Jackpot for my Nature Girl.
(It’s a deer.)
Category: nature friends
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Off to Mexico
It’s been a thin year for monarchs in these parts. Today we released our last butterfly, sending it off to Mexico. This time it was one we raised at home.
Want to know what lies ahead for this little guy? Watch the Nova special, The Incredible Journey of the Butterflies.
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Diversity festival
We hit up the local diversity festival. The Youngest’s favorite part was the animal area—alpacas, llamas, chinchillas, and goats.
I think there’s a loose connection with the animals and their country of origin, but for the little people, diversity was all about the wide range of things we could pet and feed handfuls of corn.
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Monarchs
We’ve been raising monarchs at school. Just today the first butterfly emerged, leaving us with three chrysalises.
If you look carefully at the chrysalis in the foreground, you can see the monarch wings below the slightly translucent surface.
Science is neat-o!
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Field Trip #2: Farm
I love this photo. Nothing says midwest like a goat dozing in the sun.
I realize I probably haven’t properly described the Field Trip concept in detail, so it’s probably just confusing to some.
We live in a college town, so when summer rolls around, things get very quiet. Many folks head off to beach houses for months at a time or teach summer sessions overseas, families in tow.
However, our company runs year-round, which means we spend all but one week of summer in town. We hope to change that up some day, and spend weeks on end on summer adventures with our kids. But for now, we spend the summer as homebodies.
That first summer I got a bit bored in our quiet town, so I started planning field trips for myself. Once a week we would get out of dodge and go somewhere. Somewhere different and outside our normal routine, just to shake things up a bit. I begged people to go with me. Every now and then someone would come along.
Fast forward five years, and I’m releasing the list of field trips a month in advance, and all the slots for our nine field trips filled up within two hours.
Wow.
We love these weekly outings, and love even more that so many people join us.
I’d encourage anyone to take on summer field tripping. Even just one or two each summer. Round up some friends, because there are many things available to groups that aren’t available to individuals.
In a future post I’ll detail all the places we’ve been in the last five years. But in the meantime, I will pass along this one nugget—the one thing I’ve learned in all those years is how often, if you just ask nicely, people usually say, yes, they would love to have you come visit. And because we asked, good golly, have we had some rich experiences.
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First toad of the season
It’s toad season. Neko is beside herself with excitement. Each summer we seem to catch and release the same toads, as we began recognizing certain markings. Our house is a bit like a toad day spa, with fresh water and captive meals. Last summer Leaper and Sweet Pea were our regular visitors.
This is the first toad of the season, and she has been dubbed Philomena by the eight-year-old with an ever-maturing naming strategy.
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Madagascar cockroach
Four-year-olds and large, hissing cockroaches. Just another day at the preschool program…
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Hike
Our school has a fitness program each spring, encouraging students to run and walk as much as they can in three weeks. They find sponsors, and each mile raises money for the local food pantry.
I’m always amazed how enthusiastic the kids get, taking every opportunity to clock in a few more miles, like this school-led three mile nature hike. They muscled through, despite the huge amount of rain we’ve had.
All that mud? Nothing an hour splashing in the creek can’t fix.
