Nature Study: Hawks

I've been lax in the nature study department, but this week we managed to accomplish a wonderful bird study right from our kitchen window!

Thanks to Lacy the very observant WonderDog, we've noticed a pair of red-tailed hawks in the yard quite often lately. Lacy doesn't usually bark when she sees something like that, but watches intently out the window and sometimes gives a little whine. Wednesday morning, after noticing that Lacy was studying something, Kathryn and I had a chance to observe a hawk as it ate it's breakfast. (Not as graphic as it sounds; we couldn't see it's meal well enough to be grossed out!) It's not often I get a photo of a hawk right outside my window (through the screen, which is why it isn't more clear) with snow still on the ground!Then another hawk -- its mate, we're assuming -- joined it to keep a look-out but never joined in the meal. I believe the one on the left is a female because they are typically bigger than the males. Their coloring was quite different, though; the one I'm calling the female was more brown, and the male was more of a slate gray, almost with a blue hue. From what I've learned online, the color of their plumage can vary greatly. I stepped outside to try to get a better shot (not through a window screen), and it flew off. I am obviously not a wildlife photographer. Especially when I'm in my robe and slippers on the patio covered in melting snow. So forgive the poor quality of the photos, but I'm still sharing because this was really amazing!We read about hawks in our Handbook of Nature Study, and in an old North American Wildlife book I have from when I was a kid, and I looked a few more things up online. Hawks have something called a crop that is in-between the throat and the stomach; it holds food when they've eaten a big meal, and slowly releases it into their stomachs as they digest. This hawk won't have to eat again for a few days. In the photo above (totally blurry--sorry!), you can see how hugely bulging her crop was!

I did my own nature journal entry, and I plan to try to do that more often to encourage the girls in doing theirs. I'm always torn about how much to push them to do it, so I'm hoping if I do it myself, I'll do less nagging and more inspiring.

Nature Study: Snowflakes!

We had hoped for enough snow to build snowmen, have snowball fights, and to go sledding (which neither of my girls have ever done!), but we ended up with only a thorough dusting. However, there was enough snow to run around catching snowflakes on our tongue and for me to play right alongside the kids. I don't do that often enough.

We also made a point of noticing how intricate and amazing individual snowflakes are. I had seen some amazing snowflake photos and really wanted to capture some of my own. I didn't really prepare enough to have a frozen pane of glass or anything like that to catch them on, but the girls help me find them, like these on the playset: And this one on Kathryn's coat:
I can't believe I've my whole life and never noticed individual snowflakes before. As we were in search of snowflakes, I keep thinking of a verse we'd read earlier in the week, about God's "storehouses of snow" (Job 39:22).

We learned that snowflakes are formed when water vapor is frozen while still in the clouds. These  hexagon-shaped ice crystals grow into more complex shapes based on various environmental factors such as temperature and humidity levels. Colder temperatures produce snowflakes with sharper tips, which may explain why we saw them so easily this time.

We read a bit about Wilson "Snowflake" Bentley, who photographed over 5000 snow crystals (flakes) in his lifetime. He adapted a microscope and bellows camera to capture these amazing images. In all his work, he never found two snowflakes alike. I love this quote by Bentley, and I'm so thankful he shared this gift with the world:

"Under the microscope, I found that snowflakes were miracles of beauty; and it seemed a shame that this beauty should not be seen and appreciated by others. Every crystal was a masterpiece of design and no one design was ever repeated. When a snowflake melted, that design was forever lost. Just that much beauty was gone, without leaving any record behind."

Even though I've been a slacker on nature studies, this reminds me of the main reason I love it: because I think all of creation is a "masterpiece of design." I hope to teach my girls to always take time to enjoy the beauty of God's creation!

Nature Study: Bracket Fungi

Finally! An official nature study! Hurray!

While playing outside yesterday, we noticed some weirdly interesting mushrooms on the side of an old pine tree stump. We poked and prodded them, and were surprised at how hard and tough they were! I came inside later to research exactly what they are, and it appears that they are turkey tail mushrooms -- but I'm not sure they are "true" turkey tail mushrooms, so we won't be boiling them to make tea, crushing them into powder, or even chewing them as we stroll through the woods, like one eminent herbalogist likes to do. True turkey tail mushrooms are said to be fantastic for all sorts of health woes: tumors, cancer, HIV, malaria, and more! If all that is indeed true, then we need to be doing some serious mushroom farming!

