Wildlife in the Front Yard

You gotta love it when the nature comes to you! This picture was taken through the window of my laundry room, looking out over the front porch. I was actually standing on my treadmill as I took it.

If you look close, right below the wheel of the car, on the bricks, you can see a chipmunk.  He is so cute! His home is in the tuft of grass to the left of him. There is the rotting out root system of a tree that used to stand there long before we moved here, and I've found it impossible to fill in with dirt. When that plant grew up there, I was happy because it kind of covered the hole.

Now the little chipmunk has moved in there.  As I walk on the treadmill in the morning I watch him doing his little morning routine. Here's hoping kitty doesn't get him!

Is he not the cutest thing?!

Enjoying Autumn

We are enjoying Autumn so much! The colors this year are fabulous. We have taken the opportunity to preserve a few colorful leaves for our leaf collection. Below is a picture of a Robin's nest in the Dogwood tree in our front yard.

Mitchell's Sting Ray

Mitchell is back on the boat, and day two included a nature study about Stingray! Impromptu of course!

Baby Chicks Have Arrived

Nature study indeed! The baby chicks arrived yesterday, and they are so sweet. Alli calls them "cheepers", and of course they all have names already.

Painting the Chicken Tractor

The kids painted one of the chicken tractors a couple of weeks ago. We had a warmish day, so we took advantage of it by being outside. There was paint in everyone's hair for a week!

It will be a little while before the little chicks are in it.

Spider Webs

This morning we noticed these two HUGE spider webs out our front window. They were attached to both power lines and the Dogwood tree. The dogwood is covered in berries right now and so pretty.

Mushroom Study - Spore Prints

We have continued our search for mushrooms. They are everywhere! How did we NOT see them before?

Our spore print experiment turned out great this time. Some mushrooms have white spore prints and some have brown or black, so we had to try it out on both white and black paper.

 
 Check out the kids' faces in this next picture! So cute!

  
 
 

Mushroom Study Continues

The mushrooms in the backyard have changed since last week and we are fascinated! No longer are they pretty little cones - now the cap has become broadly convex. Our spore prints from last week did not work, and now we realize that it is probably because our mushrooms were not mature enough. We are trying again. Identifying mushrooms is hard!


We love the following picture, showing the mushroom pushing it's way up through the pine needles with pine cones all around it.




We measured our mushroom and found the cap is 9 1/2 cm wide, the stem is 9 cm long, and 1 cm wide.

Mushroom Study

We meandered outside to do nature study this morning, intending to identify a tree on our property, but we were sidetracked by a mushroom. We took the opportunity to sketch or paint it in our nature notebooks, and then followed directions we found online to identify it. It will be harder than we though! We have set it out to get a "spore print" which should help us narrow it down further.

Blueberry Picking and Playing With Friends

We went Blueberry Picking again last week. This was our 3rd year in a row. We've determined that 7 gallons is the right number for us. (At $5/gallon that's do-able, if not a lot of work!) After laying them out to dry we made a few blueberry treats (muffins and cobblers,) and then froze several gallons (for Mitchell to snack on and the rest of us to use in our smoothies.) After picking the blueberries we went to a nearby creek to have a picnic and play with our friends.





We came across a nest of baby birds while we were picking.

Bays Mountain Nature Study

Natural Tunnel State Park

We started out our visit to the Natural Tunnel State Park by having a picnic lunch with friends.

Then we headed down the trail to the creek.
The ranger showed us how to find creatures in the creek.

Then we looked at what we collected.

After that we walked down the path to the Natural Tunnel. The railroad put tracks right through it.

On the other side of the canyon the railroad blasted a hole because they couldn't turn so sharp.

Then we road the chair lift up to the top again.

Lastly, we went to see the block house replica and view a short video about how settlers used block houses to protect themselves when they moved West.

It was a very fun day!