I love fall, and some of the most beautiful colors of fall are found on maple trees, which I suppose is one of the main reasons I love them so much. When we were selecting trees to plant this past spring, two of the ones we chose are maples: a silver maple and a red maple. It will be some years from now before I'll be able to enjoy the shade of these trees, but they have grown noticably already this year and stand about seven or eight feet tall now. A friend of mine also gave me a Japanese Maple sapling earlier this summer. It is growing quite well, and I hope it will be big enough to transplant to a spot in the yard by next fall.
(One of my Japanese Maple leaves. They are so delicate!)Since the maples in our yard are not large yet, we observed a few bigger ones on our almost-daily walks. The maples in our area are not changing colors as dramatically as in other parts of the country just yet, but they are beginning to change, and will be quite dramatic soon. This is one of our neighbor's trees:
Kathryn's nature journal entry this time consisted of leaf-rubbings and a paragraph about maple syrup; her favorite part of this nature study consisted of tasting maple syrup and daydreaming about living somewhere that would allow us to harvest sap for syrup like Laura Ingalls and family. She told me all about how the Ingalls family did it, and remembered it in great detail. The bit about drizzling hot syrup on fresh snow sounds like a lovely idea to us both. Yum! Unfortunately, there aren't many opportunities for such a thing here in Georgia. {sigh}
Also, when you have a few minutes to yourself (and maybe a steaming hot cup of tea--or coffee--in hand), don't forget to read the latest edition of the Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival, posted yesterday at Twinkling Stars Homeschool.
Kathryn's nature journal entry this time consisted of leaf-rubbings and a paragraph about maple syrup; her favorite part of this nature study consisted of tasting maple syrup and daydreaming about living somewhere that would allow us to harvest sap for syrup like Laura Ingalls and family. She told me all about how the Ingalls family did it, and remembered it in great detail. The bit about drizzling hot syrup on fresh snow sounds like a lovely idea to us both. Yum! Unfortunately, there aren't many opportunities for such a thing here in Georgia. {sigh}Also, when you have a few minutes to yourself (and maybe a steaming hot cup of tea--or coffee--in hand), don't forget to read the latest edition of the Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival, posted yesterday at Twinkling Stars Homeschool.