Today we went back out and pulled one of these off, which was more difficult than you'd think.We brought it inside to study more closely, using our magnifying glass.
Lacy the WonderDog wanted to study it, too. {hee hee}
This study goes along with Outdoor Hour Challenge #41: Flowerless Plants. In the Handbook of Nature Study, we learned that these are considered saprophytes, which are a type of fungus that feeds on dead or decaying matter, rather than being a true parasite that steals nutrients from a living plant. Some varieties of bracket fungus, however, grow on living trees and are very harmful. There is no way to rid a tree of this fungus once it takes hold.

We're so out of practice with nature studies and our nature journal, that Kathryn is a little resistant to doing journal entries. I think it's because she's too much of a perfectionist with her drawing, so that's something we'll have to work on. For today, I printed out a photo of our fungi so she could paste that on her page and just write a few sentences about it.

I hope to be posting about many more nature studies as we try to get back into the habit of doing them!

Nature Study: Tussock Moth

"About us on every side are myriads of tiny creatures that commonly pass unnoticed, and even when we observe them, we usually think them unworthy of serious consideration. But all life is linked together in such a way that no part of the chain is unimportant... The abundance of insects makes it easy to study them. They can be found where-ever man can live, and at all seasons."

~ Anna Botsford Comstock

We've been lacking in our nature studies so far this school year, but on Sunday a little impromptu nature study showed up as I was pruning my roses. I found this weird insect on a leaf...

We poked and prodded it, looked at it with a magnifying glass, took pictures of it, and Kathryn decided to put in her "bug catcher" so we could see what it was doing later. Here she and Lindsey are having a good look.

Ken looked up our strange critter on What's That Bug, and identified it as a tussock moth caterpillar, called that because of the tufts -- or tussocks -- of irritating hairs on it's body. Ours is a mature caterpillar that will soon weave a cocoon. After emerging from her cocoon, the wingless, fat, and hairy female moth waits for a male to fly to her. Once they've mated, the female will lays eggs on the cocoon, and then her life cycle is done. We all decided we're happy not to be tussock moths!

I'm hoping this little study will jump-start us into MORE nature studies!

Nature Study: Praying Mantis

When we ordered our butterfly larvae from InsectLore, we also ordered a praying mantis egg case. They arrived the same day, but the butterflies did their thing much more quickly; they completed their metamorphosis, mated, and were released to lay eggs and die, before anything at all happened with the mantis egg case. But on Sunday, Ken noticed that Lacy--our very observant WonderDog--was sniffing and staring at the Praying Mantis Pagoda, so he went to look and voila! Baby praying mantises! (Lacy likes nature study, too!)Because they will eat each other if they don't have anything else to eat, and because there were SO many of them, we went ahead and released most of them all around the yard. Ken said he felt like a praying mantis farmer. We decided to set the egg case out in the garden so that any remaining mantises could emerge there. At least one mantis was still on it; you can see it if you look closely. (That's Ken holding the egg case.)

The egg case feels kind of crunchy; I think it feels a bit like styrofoam. Last year I found what I thought was some weird growth on one of our blueberry bushes, so I yanked it off and poked and prodded it and ended up squashing it, still not figuring out what it was. When I started browsing the InsectLore website, deciding what to order and when, I realized that a praying mantis egg case is what I destroyed last spring! I would have left it alone if I knew what it was, because praying mantises are great for the garden; they eat all kinds of insects that eat my plants, so I want lots of happy mantises in our yard!

When all the mantises were crawling around in their "pagoda," they were creeping me out a little, probably because they looked like ants and it made my skin crawl. However, I know the good they do and even had one briefly as a pet (when I was a kid), so I'm not afraid of them. Guess I just don't like any large number of insects! Once we'd let some of them out, I wasn't creeped out anymore and didn't mind one or two on my hand as I released them on various plants. I felt like a pretty cool nature-studyin' mama letting one sit on my finger while taking a photo. {smile}

We tried to keep a few, but I think we waited too long to capture some tiny insects for them to eat, and those all died. We're hoping that most of the ones we released survived and will get big and strong eating things like japanese beetles! {bwa ha ha ha ha!} This little guy--or gal--is sitting on a rose leaf, and you can see on the closest leaf that something has already been nibbling there. Do your bug-eating thing, little mantis!

We're all hoping we'll see them again, once they're bigger, and Kathryn is hoping we can capture one to keep for a little while.

Nature Study: Butterflies!

I have willingly invited insects into our home.

