squirrels consume the seeds, but bees are poisoned by the nectar and pollen.”
I really enjoyed this challenge because our whole family learned something about a tree we see in our own neighborhood but we didn’t know much about before this study. I am going to sure to read up on the elm and the hickory to see if I can find some local connections as well.
We had our eyes open for a spruce when we were traveling in Oregon and we discovered that the Sitka spruce was in just about every campground that we stayed in this time around.
The cones are interesting and the tree itself is very pretty. If you look closely at this photo, you will see the cones hanging on the branch.
One night we had our tent under a spruce and a storm blew in after we had crawled into our sleeping bags. The trees howled and the rain poured and it was sort of a wild night. In the morning the rain had stopped but we still had the drip, drip of the raindrops from the tree falling on our tent. We at first thought it was still raining until we unzipped the rain fly and realized the sun was peeking out and our “rain” was really just left over drops coming from the spruce.
I guess that’s what happens when you go camping in Oregon during the month of October.
Here are some other photos from that trip that are interesting.
I think this is the perfect mushroom. We saw lots of these when we were hiking and they were something new to me. I think this sparked my interest in “flowerless plants” so that is why they are going to be included for a few weeks in the Outdoor Hour Challenges. The boys and I would like to learn a bit more about mushrooms.
These two are such great travelers. Can I just say now how grateful I am to be able to homeschool them through high school? I think that so many of us get overwhelmed at the idea of homeschooling in the teen years but this is the best part of the whole experience. It is hard, don’t get me wrong. But here we are on a school day in October, standing and taking in the fresh ocean air and the peace of the moment. Right after this they had to find a way to hike down and throw some rocks in the water. There actually was a trail if you looked hard enough. Of course there was some sort of sea cave and that spurred on some more discussion about the power of waves.
This photo shows that not all our time outdoors has to be about nature study. We actually do spend time just throwing the frisbee around the campsite. That is a spruce tree in the background.
Here is something interesting from our trip as well and it tied into our study of trees during this time.
One campground we stayed at in Northern California had a recreated Native American village. This is one of the structures that was a family dwelling and the boys were fascinated by the circular door openings. This area was inhabited by the Yurok tribe and the buildings were all built of local redwoods.
Here is the sweat house in the village. They actually still use this for ceremonial activities.
I am not sure what kind of tree this is but I thought it was just so interesting growing right there out of the cliff along the Pacific Ocean. It was just so nice to look at and enjoy as we took in the horizon.
Okay, enough about trees. This was a great challenge for us and I know I had the advantage of knowing ahead of time that we needed to be looking for spruce trees. Challenge #38 is going to take some ingenuity to find an elm, hickory, or chestnut tree. We are up to the challenge though.
Autumn Tree Study
We continued our tree study with the Sweet Gum or liquidambar tree in our backyard.
We had a huge wind and rain storm last night so the tree has lost most of its leaves.
Here were his observations:
The tree has just about lost its leaves. If you look carefully, perhaps clicking the photo to enlarge it, you will see a little bird on the branch of his tree- just the behind section.
The bark is ragged and rough.
I saw ants and a bit of moss on the trunk.
It didn’t smell like anything.
The leaves under the tree were mostly yellow but some were reddish.
I saw the sticker balls on the ground and some were brown and a few were green and heavy.
Where the leaves have fallen off, there are little buds on the tree.
I think he did a pretty good job of observing his tree. He completed the Seasonal Tree Study notebook page for his journal and it is filed away with the other two pages.
We were able to fit in some time at the tide pools along the Oregon Coast. We have started a study of marine biology this year and it was a perfect time to investigate up close the life in these pockets of water and at the rocky shore line.
The first thing we learned was that we needed to know the high and low tides for each day. It made a big difference in what we would see. One day we timed it just right and we found ourselves all alone at a great area of tide pools.
There had been a storm during the night before and the area was covered in seaweed. The whole beach area was filled in with piles of kelp….mostly bullwhip kelp.
