Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Nature Study this Week

I love getting to have our own ecology lab around here! The pond that was seeing its ending with increasing sediment and the froggy inhabitants, has taken new interest for us all as we have been visited by a beaver! We hope he or she will stay!

Swimming in the pond, letting us somewhat near

We'll call he/she Paddy the Beaver for fun's sake.

As you can see, the Paddy has been very hard at work!


Here is a weed flower seeding that my mom picked up alongside of our driveway. Jeremy took it in to a work colleague and he helped us to discover it is from the wild onion family, a variety of the Jack-in the-Pulpit. Information is seen here.

And now, for this fellow. This weed I gathered and rid of thinking it a hallucinogenic. Well, funny thing is, I link to and follow Cold Climate Gardening (see in my sidebar.) She had pictures up last week of Wildflower Wednesday's bur cucumber. So, I went hunting on Google images for its seeds. And, lo and behold, the Jimson weed and bur cucumber seedpods look VERY similar, but the bur cucumber seeds actually resemble cucumber seeds, and I do believe that is what we have!! We will scavenge today, draw, and verify for sure with Mr. Plant IDenTiFiIER. Thank you Mr. IDenTiFIER! The bur cucumbers are edible, which would explain the mistakes families and soldiers from history have made.

"Let me repeat, that I venture to suggest, not what is practicable in any household, but what seems to me absolutely best for the children; and that, in the faith that mothers work wonders once they are convinced that wonders are demanded of them." Charlotte Mason, (Vol 1, II, Out-Of-Door Life For The Children, p. 44)

3 comments:

  1. This was really interesting to me! I'm curious about that seed/drug thing. HA. How interesting!! And I have a book called "Beaver Pond." It's has great older illustrations!

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  2. A beaver! How fun! You are the nature queen...xo

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  3. um....guess I didn't realize Ken was still signed into google--obviously, the above comment was from me! :>)

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