Now, I wouldn't willingly allow just any insects in the house, but I've made an exception for these painted lady butterflies. Kathryn has l-o-v-e-d this up close and personal nature study, and we've all learned a great deal. Watching them out in the yard still leaves a lot of missed opportunities to observe them. But not inside! Our butterfly "pavillion" is on the sideboard in our dining area, right where we do school, and where we pass by to go anywhere in the house.

The butterfly larvae--little caterpillars--came in a little plastic jar with some kind of power food that looked a bit like too-thick peanut butter. We were not allowed to open the jar so that we would not introduce bacteria into the jar. For about a week, they ate and ate and ate, and grew faster than I thought possible! Kathryn wrote about the caterpillars on her blog here, and about our butterflies here.

Our caterpillars hung from the lid of the jar and formed into chrysalids eight days after their arrival. Four out of five did it all in one day, and slow-poke #5 waited until the following day. After we were sure they'd hardened (the following day), we moved them into their mesh butterfly pavillion.

Exactly one week later, they emerged. Again, slow-poke #5 waited until the day after the others. We never could actually catch their emergence in process. Every time we checked, either nothing was happening, or a new one was suddenly out. Their wings stretched out rather quickly. I'm quite glad my cousin Jonnia warned me that butterfly meconium, made up of leftover pigment and such from their transformation, looked red like blood. (You can sort of see the stain on the side of the pavillion. Ick.)

We feed them by putting sugar-water on some carnations in the a little vase in the bottom of the pavillion. Kathyn loves feeding them and watching them drink. It is pretty fascinating. We noticed that they only had four legs, but Kathryn remembered that insects have to have six legs to be insects. We looked and looked, even using a magnifying glass to try to find those missing legs, and knew all five couldn't be some mutant 4-legged butterfly. Google-search to the rescue: some varieties of butterflies, including our painted ladies hold their first pair of tiny legs so close to their body that you can't usually see them. Ken claims he did see them on one of the butterflies, but I think he's just trying to convince me I really do need an eye exam. {smile}

Just two days after they emerged, we had another lesson in the butterfly life cycle: two of our butterflies mated. Thanks to her Usborne Complete First Book of Nature, she already knew how that worked. The next day, two more mated. (Or maybe it was the same male? We have no way of telling them apart.)

Sometime soon, probably early next week, we'll let our painted ladies go free. They only live about two weeks after becoming butterflies, so they need to go off and lay their little blue-green eggs somewhere soon.

Kathryn has done a whole lot of observation during this study, and done a couple of nature journal pages, in addition to her blog posts. Despite the little bit of ickiness, this has been a fabulous nature study, and we'll do it again next spring. We also have a praying mantis egg case we're watching, but it may still be a few weeks before they hatch. You can order either (or both) of these great kits from InsectLore, and there are quite a few other fascinating insect kits we may do eventually. Jonnia is doing earthworms now, and Kathryn wants to do ladybugs, too. No matter how educational you may claim it to be, we will NOT be studying the hissing cockroaches!!!

Fun at Biltmore

A couple of months ago, my cousin Jonnia emailed me a link to the Spring Homeschool Festival at Biltmore Estate, with the brief message, "This would be a great field trip!" She was mostly kidding, but when I replied saying I wanted to go and would talk to Ken about it, we all got excited! My maternal grandmother is from Asheville and I've grown up hearing about Biltmore, but I'd never been, and this educational opportunity sounded like the PERFECT excuse to go! Ken was up for it, so he took the time off work, and I made the reservations. Jonnia's husband couldn't get away from his job, so she asked her mom (my aunt Beckie, one of the house-swappers) to come along.

We drove up on Wednesday, and Kathryn was very excited to visit North Carolina for the first time ever. The drive was beautiful, and so was the weather. Growing up, my dad's road-trip philosophy was: "Vacation doesn't start til you get there!" That made for some grumpiness and uncomfortable bladders! Prior to our first vacation together, Ken and I decided that our road-trip philosophy would be, "Vacation starts as soon as you leave the driveway!" It makes for much more enjoyable times, with plenty of time for potty breaks and meal stops when necessary.

Kathryn had never stayed in a hotel before, so that was one of the many things she was excited to do. Our hotel was on Tunnel Road; not surprisingly, there was a tunnel on the way to the hotel, and she thought that was extremely cool. She discovered she likes pumpernickel bread when we ate at Outback that night (her first time there--we don't go out to eat often). She loved being the official elevator button-pusher for us, too.

