Pussy Willows

Somehow I have the impression deep in my heart that pussy willows are one of my mother's favourite things. Maybe it's because I remember them being displayed in an early spring arrangement on the stereo cabinet. Or maybe it's because I associate her with soft beautiful things. Either way, there is a connection from my memory to my heart which has given me, in turn, an appreciation for these little things, so full of hope.

But somehow, when I do remember to look for them, I always seem to go looking too late in the season, and I miss them. Has there ever been a spring when I've had pussy willows in a vase on my piano? I don't think so.

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Last week I was given the opportunity to gather with some other mothers who home educate their children, an opportunity for the women to gather and fill our own hearts. The afternoon was just for us, no children. That alone was a rarity. But the beauty that was packed into the few hours together? That was miraculous! A nature walk; tea with scones and jam and clotted cream and berries and oh, so much more; a book giveaway; nature study; an exchange of gifts to refresh our lives; rich conversations about books and history and life and hopes. 

The topic of the nature study was none other than those sweet pussy willows. Samples from two different sources were brought in, and we spent time looking, sharing observations, listening to nature lore about them, hearing details about their characteristics. 

Who doesn't love those little white-grey buds that look like tiny kitten toes peeking out? Who can resist touching? 

My nature journal entry of those pussy willows.

A few days later, on a walk with my family, I saw them myself, growing by the wayside of our trail. I might have missed them if I hadn't already been made aware that THIS was the time to be watching. 

Isn't that key? Not just to look, but also to look at the right time?

More Critters

Caterpillars have been everywhere this month. 

First there were the ones that coated the tree outside the dining room window. 

Then came a horde of small black ones that, practically overnight, devastated our lawn. Now, our lawn was nothing precious to behold in the first place, but at least it was green. By the time these critters were finished with it, there was nothing left but dry brown stubble.

This morning, as we were finishing up our writing project for the morning (getting some long overdue notes ready to mail), Ed called from outside where he had just finished hanging out the laundry. 

"Do the boys have a minute for me to show them something?"

"Is it gross?"

"Um, yeah."

And out they were like shots, ready to see what was there!

Ed had discovered this caterpillar just outside the kitchen door, and it was a doozy. Thick, plump, multiple-waisted. We have no idea what kind of caterpillar it is, or what it will become. But, look at the size of it!

Bigger around than Ed's index finger, it made me think of a well stuffed cigar which, if nicked in the right place, would spill its stuffing all over.

I wonder what other amazing critters are hiding just outside my door? I wonder if I really want to know.

Seeking and Seeing

Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. (Jeremiah 29:12-13)

Sometimes that seeking is a first step in drawing close to God - a first knowing of Him, a first hearing of His love and calling, a first realization that 'there must be more'. 

But sometimes it's a step along the way, on a path that's already been travelled for years and will last for many more years.

After reading this passage as part of our study this morning, three of us spoke of how we could put it into practise. My choice? To ask God to show me Himself each day, to open my eyes to the way He was working in my life to make Himself known to me. You know, to realize that some of those 'coincidences' of life were really God ordering things for a purpose, or to see the changes He is working in me to make me more like Him. To see Him. To notice. To appreciate. He says, after all, that if we seek Him we will find Him.

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The base of the tree trunk was covered with fuzz yesterday, and a long line of caterpillars climbed their way up to one branch where they molted. Yesterday, fascinated by the parade of fuzz that lasted most of the afternoon, I neglected to look at what happened after the molting.

 

Today, when the branch was once again a soft furry mass of little bodies, I determined to look more closely at what happened next. Where did those critters go? 

I took the camera with me again, but this time it stayed strapped in its case for a long time. For more than 10 minutes I looked for signs of the path the caterpillars took yesterday. And finally I found a section of chewed leaves. 

It was at the far end of the same main branch that the caterpillars had taken as a changing room yesterday. Was this the right area? I circled around that branch, searching. Would I find chrysalises or cocoons? Newly molted caterpillars? Something else? Anything at all?

