By Sun and Candlelight

Happy March!

Rabbit, rabbit, my friends!

Is March arriving like a LION where you are (as the saying goes)? It's actually quite mild here - temps in the 40s and just a little breeze. Not so bad!

I took this picture yesterday afternoon with Earlybird. We were on our way to pick up Bookworm from class and on a whim, I decided to trudge through the snow and check the ground beneath the big maple out front where we usually spy our first crocus. And sure enough - there they were! Lots of tiny green shoots poking up through the winter debris ... we were absolutely delighted. In fact, EB was so excited that upon returning home with Bookworm he dragged his big brother over to "come see the crocus!!" I love instilling an awareness and appreciation for nature in my kids. :)

If you, like me, are perhaps itching for spring and looking for some ideas and inspiration, here are a few posts I've done in the past:

Spring Nature, Spring Books

Springing Forward

Themes & Plans for March

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And before I go, here's a great recipe for refrigerator bran muffins - I spied this online just this morning, but I have a similiar recipe somewhere in my files. Have you had these before? My grandmother always had a big bowl of batter in her fridge - and the freshly baked muffins were oh-so-delicious! I'm going to make up a batch this weekend ... 

(In fact, I'm kind of wishing I had one right now - I have my glucose test this morning and, while I don't have to fast, I am trying to keep my blood sugar low. Of course naturally, I'm starving, lol!)

Have yourselves a good day, my friends ... and here's to a happy new month!

*❤*

A Fine Spring Day

For many families in the US, this is Spring Vacation week ... but our homeschool does not take this week "off." Rather, we take a sizeable break during Holy Week, and a few days just after Easter. All this to say - technically this is a "school day" for us. However, I was ill yesterday with a (blessedly brief) stomach bug, and though I feel SO much better today I really did not have it in me to do much at all this morning. Since Bookworm was doing some lawn work for our neighbor, and the weather was just SO nice, I joined the younger two out back for some impromptu exploring ...

And WOW, has Spring ever sprung! Everything's popping up and leafing out and all a-buzz with birdsong and bugs. The air felt good - just a little bit cool - and oh my goodness, that glorious sun!

So it was fun to get reacquainted with our own backyard, and I thought you might like to see some of the pictures I snapped. This is a nice activity for the upcoming Earth Day - just walking around your own property, looking for new life and remembering what grows where ... and most of all, seeing all the possibilities. :)

So here we have perhaps the most exciting "find" of the morning ... dandlion fluff on which we make wishes!

Meanwhile, Crackerjack got some serious height in the trampoline.

But what is this?

An inchworm dropped right into Crackerjack's hand!

Marveling at the marvelous ...

Our bleeding hearts, so pretty.

The deck - in need of a good scrub down/spruce up. Here's where we'll have our container herb garden.

A tiny forest of purple.

The lilacs are nearly ready ...

Then, a dandelion discussion ensued:

Can you eat them?

Why are they called dandy-lions?

Why would somebody eat them? 

How come our yard is the only one that grows dandelions?

(lol)

Miniature maple leaves.

Our "Friends of Saint Francis" corner.

We filled the birdfeeders and then stood as still as we could ...

The boys had given up but I got to see this little guy:

While He-Who-Wants-To-Be-A-Real-Boy watched from the doorway.

And the eldest worked hard next door.

(He charges $10 an hour and he does excellent work.)

:)

Lovely little seedlings ...

Hard to see, but the cherry blossoms are starting!

As are the new spruce cones ...

But still, best of all, there were plenty of these ...

"Mama, YOU make a wish ..."

Oh, if we could bottle these days ... so that years from now we might take a big sip and remember just how very sweet they were.

❤

Well, my friends, that was a peek into our very fine Spring day ... I hope you enjoyed your day as much as we did!

And speaking of Spring, I am currently working on the Spring Newsletter, to which many of you have subscribed. Thank you again for your interest - and your patience! I hope to have it composed and ready to mail sometime next month. So please stay tuned!

For now I'll be off ... for there's a supper to start. But have a great evening, everyone ... thanks so much for stopping by ...

I will see you again very soon!

Monarch Monday

Now, before I launch into our monarch butterfly story, I wanted to tell you all (in case you didn't know), that this is National Earth Science Week. Also, this Wednesday is National Fossil Day. These special events offer lots of opportunities for good learning and fun!

Our younger two are focusing on earth science this year, so we've got that part sewn up. This week they're working on maps and globes, and they've started a sky log (Crackerjack) and a moon journal (Earlybird). (Bookworm, our 11th grader, is studying chemistry this year, but he's pretty involved in the sky observation, too.)