Thursday was non-stop fun, beginning with breakfast at the very fancy Biltmore Village McDonald's. (Did you know they have cafe lattes & cappuccinos at McD's now?) We met up with Jonnia & gang at the entrance gate to Biltmore at 9AM. Our first stop was touring the Biltmore home. Beckie rented headphones for us all to use on our self-guided tour, and I highly recommend that if you ever go; you learn ever so much more that way! I can't possibly pick my favorite part of the home, but I was very impressed with the library, and loved the thought of having tea in the tapestry room as the piano player provided live music! I was quite amazed by the technology, too, like sycronized clocks throughout the home, in-house telephone service, and a heated/lighted indoor pool! I also loved the servant's quarters--quite nice! In fact, I just learned from my mom that my great, great aunt (my grandmother's aunt) was a household servant at the Biltmore home! I need to find out her name and see what else I can learn about her.

After our tour, we had lunch at the Stable Cafe, and then headed over to the area where the homeschool activities were going on. In this photo, Kathryn is helping Cullen lift a 1000-pound log using an elaborate system of pulleys.There were some great demonstrations and activities for many different subjects. Kathryn & Cullen made a compass and learned about orienteering (using a compass & map); they watched a fun erosion demonstration; they helped churn butter and then got to sample it (yum!); learned a bit more about bees and observed bees at work in a cross-section of a hive; and saw birds of prey including a turkey buzzard, a red-tailed hawk, a screech owl, a horned owl, and a barred owl (all have been injured too severely to ever be returned to the wild).

After all of that, we headed to the farmyard, where we got to pet goats (love them!), two big Belgian horses named Bert and Ernie, a chicken named Emerald (iridescent black/green feathers), and hold baby chicks. The chicks were Kathryn's favorite part.Everyone at every part of Biltmore Estate was so helpful and friendly. When talking to the man who was keeping an eye on the kids holding the chicks (so nobody squashed one!), I mentioned that Kathryn wants to have chickens and be in charge of collecting the eggs, so he sent us over to the man in charge to ask if she could gather the eggs. We asked, he said yes, and Kathryn (and a few other kids) collected the nine eggs currently in the laying boxes. I learned that eggs have a natural anti-bacterial coating that allows them to sit out safely for about two weeks, but once you wash them, you must refrigerate them or they'll spoil. Even though I had chickens when I was a little girl (very little), I never knew that!

The barn was our next stop. Back in it's day, the estate included a dairy farm, and Biltmore Creamery sold milk, eggs, and ice cream. In honor of that, we all bought big ol' ice cream cones and sat down to rest while we ate them. Mmm, mmm, mmm! Before we left there, Kathryn and Cullen played on an old wagon, pretending to sell us vegetables. I think they could've entertained themselves with that game all day.What was once a dairy barn has now been converted to a winery. We took a tour there which concluded with a complimentary wine tasting, where I rediscovered that I really don't like wine at all. However, wine crackers are another matter entirely and go GREAT with tea! (I bought two boxes!) Kathryn and Cullen sampled what Kathryn said was the best, sweetest grape juice ever. (I'm guessing that's because it wasn't watered down like we do at home!)

Finally, as it neared sunset, we went around to the walled garden. I think heaven has quite a few places like this. It's too early in the season for much variety to be blooming. Some of the azaleas had just begun to bloom, as well as the dogwoods and a few other flowering trees, but the breath-taking display right now is the TULIPS! We walked up the hill to see the Biltmore home at twilight. Amazing. On the way out, a couple of deer leaped across the road ahead of us. It was totally dark, and we had spend nearly twelve hours at Biltmore Estate! We did see all that was there, but to really experience it fully, I think you'd need a few days, so we'll definitely go back someday. I'd love to go when all the flowers are in full bloom! Autumn would be gorgeous as well.

We headed back to Georgia on Friday morning, and took our time driving home. We'd all gotten a bit sunburned the day before because the 35-degree morning fooled me into thinking we wouldn't need sunscreen. I forgot that the medicine I was taking for bronchitis said to avoid sun exposure, and after the itchiest day and night I've ever had, now I know why! For future reference, aloe with lidocaine is a gift from God, and works better than lotion, vinegar, or ice packs on horridly itchy sunburns!!!

Week Before Spring Break

Today I'm feeling really yucky: achy all over, swollen throat, headache, and fever. So we didn't do much today, but Kathryn is such a good helper! While I'm awake & the Advil is keeping my fever down, I'm trying to get this written and posted. If there are typos or any random, run-on sentences, please forgive my fever brain!
Our verse this week was James 1:19: "Be quick to listen, slow to speak." I chose that one because it went along with her Little Annie's Art Book lesson about being courteous to others.

