Ladybug Garden

Sweet Pea has been reading in Nature Friend, and decided after several articles on keeping ladybugs as pets, that she too wanted to create a habitat for some ladybugs. She used an old mayo jar with a plastic petri dish cover for a lid. It fits just right over the opening, and Sweet Pea likes that it's clear. See her looking through the other side as I take a picture.


She went to her garden and added a little dirt to the bottom and planted two little plants in the bottom of her mayo garden. One is a morning glory, but I haven't identified the other yet. She read that ladybugs drink milk and eat carrots and apples. She used her Nature Friend and an Insects book to identify the difference between the males and females she has gathered. She also spent a lot of time studying their individual characteristics. You know the next logical step....naming them. We have, living on our kitchen counter, Bob, Mary, Betty, and Lady. Sweet Pea plans on journaling about them. We will also observe what happens when you have plants, soil, and moisture in an enclosed environment. How fun!

Make Way for Ducklings

When we arrived at co-op Monday morning we were greeted by a mother duck sitting under the bushes near the door. We could see a couple of baby ducks tucked under her.

Apparently, the wildlife people knew she had relocated herself to this area, which was not far from the park where she and the other ducks were residents. They decided to leave her until her eggs hatched. They had just hatched when we arrived Monday morning. We co-op at St. Mary of the Visitation's parish center downtown Huntsville. The building is surrounded on all sides by traffic and busy streets. I'm not sure how she got to St. Mary's from the park without being run over, but she did, and after all the babies were safely hatched she was ready to get them back to the park.

She waddled out of the bushes and 14 adorable little baby ducks obediently followed her. We mobilized! The children lined the sidewalks forming a barrier so she couldn't step out into traffic with the babies. One of the moms called someone, not sure who, but a wildlife or park person. This person, who knew mother duck came for them. As we watched, mother duck and her 14 babies were gently placed in a box and taken back to the park. Success! We all felt very good about helping mother duck, and the children (well, all of us really) had such a treat watching how mother protected those adorable baby ducklings. What a little gift of God on the last day of co-op.

We plan on reading Robert McCloskey's "Make Way for Ducklings" and Beatrix Potter's "Jemima Puddleduck" later this week, and making some lap books recording our findings on ducks and ducklings. If you've never made a lapbook before there are some good examples to give you a jumping point here. I found an extraordinary site with a lot of information about ducks and several printables for including in our lapbook here. We have a lot of questions we want to try to answer. Some very interesting things I found out were that ducks have excellent vision and see in color and developing baby ducks breathe through the tiny pores in their eggshells.

I have been searching and searching for why some of the baby ducks we saw were yellow, while a few were darker. I'm pretty sure they were mallard ducks, but I can't find anything yet that explains the different colors. If anybody should happen to find out let me know.

Nature Walk on the Flint River

It was time to get out for a long nature walk - we headed down "Anne Lane" to the bottomland. It was quite warm yesterday, and I had been back-packing the Peanut up the bluff already, so I wimped out and asked if we could take the gator down to the river. Everyone was agreeable, so off we went.

Isn't this view amazing??!! Shep and Butch (Rob's parent's dogs) took off after some strange dogs and people on horseback, so Rob tossed Peanut in my lap and told the kids to hold on tight. Off we went to chase the dogs. The kids were so thrilled - they screamed in our ears the whole way up the long hill and all the way through the gigantic mud puddle that we plowed through at breakneck speed. When we reached the top of the hill, the dogs were there waiting. We turned around after our little adventure and this remarkable view was in front of us. The picture doesn't really do it justice! The far right treeline borders the Flint River, and that is where we had just come from - and where we were headed back to. This all used to be cotton, but was recently bought and the owner has planted pasture grass for hay for his cows. It's certainly beautiful.

We finally made it to the dam. The water is quite low because of the drought lately, but that made it possible for us to find some great treasures - lots of little fossil rocks, some mussel shells, and lots of flint (hence the name of the river.) Everyone had a great time treasure hunting here!

The dogs were happy to plop in the river for some much needed cooling off. Here's Shep - he was really tired by this time. He just sat right down at the base of the falls and stayed there!

Treasure hunting! The falls and dam in the background were made a number of years ago to divert water to an old grist mill that was just to the left of where the kids are now standing - on the opposite side of the river from us. Sadly, the mill burned to the ground just a couple of months ago.

This is a great shot of the falls - we all climbed up that neat stepped rock formation to the top of the dam - it was a neat perspective for the kids to see the top of the dam. Down here the water moves quickly - there is the sound of the falls and the rocks are pocked and carved from years of water pounding on them. But the top of the falls was...

...so peaceful. The water seems to barely move up here. We found an area near the top here where some tree limbs and leaves had wedged themselves together and provided a very calm place within. There were a number of tiny minnows in this area - it was neat to watch. Peanut discovered them instantly and cried out "pishyies!" Translation "fishies!"

Here are Peanut and I on the rocks at the base of the falls. Rob (taking the picture) was still on the rock formation that form the dam.