What I found was this:

A delicate basket of spider's webbing filled with... what? Could these be the little bodily remains of countless caterpillars? I didn't go digging around to find out.

On a different sub-branch, though, after almost 15 minutes of searching, my eyes found this:

... and then this: 

Two small chrysalises! Striped, slightly twisty, precious little houses! (Or are they cocoons? As I'm unsure what species I'm looking at, I can't say for sure, because I don't know enough about how to distinguish them.)

They're both in this shot. Can you see them?

After a few more minutes of searching, puzzling, wondering, I realize that these really are the only two on the tree. So the mystery remains: What has happened to all those little bodies?

I'm so thankful to have seen these two chrysalises, especially since, less than an hour later when Ed went out to have a look for himself, they were gone. I don't know how long they were there, but we were aware of them for less than an hour, and I had the privilege of seeing them. Beautiful gift that was!

Square-Foot Gardening

This year we started our first foray into "Square-Foot Gardening". (I suppose that here in South America it should be called "Square-Metre Gardening", but that just doesn't roll off the tongue as well.)

Following a good friend's suggestion, I had foregone purchasing a book (gulp) about the process and had instead visited the Square Foot Gardening website, read through all the info, and made my plan. Then I had to pull out my dictionary - the Spanish-English dictionary, that is - and look up all the words I might possibly need before making the trip to the vivero. I looked up 'peat moss', 'compost', 'soil', 'vermiculite', 'moisture-retention', 'weed-barrier', and so much more, jotting the words down in the little notebook I keep in my purse for vocabulary, braced myself with a dozen or more deep breaths, and off I went.

I walked through the entire store first, hoping to just find the things I was looking for without too much difficulty. And for the most part I was successful. I found the peat moss, compost, and garden soil, but still I needed help with choosing which variety of those would be best to purchase. The woman working the counter was helpful, allowing for my halting Spanish as I tried to explain what I needed, and guided me to the right items, telling me prices, too, since many things didn't have prices on them.

I got out my pen and turned my vocabulary list into a price list so I could report back to my Dear Man before purchasing.  Costs approved, we made our purchases a couple of days later.

My bale of peat moss - turba - We almost didn't go through with the project because of the cost of this one item.

My Dear Man had already constructed the ground-level frames we were going to use, so  now the whole family was ready to set to work.

Brown-Eyed Boy helps me lay the weed-barrier.

Two planters ready for the triple-mix.

Brown-Eyed Boy and Little Man mixing up the triple mix. (We altered the proportions slightly because of the cost of the turba, but it should be okay, don't you think?)

One planter filled with triple-mix under the approving eyes of our neighbours' dogs, Linda and Pongo.

(See the lemon on the right? A bumper crop of lemons on the tree this spring, then our landlord pruned it and it'll be a while before the new fruit is ready to pick!)

The first planter was string-divided into 9 sections, each roughly (you guessed it) one square foot in area. Each of the children was given a row of three sections to plant as they chose. All three went for plantas de frutilla (strawberry), and girasol (sunflower) for two sections, and their third sections were zanahorias (carrots), marones (peppers), and lechuga (lettuce). The seeds went in a couple of days after the planter was ready.

All of us were eager to see what would come up, and how quickly. With the exception of the frutillas, all were started from seeds, and we hoped that, living here where there are no pesky squirrels, we might have some nice results with the girasoles (unlike the attempt that My Girl and I made at 'building' a sunflower house several years ago).

Sadly, however, the leaf-cutter ants quickly discovered this new food source, and completely wiped out the leaves and buds from the frutillas as well as the early sprouts of the girasol in Brown-Eyed Boy's center square.

Early sprouts

Frutilla - a great harvest crop... for the leaf-cutter ants

See how those nasty ants have completely removed the leaves from the ends of the stalks, not to mention chewing away some of the stalks themselves? Nasty ants.