For our handiwork for the week, Kathryn made an adorable bunny (see my previous post). Kathryn has been re-reading her series of Little House books, and loving them just as much this time around. They are providing fuel for her homesteading aspirations. She also enjoyed another "Dear America" book, Jasper Jonathan Pierce, the journal of an orphan pilgrim boy in 1620. Ambleside readings comprised the majority of our history study, and Kathryn also read about current events in her God's World News "Taking Off" magazine.

We watch very little television, but once night each week, while I'm hosting a ladies' Bible study group, Kathryn and Ken watch Alton Brown's show, Good Eats. Besides sparking a desire to cook, he's great about including a good dose of humor, along with some science (of things like why to mix which ingredients in what order because of the chemical reactions) and often some history, too. This week's episode was on okra, and I realize I have not been a proper Southern mama because I have never cooked fried okra for my family! I grew up eating it, but I've never actually cooked it myself. (Tragic, I know.)

Besides doing a couple of pages of her Italics C workbook, Kathryn wrote letters to two pen-pals recently. One is a friend who recently moved out of state (we're waiting on her return letter), but she and her cousin Cullen have been exchanging notes in the mail this week, even though they don't live far away at all! Getting an actual piece of real mail in the mailbox can be very exciting, and a motivating reason to practice handwriting.

For nature study this week, we didn't actually get outdoors much because it's been a very rainy week, but we have been observing our birds at the feeder and in the yard. Yesterday we watched a robin take a leisurely bath in our birdbath, and we noticed this week that the cowbirds are back for the season. They lay their eggs in another bird's nest (just one in each different nest), so we got to wondering how they grow up to know they are cowbirds. Sounds like a study we'll have to do soon. But this week we studied bluebirds, even before we knew that was the newest Outdoor Hour Challenge! We learned how very beneficial they are because they eat so many insects. We discussed the many ways birds use their beaks, too; handy little things, they are! We've also been trying to learn the songs of the birds that serenade us every day. A great site for that is Learn Bird Songs, where you can listen to recordings of many bird sounds and songs.Another funny little "nature study" thing Kathryn did this week: while we were paying for our groceries at Trader Joe's, Kathryn went over and started examining the potted tulips and daffodils for sale, and called me over to show me all the flower parts, including pollen. Then she went around pollinating the flowers, taking pollen from one flower and pollinating another flower of the same type. It just struck me as so funny!

When I suggested a painting project this week, Kathryn wanted to do a paint-by-number we had. She had fun with it, and experimented with mixing paint colors, and I'd say it helped her work on her patience a bit, too!Last year, although testing isn't required until third grade in our state, I went ahead and gave Kathryn a standardized test, so she'd get familiar with the process, and to keep for my records. I'll plan to do that again in a few weeks for this school year, and have already ordered it from Seton Testing. We also did the Let's Go Learn online reading assessment last year, which gave me a good deal of helpful information about her strengths and weaknesses. She did another one this morning to see how she's doing as we near the completion of our second grade year. Last year I was rather surprised that her comprehension wasn't better than it was, so we focused a bit more on narration, and she brought that up from a 4th grade level last year to a 9th grade level this year. Her vocabulary recognition is very high, and she tested at the maximum level in phonics & such. Her lowest scores were for spelling (low 4th grade level), so we'll devote a bit more time to that in our upcoming school year.

We're taking off next week, as Kathryn is with her dad for spring break, and then we have an exciting, fun-for-the-whole-family field trip planned the following week. Yay! Now I just have to get to feeling better. Speaking of that, my achies are coming back, so I'm off to take more Advil and drink more hot tea.

