While I believe I was born with a natural love of God’s creation, I was not born with green thumbs! It seems everything they touch outside turns out beautiful! Thank you Mom and Dad for sharing your green thumbs and most of all your love of nature!

Today we took a nature walk at a local park to hunt for early signs of spring. If you’d like to read more about that and see all our photos, head over to my post at Shining Dawn Books! But I just had to share this photo here of a beautiful Snowdrop flower we found. And if you look close you’ll see the rear-end of a little honeybee sticking out of the bottom. Now that’s a sure sign of Spring!

]]> http://inthesparrowsnest.com/2010/03/a-snowdrop-for-a-honeybee/feed/ 3 http://inthesparrowsnest.com/2009/03/captivating-crocus/ http://inthesparrowsnest.com/2009/03/captivating-crocus/#comments Sun, 22 Mar 2009 23:45:58 +0000 Melissa http://inthesparrowsnest.com/?p=179 One by one the signs of spring are emerging. Yes, I think I’d like to officially call this an early spring. I’m for sure it didn’t warm up quite this quickly last year.  This past week it fell down below freezing a couple of nights, but the quickly warming up temperatures during the day surely speak of spring. I paid a visit to my parents this last week, and their crocuses are in bloom already. I grabbed my camera to capture a shot of these early spring beauties. 

 WAIT!!! Hold the press…I just went for a nature walk a few minutes ago, and look what I found in our landscaping. He’s a wee little one, but a beautiful one none-the-less, such a crisp delicate spring white! We just planted these in the fall, and I’ve heard that sometimes they will not bloom the first year, so I’m quite pleased to see this Heavenly bloom! 

 “In the spring nature work, train the child to recognize the evidences of law, order, and sequence while studying the life story of a plant from seed to seed. Cultivate in him an abiding friendship for the flowers, the trees, the birds – for all living things. Nature loved in youth will prove a blessing and an inspiration in mature life.” 

- from Type Lessons for Primary Teachers by Anna E. McGovern 

Doesn’t that face speak volumes?!

Gabby helped brother by holding the bucket.

We had fried ham and those fresh melt-in-your mouth potatoes for lunch that day!  Alex even fried the ham for us!

The rest of the garden is doing well so far too.  The Zucchini is really doing great.

It won’t be too long before this one can be harvested and made into one of our favorite things…Zucchini bread!  Yum!

Yellow Squash

Roma Tomatoes

I can’t wait until the Roma tomatoes and Bell Peppers are ready for me to make some fresh salsa!

Potatoes and Zucchini

Zucchini Bloom

Corn

Basil

Carrots

Gabby likes to help too, and big brother has been so kind to let her!

Other Nature things we have been observing:

Mushrooms

Bird’s Nest with Eggs in Bushes by Creek

Alex found a wild Black Raspberry Bush!  Here he is pointing it out to me with his light saber!

Some were ripe, yum!

Raccoons!

I’m helping to spread seeds around!

After our encounter with the beautiful butterfly a few days ago, Hannah and Alex approached me with drinks and straws turned around and said, “Look Mom, we’re drinking with our proboscis!” 

And last but not least, a very beautiful sunset…

Peaceful dreams for the end of your weekend and beginning of your new week.

Our newest one was just found today, the Deptford Pink.  Unfortunately Alex had grabbed and plucked the only bloom there was before I could stop him.  I was able to put it in a little container of water. 

Hannah and I both choose the Deptford Pink to illustrate.  It has such beautiful “hot pink” petals.

Hannah’s Journal Entry

My Journal Entry

Alex chose the Ox-Eye Daisy to illustrate.

He drew this in about 20 seconds, and the next thing I knew he was headed out the door with the butterfly net!  It wasn’t long before Hannah joined him, and they brought me this beautiful little butterfly.  We unfortunately weren’t able to identify it.

We also wen’t outside with my new tree identification field guide and were finally able to identify Hannah’s tree that she chose to journal about through the seasons.

Pignut Hickory Tree

The leaves on the big tree were too far up, but a little walk in the woods produced a smaller Pignut Hickory that we could get a sampling of leaves from.  And, as a bonus we found a pignut right below the tree to observe.  Hannah did a leaf rubbing after we came inside to put in her journal.

It was so easy to identify with this new guide, Identifying Trees – An All-Season Guide to Eastern North America, we love it!  It has closeup pictures of the bark, leaves and nuts.  It was so easy to for me and the kids to use.

I wanted to share this beautiful photo.  This was taken from the spot in the woods where we found the tree.  Ahhhh, I could have sat there all day!

After coming back inside the nature fun wasn’t over yet.  While sitting on the couch reading a book, Hannah jumped up and snapped this funny photo of an Fox Squirrel making his way up the pole for a bite of suet.

And then, just after we were sitting back down to read again, guess who showed up at our feeders?  An Indigo Bunting!  Hannah, with her heart beating fast, took a great photo!  You can click on the image for full-size.

It’s truly a rare treat to see them at the feeders because the guides say they only will come to them before insects become plentiful, and they are only in our area in Spring and Summer.  And just moments later the female came too!  How exciting!  She wouldn’t stay still long enough for a photo though.

So much for finishing reading our book!  I’m going to have to turn that couch around so we can’t see out the window!