We decided that we weren't going to take the ant-attack lying down and went to the store to find ant killer of any kind, as long as it was POWERFUL! The single treatment we gave did the trick, and we haven't had such an attack since.

The frutillas made a come-back, and the later girasol sprouts not only survived, but thrived, although only in two sections; My Girl's girasol square is still completely empty as a continual reminder of the sad day when the ants were discovered.

All the initial prep and planting was done September 10 and 11, with the early sprouts and ant attack occurring in early October. Since then I've also planted my own planter with peppers, carrots, tomatoes, and lettuce, and the kids have added peppers, carrots, and lettuce (I think!) to theirs, filling in open sections where plants didn't come up.

Here's the progress so far:

Two tall sunflowers - the one on the left is Little Man's, the one in the centre section is Brown-Eyed Boy's. Behind them you can see the strawberry plants filling out nicely - all three of them!

My planter

 

A couple of pale berries that will be candidates for picking very soon!

Brown-Eyed Boy has been the most diligent of all three children in terms of watering, although even his efforts have been sporadic. We don't have a watering can, so we're using one of the plastic pots with holes in the bottom that the flowers from our front garden came in, which involves making multiple trips to the tap in order to water both planters. 

We hope to see some nice growth from the new sprouts (photos to come later) in the other crops, and to be able to pull fresh carrots, lettuce, peppers and tomatoes from the garden soon.

Nature Journal Drawings of the Rufous Hornero (Red Ovenbird)

After finding the nest in our neighbourhood, we did illustrations of the Rufous Hornero using one of our favourite art tools for nature illustrations: watercolour pencil crayons. (We also use watercolour crayons, for a slightly different effect.) There are times when using watercolour paints works well, but for ease, and a bit more control, the pencil crayons are a hit with our family.

Brown-Eyed Boy's

My Girl's

Little Man's

Mine

Rufous Hornero

There have been many new things to see since our move to South America, and that's been a big part of the adventure. Practically every day we see something that lives or grows here that we haven't seen in Canada, and, bit by bit, with the aid of our guidebooks and our friends and neighbours, they're becoming familiar.

One of the first things we noticed was the Rufous Hornero, or Red Ovenbird. We spent some time in our Nature Study looking at the birds, locating their nests, and reading about them online.

We knew we had seen many nests in our neighbourhood, but once we actually set out to draw one, we realized how hard they are to find. The Ovenbirds build their nests on top of things: fenceposts, light poles, tall trees, or anything else they can find. And so we walked around the neighbourhood, looking up, carrying our notebooks and pencils. Looking, always looking.

Finally we spotted one after walking about five blocks. It was high atop a telephone pole, with the 'door' facing away from us.  Here's a glimpse of each of our perspectives on what we saw:

Brown-Eyed Boy's

My Girl's

Little Man's

Mine

The Red Ovenbird builds a very unique nest, and our neighbour, knowing how much we enjoy Nature Study, sent us this slideshow of a pair of Ovenbirds constructing a nest.  (You might need to allow a moment after the link opens to let the photos load into the slideshow. Be paitent, it won't take long!)

In order to make the slideshow small enough to share on Google Docs I had to remove a couple of the slides, but I think I chose carefully enough not to have lost the flow of the process. I don't know who put together the original slideshow, but if anyone knows, I'd be pleased to hear from you so I can credit the owner of the photos. 

Did you notice, at the end, the way the door is kind of angled into the nest? That's a protection against predators (and weather?), offering more security inside the nest. The whole 'plastering' process looks quite involved, and the nests are very tidy when complete. I'm not sure how long it takes to build a nest.

That day out we didn't actually see an ovenbird, but we've since seen many, and I'll let you see our drawings of them soon.

Pines and Cones

We are living in a different land now, and so much is new that sometimes it's hard to know where to start with the discovering.

So we're starting with whatever comes up whenever it comes up, and we'll see where that leads us.