Nature Study: Moss, Lichens, and More

Ken was out of town all week on a business trip and got in very late Wednesday night (actually Thursday morning!), so he decided to take the day off yesterday to relax. Since it was such a gloriously beautiful day, we decided to go for a nature walk and enjoy a picnic lunch. We went back to the same trail at Kennesaw Mountain National Park where we went with friends last spring for our Nature Study: Picnic.
There are still quite a few of Barb's "Outdoor Hour" nature studies we have yet to do, and though we didn't specifically head out with any intention of getting one of these done, we kept noticing moss and lichens all over the place. I remembered that one of the nature studies we had not yet done was on Moss and Lichens, so we paid a bit more attention to these so we could read about them later at home. (We did that today.) Since Ken was with us, he manned the camera; therefore, I'm actually in some of the photos!We saw so many lovely things on our walk! There was one tree I haven't identified yet. Across a grassy field, we noticed it because it is red. When we got close, we saw that it had these bundles of red "helicopters" (as we call them). It was still a little cool to go wading in the creek this time, but Kathryn floated some leaves away in the current like tiny boats. We saw two lizards on a tree, some type of sapsucker or woodpecker that was just too far away to properly identify, and some beautiful bloodroot flowers. Kathryn asked what a big vine was that was growing up a tree; we weren't sure but when I said it may have been wisteria, she remembered from her Junior Ranger information that wisteria is a "pushy plant."We ended our nature walk with a picnic in a grassy field, one of the old Civil War battlefields at the park. We all agreed that food just tastes better after some good exercise and fresh air!

Nature Study - Dogs

We've been out of the habit of doing nature studies lately, but we're trying to remedy that. Yesterday we did Outdoor Hour Challenge #51: Wolf, Fox, and Dog. We watched part of a PBS show called In The Valley of the Wolves, and Kathryn wants to watch the rest if it soon. It does have some graphic parts, but she doesn't seem disturbed by it. I'm always conflicted on those parts, and never can decide who to cheer for: the predator to get food and feed it's family, or for the prey to get away and live another day. Either way, it's life.

We read about wolves, foxes, and dogs in our Handbook of Nature Study. Kathryn has never seen a wolf or fox in real life, but I have. I've always had a fascination with wolves. One of my fondest memories is of meeting a domesticated wolf and spending at least an hour (I lost track of time) years ago just talking to her and petting her; I felt really special when the owner said the wolf seldom let anyone touch her and usually hid from people. Only once did I ever see a fox in the wild, and it was thrilling to see it bound away. When I lived in the mountains, a coyote ran down the road in front of my house, and my dad has seen wolves at his house in the mountains a few times in the past few years.

In the "METHOD" section at the end of the lesson the author says, "For the observation lesson it would be well to have at hand a well-disposed dog which would not object to being handled." We just happened to have a well-disposed dog lying right by the couch, so we studied Lacy!

First we studied her paws, with thick pads and non-retractable claws. (We think it's cute that some of her toe pads stayed pink.)Then we talked about moist dog noses, how well they can smell, and how amazing it would be to be able to smell so many things from so far away! Guess I'd never really thought before about how the shape of the nostrils and the fact that they're set right at the tip of the nose to maximize the ability to smell. We talked about dog hair, differences between breeds of dogs and what they were bred to do. We talked about ears and how well dogs can hear, and held our hands up to our ears to imitate the shape of a dog's ear to see how that helps it hear better. We looked at Lacy's pretty eyes and talked about the similarities between the pupil of a dog's eye and our own pupils, verses the slit-like pupils of the cat. For Kathryn's journal entry, she drew a picture of Lacy and labeled various parts with info about some of the parts we had discussed. To finish off our lesson, we went out in the back yard and watched Lacy run around and demonstrate the lean and muscular body of a dog. Thank you, WonderDog, for letting us study you!

Randomness

This is a jumpy, random post; sometimes that's just how life goes!

Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival: It's up at Adventures on Beck's Bounty, and it looks great, but I have not yet had a chance to read the entries. I'm sure they are all splendid, and I will try to get to them later today. Grab a cup of coffee/tea and head over there yourself! Start working on those entries for next time! (I'm telling myself that, too!)

Adoption Update: our caseworker heard back from the DHR (state of Georgia) worker who is reviewing/approving families. She says the DHR worker is still backed up because she's been assigned to work on other projects but she's suppose to be trying to get to our home study this week. Our caseworker will be checking in with her again today and will let us know if there's any update.

Gardening: Whoa, that's a topic I haven't mentioned in months! My cherry tree is already blooming, but my very ugly, muddy, dead, weedy, abandoned-looking flower garden has me thinking about all I have to do to get it looking gorgeous and healthy this spring. And it's got me Rambling on my other rosey blog, too.

Nature Study: The Great American Bird Count ended on Monday. I was going to share our tallies with you, but I think I must've thrown away my sheet after entering the numbers in online. Oops! Whether you participated or not, you can see the tallies for the birds in your areaor find a check out a few bird-related games for kids, like a printable word-find and some coloring pages, as well as an online "Guess Who's Squawkin" game to identify bird calls.