If you’d like to participate in these wonderful Green Hour Challenges, visit Barb at Handbook of Nature Study.

You know spring is officially about us when just about all thoughts are on everything bursting forth to new life.  As we have watched our woods in back, we have seen the bright greens edging their way from the ground up, all the way to there only being a few trees still lacking their new attire.

You just can’t help getting in the gardening mood!  This year is our first attempt at growing a small garden area in our backyard.  My childhood memories consist of every spring planting a very large garden on our small family farm.  You know there will never on this earth be food that tasted so good again.  Rich red ripe tomatoes, crisp carrots, and sweet juicy corn….are a few of the delightful memories from my childhood garden.

While we do not have the land to grow a very large garden, nor do I think we would because I also remember the intense work required for such a thing, we do have enough for a couple small raised beds.  So, while it’s a bit early yet, we decided to call upon my gardening heroes (my parents) and commence to getting our hands dirty.

We planted two beds; 6′ x 4′ and 4′ x 4′.  We used a pretty even mixture of potting soil and top soil.  In the larger bed we planted some seedlings that we had started indoors (roma tomatoes, carrots, bell peppers, and basil); and also planted seeds for zucchini and a few Yukon Gold potato starters.  The smaller bed we will probably be using for planting Hannah’s perrenials; depending on how many more vegetables I find that we want to grow!  She just started the seeds indoors this past week.  I have dreams for making one more 4′ x 4′ possibly down closer to the creekside to plant Milkweed plants and butterfly bushes in.

Great book that I have gotten lots of ideas from:

The Christian Kids’ Gardening Guide

 Great website and activities for gardening with kids:

Gardening with Children

Backyard Fun and Gardening - FamilyFun

My First Garden - EXCELLENT! 

Ways to get children excited about gardening: 

• Mom needs to jump up and down with excitement too!
• Begin by reading great but simple books on gardening, including what the fruits of their labor will be.
• Let them choose a few things to grow, even if they want to grow corn and perhaps you don’t have the room, encourage them to plant a couple seeds/plants just to see the process and perhaps get an ear or two of corn to eat!  Or see if you can re-direct to a more profitable vegetable choice.  It doesn’t have to be vegetables, choose flowers or a tree!
• Help them come up with a plan of how to layout the garden.
• Start some seeds indoors ahead of time.  Even though this process is more work seeing something grow from seed is priceless in lessons.
• Encourage them to keep a written journal.  Take photos (or let them) for them to keep in their journals.  If they are too young to write very much, encourage drawing pictures of the steps.
• Get some real tools.  Real children-sized gardening tools are available.  Even younger ones can partcipate by using plastic ones.
• Let them be a part of labeling the plant stakes markers.  If you’d like they can draw pictures which you can cover with laminate or packing tape and attach to the stakes.
• Use this opportunity to teach about plant life cycle and how amazing it is that God put exactly what that plant needed to grow in that little tiny seed.
• If you don’t have the area outside to plant, don’t hesistate to plant in containers and still enjoy the process.
• Involve them in reaping the harvest!  Enjoy a wonderful meal prepared from their delicious creations.

Tabletop Root Vegetable Garden

(the parsnip never produced, so we tossed it this week,

the turnip, carrot, beet and sweet potato remain)

 Wow, Turnip!

Beautiful Beet Leaves 

Hannah’s Strawberry Plant

(tiny fruits keep forming!) 

 Carrots, Roma Tomatoes, Bell Peppers, Basil Seedlings

(everything’s sprouted; isn’t it neat how the Roma Tomatoes are reaching towards the sunlight) 

Hannah and I think her bean plant looks like a garden fairy! 

First, an update on our Tabletop Root Vegetable Garden…It’s coming along very nicely.  The turnip continues to be the one growing like wild.  Our parsnip has still not produced anything, so today it will probably be tossed.  The sweet potato has sprouted but is sure slow as molasses!  The kids both filled out a journal sheet which I had gotten from Amanda’s free downloads at Hearts and Trees.

Hannah’s bean and wheat plants are still flourishing.  She completed a Plant Journal Page for these measuring their growth, and this week labeling the parts of the bean plant, thanks to help from this pdf file on labeling plants that I found.

Alex also filled out a journal sheet for his carrots which are popping up all over the place; we will thin those out shortly.

Grandpa came over on Saturday and brought Hannah a present.  They had fun planting her new strawberry plant!

It’s doing really well so far.

And yesterday, Grandpa brought us another present from his garden…..LOTS of Crocuses!!!  We’ll be getting them outside in our landscaping soon.

Two weekends ago, we started some vegetable seeds indoors.  We will be having a very small vegetable garden outside in the spring.  The kids planted roma tomatoes, carrots, bell peppers, and basil (esp. for Mommy!).

It is also coming along quite nicely, everything has sprung up except for the bell peppers.

The system we are using we bought at Lowe’s.  It has been great because it’s self watering and has a cover that goes on top, so it simulates a greenhouse effect.

We have lots more vegetable seeds to plant, but it’s still a bit early; also we have lots of flowers too to get started.  Hmm, better get out my gardening gloves!!

We had a lovely Green Hour Challenge this week that I’ll should have posted about by tomorrow!