When we first arrived in South America we were immediately aware of the importance of the pine cone in daily life.  First of all, pine cones were everywhere.  The most obvious ones lay on the roads and in the yards. But then we also saw bags of them for sale at the neighbourhood supermarkets and gas stations. And at the firewood sale-lots. Quickly we learned that, in a country where homes don't have central heat, fires play a key role in staying warm in winter, and pine cones themselves are the items used as kindling!

Brown Eyed Boy gathering pine cones for our family

Seeing how key they were going to be to our life here, when I saw an Outdoor Hour Challenge on pine cones on the Handbook of Nature Study blog, I thought it might be interesting to take a closer look.


I read the background information on pines and pine cones in Anna Botsford Comstock's book, Handbook of Nature Study, and gathered the family. Even My Dear Man came along on this one!  We walked three blocks to the woods that have become a shortcut for us when we go visit friends, for we knew that there we would find an abundance of pines.  I asked each person to gather one open and one closed cone as well as a bundle of needles.

Did you know that the topmost branch of a pine, the one that points straight up, is called the 'leader'? And did you know that the new branches form below the leader, in clusters of 3 or more, depending on the variety? That in itself didn't intrigue the children too much, but then I asked them to look for trees that had more than one leader, either two or three.  When a certain insect lays its eggs at the top of the tree, in a little hole it has burrowed, the developing and hatching process kills the leader branch. But to compensate, the tree establishes a new leader from the new-growing branches at the top. Usually only one steps into the role, giving a new, off-centre leader, but occasionally two (and sometimes even three) will share the role. 

After hearing that information, the children and I began seeing trees with lopsided or multiple leaders! This forest was filled with trees that gave evidence of a storied past!


The pine cones we took home, sketched in our nature journals, and then each child and I narrated about the walk and the cones.  I was very pleased with the resulting drawings, especially since it has been many weeks since we've brought out our nature journals.

Dandelion - 100 Species Challenge

7.  Dandelion

     Taraxacum officinale

I wrote about our expedition to discover more about the dandelion in our Outdoor Hour Challenge.  But then I realized that this handy, resilient little plant could serve more than one purpose:  by looking up the official name of this bright fellow, I could bring my 100 Species Challenge list up to the whopping total of 7!

Before doing our study of the dandelion, I already knew about the long, strong taproot which makes the plant virtually ineradicable.  I recognized its leaf shape, knew about the way it chokes neighbouring plants out by shading them, and had watched the flowers go from bud to blossom to seed.

What I didn't know was that the dandelion is actually a composite flower, each head being made up of hundreds of individual florets.  And I knew that the head changed from sunny yellow to white fluff, but didn't realize that the head took several days of opening and closing (morning and night) before it opened fully, and then it would stay closed for a couple of days (I have yet to watch one to see how many) before reopening as the fuzzy white ball that is so much fun to play with.

The plants grow to slightly exceed their neighbouring plants in height.  When on a short grassy lawn they are short themselves, the bloom stalks being only a couple of inches in height.  But when in a grassy field, they grow taller, always outstripping the plants around them.

The leaves on the ones we observed were between 3 and 5 inches in length, slender (only about an inch wide at the widest part), and deeply notched.  They are said to resemble the teeth of a lion (dents de lion), which are quite jagged, apparently.  The flower heads were from 1 to 1 1/2 inches in diameter when fully open, the buds less than 1/2 of an inch tall and about 1/4 of an inch across.

It was hard for me to follow all the structural information about the dandelion.  Some familiar terms came up (anther-tube, stigma, corolla, etc.), but new terms like involucral bracts, akene, and pappus will take some getting used to.

All the information I gathered about the taraxacus officinale came from Anna Botsford Comstock's fabulous book, Handbook of Nature Study.  I really like the way Comstock talks about the specimens as individuals.  She gives them character and invites us to be friends with them.  What a great way to learn about nature.