After getting our feet wet in the river, we climbed back in the gator. We decided to ride down through the bottom land a little more before heading up to the house. The bottom land had been seeded earlier in the season with fescue. This land has been flooded numerous times because of its close proximity to the Flint River. These floods deposit countless nutrients in the soil here, so it is rich and offers beautiful plant life. We are always amazed at the number of flowers we find here in the rich land along the Flint. It varies from season to season. This day the children were enamored with the vast numbers of buttercups to be picked. We also saw a number of stephanotis, queen anne's lace, and some little purple harebells. We didn't see any deer or other wildlife today, but we were a little loud!

I love stephanotis! I had them decorating my wedding cake in lieu of fancy icing! It is such a pretty little plant. There were a number of these little clumps at the woods edge - always in the dappled sunshine. I am very tempted to go back soon and dig up a few and try to start them around my house. They are said to be evergreen, though I wonder if they could handle our sometimes harsh winters. Still, it would be lovely to see them climbing and flowering up the columns of my front porch.

The Anne Field

Kim and Chris really came through for me and sent me some pictures from their camera. I had to include them here. I wish I had thought to ask for them to include in the original post So Much Scope... Well, above is the Anne field as it was last Sunday. Waiting to spring forth with color, but still holding back. Actually, the Anne fields are between the two tree lines which you can see coming in on the right and left sides of the picture. Just beyond the opening there, the fields open up and start rolling. Kim says she has more pics of the Anne fields. If I can't get back home next week to take more pics, I'll try to get hers up here.

Below are some great shots that I had to include.
Is there anything more adorable.

So Much Scope for the Imagination

Alright - let me just start by saying that I'm not sure how much restraint I can exercise here. There are just oodles of pictures from this nature walk. Mom, I'm going to try to keep you off the world wide web - but so many of the good pictures with you and the Peanut would have to be excluded. No, I shall just try to exercise restraint. I can't imagine anything making Daddy happier than popping in on this blog after a class to see you and the Peanut enjoying that beautiful Sunday walk!

For those of you unfamiliar with Pop's humble piece of terra firma, I'll try to describe where we are. In this picture we're at the back of the property. It was such a beautiful, warm day. And we were all there! I was glad we decided to lengthen the walk and not just head back up to the house. Instead, we decided to make a turn down the hill to go investigate the creek below. The kids had already seen a number of little bunnies hopping through the underbrush on the way to the back of the property.

Here are Sweet Pea and Sparkly headed down to the creek with UC.
Nanny and the Peanut investigating the "wa-wa"

Papa and Nanny help the Peanut as we followed the creek down a little further. There were signs of spring everywhere.

This is an awesome shot Rob took. Walking down the creek bed, we found this huge tree. The creek had clearly cut all the soil out from under this large tree, which had at one time been growing happily at the edge of the creek. Having lost its rooting system, the tree toppled right into the support of one of its neighboors. The roots under the tree were all exposed, and though the creek wasn't very high on the day we walked it, you could certainly tell that after several days of drenching rain the creek had at one time been much higher, and cut through with great force. The awesome power of moving water!
There was so much moss on our walk - it grew in abundance everywhere - along the creek bed, and surprisingly for me, it grew in lush abundance all throughout the soggy Anne fields.

Having just crossed the creek, we stopped for a minute for a family pose. I thought it came out well.

At a certain point along the creek we turned back towards home, cutting through Mr. Dillon's apple orchard on the way. The apple trees, long neglected from years of not being pruned, formed an intricate spider web of limbs over us as we cut through. It was enchanted. I couldn't help imagining that under the apple tree canopies would be a perfect spot for a tea and cookie party. We turned past Papa's garden, the smell of freshly tilled dirt in the warm air, and began to walk around the side barns. U.B. had planted something over here? Oats I think? The ground was bright green with his plantings, and the wild violets were just starting to pop up.

After winding our way around to the front of the property, Papa asked if we wanted to continue on. YES! The day was so warm and beautiful. We crossed the street to the Anne fields. They do beckon on these glorious spring days. It's still too early to see them at their finest. In a few weeks they will be abloom in the most glorious wildflowers, which will be just tall enough to dance as the wind blows across the gentle rolling hills. Then, the fields will be just out of reach of adequate description - so beautiful that you will only be able to soak them in. It had been so long since I walked over, I had almost forgotten the sense of beauty that sweeps over you as you gaze across the gently rolling hills. The breezes seem to add to the land, almost as if the wind and hills cannot be separated. Unfortunately, I don't have any good pictures of the Anne fields and the hills from this walk. But, we're heading back to Nanny and Papa's in a couple of weeks to spend the week with them. I hope to have some really great pictures then. So much scope for the imagination there.

We found this amongst the leaves and the moss. I'd never seen anything like it. I brought back a little for our nature shelf at home. It's very spiny and prickly, not soft like moss. But it's not just been randomly blown there, it was attached to the ground. There were several other small clumps nearby.
The pond where Kim and Chris used to investigate on some of their nature walks years ago. We saw frog eggs just under the surface of the water.

After investigating the pond, we all headed back home. Peanut was pooped out! It had been a lovely Sunday afternoon, the kind with memories that will take on a magical quality in years to come.