The boys quickly learned how to look carefully in and around the crevices of the rocks for interesting things to view.
We saw anemones.
Hermit Crabs
Snails.
Sea Stars
Periwinkles
Someone in our family got wet because he was not paying attention to the waves coming in. I thought he was going to be stranded out on the rocks but he made it in safely……a little wet though. If you look closely in the photo above, you can see him way out on the rocks.
We all learned so much from this experience and now when we read in our textbook about marine life, we have a better understanding of just what they are talking about.
The Handbook of Nature Study has a few pages of information about marine invertebrates. Page 418 talks about shells of Florida and the East Coast and page 430 has a little information on seashore creatures.
After our tidepool adventure, the boys decided to build a structure with driftwood, rocks, and seaweed. This became a tradition on this trip and they came up with very elaborate ways to build on the beach.
Great memories and a lot of learning.
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Some of our Outdoor time this week was spent at the ocean. We took a few days and drove along the California and Oregon coast enjoying the views and the outdoor life that early October allows. We were sprinkled on a few times but nothing that really dampened our spirits too much. We had anticipated the weather and came equipped.
Our first beachcombing adventure gave us some things to be excited about. We saw three sea otters in the surf playing and diving as we watched. Then out past the waves, we saw another creature pop up….a sea lion. He didn’t come too close but we had a clear view of him from the shore.
We hiked around the cove a bit from where we were camping and found lots of interesting items. We saw several colors of sea stars, some brightly colored crabs, some bones, and lots of sea kelp.
The beach was covered in an area of rocks and this area is known for its agates. We joined in the hunt for our favorites and soon had a whole collection in dad’s sweatshirt pocket.
We also found this driftwood with barnacles on it which was interesting to me at the time but now that I zoom in on the photo, I realize there was a creature on the driftwood too….don’t know what it is.
On the hike back up the trail from the beach, I was able to spot two new plants to identify. One is twinberry
Our Outdoor Hours this week were spent along the northern California Coast and southern Oregon coast. Our first stop was camping at Humboldt Redwoods (great place for camping) where most of the tallest trees in the world live. We saw ancient redwoods towering overhead.
These trees are so tall and grow so densely that the forest floor is dark and quiet. It is quite the experience to hike along the trail and silently observe these magnificent trees up close.
The forest seemed to have its own atmosphere in and among the trees. The mist in some areas was high up in the canopy of the redwoods and it was dripping down on our heads as we hiked underneath.
In some parts of the redwood forest, it seemed as if the light never penetrated down to the floor and there were mushrooms and moss growing everywhere. It was like stepping back in time.
Mixed in among these forest giants are Big leaf maples. This time of year they are a brilliant yellow and orange and the leaves are *large*. My tree book says that the leaves are between 16 and 24 inches long.
Here is a leaf I saw on the ground that shows how big they are in real life.
“It is its autumn transfiguration which has made people observant of the maple’s beauty; yellow, orange, crimson, and scarlet foliage makes these trees gorgeous when October comes.” Handbook of Nature Study, page 628
This leaf was on a tree in Ashland, Oregon in Lithia Park. The trees in the park were just turning colors as we walked through last weekend. It was really cold and the air had a bite to it. We bundled up and enjoyed the walk.
After this trip along the Pacific coast, I have thought a lot about our dependence on wood from trees. We passed many areas in the forest where it had been clear cut, leaving nothing left standing to speak of. There were many, many lumber mills and great stacks of both logs and lumber.
Here is a stack of logs that we passed in the town of Eureka, CA. You cannot even imagine how tall and long these piles of logs are but this gives you an idea. It is a big reminder how useful certain trees are in our every day life. Look around you at this very moment and you will no doubt see lots of things made from wood.
I know that trees are a renewal resource but it does make you stop and think when you see so many areas clear-cut and then the piles of logs sitting at the mills. It truly is a balancing act….the love of the forest and the love of wood products.
Just a some thoughts as we travel along on this trip.