{From My Commonplace} :: Spring Partridges

"Very soon the first bluebird came flying over and warbled as he flew, The spring is coming. The sun kept gaining, and early one day in the dark of the Wakening Moon of March there was a loud Caw, caw and old Silverspot, the king crow, came swininging along from the south at the head of his troops and officially announced,

 THE SPRING HAS COME.

"All nature seemed to respond to this, the opening of the birds' New Year, and yet it was something within that chiefly seemed to move them. The chickadees went simply wild; they sang their Spring now, spring now now -- Spring now now, so persistently that one wondered how they found time to get a living.

"And Redruff felt it thrill him through the through.  He sprang with joyous vigor on a stump and sent rolling down the little valley again and again a thundering Thump, thump, thunderrrrrrrrr, that wakened dull echoes as it rolled and voiced his gladness in the coming of the spring."

-- from Seton's Wild Animals I Have Known

(Seton's partridges made me smile because I have a few birdies of my own who seem to go wild with joy and life when spring arrives. I'm guessing you do too.)

Nature Study Outing :: Thinking Back to Late Spring

Okay, so I'm way behind in sharing about our nature study outings.  Sadly, all the wildflowers here are pretty much gone, the stunning variety of shapes and colors replaced by thistle, more thistle, and the dried up remains of what once was. I'm only sad because I love wildflowers, not because there isn't plenty still to observe and discover -- there certainly is! More about that another day.  Today, I'm going back in time a couple months to the near-peak of our wildflower season.  A day with lots of color... and some unexpected adventure!

Our day started here, at the water's edge:

The kids spent the first hour collecting frogs.  They headed out by themselves along the trail holding the terrarium, and we moms got distracted by the wildflowers.

larkspur -- new for us this year!

young curly dock, I think

having trouble identifying this one amidst the million yellow flowers that bloom in our area -- help?
it looks like a yellow chickory!

mariposa lily

yellow mariposa lily

salsify

sticky monkeyflower

Meanwhile, the kids were busy by the water.

When they came back to us, they had a whole terrarium full of jumpers!

We made them release them right away at the pond's edge, but most of them ended up in the water.  My friend remarked that it looked like the start of a triathalon.  Ha!

They all seemed to be okay in the end and we had a little chat about not over-collecting.  Ahem.

Most of the group had to head home at that point, but one friend and I had a little extra time before we had to leave, so we decided to explore a little trail we hadn't been down before.  I was pretty sure it looped around toward the lake and then would deposit us back onto our trail down to the parking lot.  So off we went, with all the littles in tow.  (Yep, wait for it.)

And then we started climbing!  The trail was a bit steeper and rockier than we were expecting, but we kept thinking it was almost finished.  Did I mention it was in the 90s?  For my California kids (and who am I kidding -- for me!), that is hot.  But we kept trekking and finally wound up with these views:

We also ended up seeing a lot of new flowers, including two kinds of owl's clover and four kinds of clarkia!

narrow-leaf flax flower

clarkia

another variety of clarkia

An hour later than expected, our dirty, sweaty troupe arrived back at the cars -- thankfully with a nice variety of specimens to draw (the silver lining!).

I didn't have my littlest two boys along (they stayed home with Daddy), but I carried my three-year-old for the last half mile.  And my friend was wearing her infant and pushing her toddler in the double stroller -- with her older kids' help, thankfully.  Did I mention the trail was rocky?  Yeah.  But we have plans to revisit it on a moms' hike soon.

So does this ever happen to you -- you get a little overeager and pretty soon you're in out of your depth, with your kids along for the ride?  And when that happens, do you find your silver lining in new varieties of wildflowers? :)

Nature Study :: A Month of Weekly "Winter" Outings

People joke that here in California, we have two seasons: brown and green.  Well, it's green season!  It's been gorgeous lately, and we are soaking up the wet sunshine and new growth.

I thought I'd round up here a month of wintertime nature study here in not-all-that-wintery California.  The kids get outside daily, but we plan a "nature outing" once a week, usually with friends.  In the past month, that meant two trips to our usual spot with our nature group (one for our tree study and one for free exploring), one week of nature study solo in our backyard (thanks to illness), and then one group trip to a pond up in the hills that border our valley town.

Week 1 :: Our tree study outing with friends

Our focus for this lesson was two-fold: branches and branching.  For the latter, my friend brought positive-negative space grids for the kids to experiment with.  She also brought viewfinders for the kids to make their own grid drawings using the trees themselves, focusing on the shape of the branches coming right out of the trunk.

Then we did an object lesson with a fallen branch we found by the pond.  Our goal was to consider: what is left behind in or on the tree after the leaves fall?

shelf mushrooms

three kinds of lichen plus moss!

looks like termite droppings clustered in that bottom crevice

But despite our focus on the bare tree, only the sycamore was missing its leaves.  Our horse chestnuts are quickly re-leafing, and the laurel tree already has blossoms!

Week 2 :: Exploration outing at the same spot

This ended up being a week for mushroom hunting and lots and lots of questions with very few answers:

What kind of fungus is that, and who made those holes?

 

sorry this is so blurry, but this mushroom's curly edges looked like a flower!

black cap, white stem!

 How do mushrooms push themselves out of the ground despite those big caps?

these were still half covered with damp earth  

 Who took down our fort?!

examining the remains of their fort, likely razed by the park rangers -- and planning a rebuild!

Who made those marks, and what was he looking for?

looks like a boar, which are very common here -- maybe hunting for mushrooms like us?

And it was also a lovely week for wildflowers.  The fiddlenecks are beautiful (the one on the left is so new it hasn't "fiddled" like the one on the right just yet),

...miner's lettuce has leaves up but no blooms,

...and the buttercup sorrel/oxalis is everywhere!

Week 3 :: In Our Backyard

Everyone in the family was down with a cold (including me!), so we stayed home and the kids spent an hour out back.  Certainly not as exciting as the prior two weeks, but thankfully our yard is just now bursting into spring bloom so we made some entries in our Calendar of Firsts...

first daffodils of the year

pluot tree in bloom!

Week 4 :: At the vernal pond

This is a vernal pond--it completely dries up in late summer, which makes its a wonderful home for insects and amphibians since there are no fish predators.  And that seems true--we see far more frogs, newts, and water bugs here than we do at the year-round pond we frequent.

Right now it's at its peak: full, with boggy shores.  It seems like such a calm, quiet place, but there is so much going on!

the ground is covered with geranium (two kinds!), clover, and sorrel

the drought-marked grasses make an eerie white line against the green hills

We found a few of these nests in the grasses along the pond's edge.  I think they're mallard nests?

can you see it nestled there at the center bottom of the photo?

There were lots of tree frogs hopping around, but though we caught quite a few to watch, they were so active I didn't even try to grab a photo.  But these frog eggs floating in the pond were a first spotting for us!

And this California newt was the star of the day.  Look at that leg stretch!

And to link up with Keeping Company, here's a bit of my kids' nature journaling from these outings:

In the next few weeks, we're planning at least one trip to the beach and a wildflower walk.  This time of year feels like a gift.