Our project for Wedneday will be to make leaf fossils ~ combining science with nature study, history and crafts. :)

Leaves are a big part of our autumn learning, as is fall migration. We've been reading about monarch butterflies (and tracking where their favorite food, milkweed, is blooming), so it was quite a nice surprise to find a real, live monarch on our deck late yesterday afternoon!

What was odd, was that the monarch was staying very still - and as you can see, we got very close to it. It was moving, so we knew it was alive, and as far as we could see it was not injured. Throughout the rest of the afternoon it just slowly made its way across the deck towards the steps. Before nightfall we got it to climb onto a pine needle branch and moved it up onto the table. I'm not sure why this seemed like a good idea, but it seemed somehow less vulnerable this way.

Unfortunately, this morning we found the monarch in the same exact place - and now it was most definitely dead.

But still so very beautiful, especially sparkling with dew.

We took the butterfly inside and gently laid it to rest on our nature shelf. 

While this story had a sad ending, it was a neat experience for the boys to see a monarch so up close. We talked about what might have happened to it ... we wondered if it was on its way south when it fell ill (or prey to a bird or beastie of some kind). 

We'll keep this lovely butterfly in a place of honor at our nature shelf (I might look into mounting it somehow) and we already made plans to plant a dedicated butterfly garden next spring. :)

On a happier note, we spied flying squirrels at the feeders again last night - three at least!

Here's the best picture I got:

(Click to zoom in.)

They're pretty cute and fun to watch - but they sure do spook easily! It was very hard to get a picture ... we couldn't be sure if it was our movement that startled them, or the owl we could hear hooting off in the woods. They have nothing to fear from us, certainly - but that owl would be very bad news for these tiny creatures!

Well, that's all for me today ... I've got to get my "4:00 tidy" on and see about supper. (Grilled turkey burgers, corn on the cob and steak fries - yum!) 

I thank you all for stopping by today and taking time to read about our little adventures. I hope your day was nice, too ... and I wish you all a peaceful evening.

See you again very soon!

:)

A (Mostly) Quiet Sunrise with Earlybird

One of our "spring learning" activities this week was to spend a quiet morning outside, watching the woods and waiting for the sun to rise. We did this on Tuesday morning, and it was just magical ...

We crept out to the deck just before six (the sun was set to rise at 6:09).

Earlybird brought his binoculars so he wouldn't miss a thing ...

As we waited, we saw (and heard) ducks flying overhead, a lone crow passing over as well as a flock of squeaky blackbirds.

There was a single chickadee serenading us from the maple tree - we tried to answer him in kind, but he fell silent once we did.

We could hear morning traffic passing by on a neighboring street, and the coffeemaker beeped at 6:07.

The woods crackled in anticipation as a stiff wind (and a few squirrels) moved through ... 

 And then suddenly, there was a faint light ...

EB spotted it first!

A vivid orange glow at 6:09 - like a burst of flame in the trees:

Sunrise. 

We gathered our blankets and headed back inside - a little hungry, a bit chilled, but quite refreshed and invigorated. It was such a nice way to start the day ...

Hope your day unfolds just as nicely. Have a good one, my friends!

:)

Spring at the Orchard

 

"When spring comes, our apple tree wakes up. Pink buds and white blossoms show that it is ready to make apples again ... 

 

"Bees come to visit, flying from blossom to blossom. They visit every apple tree for miles around. Every day the bees gather sweet nectar and dusty pollen. Every night they go home to make honey and feed their babies. Wherever the bees go, they take some pollen and leave some pollen behind. And soon the blossoms begin to turn into the tiniest apples, all soft and downy. In the warm sun, the apples grow bigger and bigger ... 

 

"Our apple tree is hard at work."

(Excerpt from Our Apple Tree by Gorel Kristina Naslund ... a charming and beautifully illustrated children's book ~  a whimsical, informative story about the life of an apple tree, the partnerships in nature, as well as the changing seasons.)

 

Happy Tuesday, everyone! :)

On a fine spring morning ~ a look around the yard

What a fun weekend! The weather, for lack of a better word, was absolutely pristine. Hot, though - crazy hot for April. The one time I checked the temperature was late afternoon on Saturday and it read 87. According to the forecast, we'll be at 90 tomorrow. Crazy!

Crackerjack played soccer in all that heat, and, please allow me to brag for a moment - he scored his first ever goal! His team went on to win the game 7-2 and almost as exciting, he spotted a beaver in the woods on the walk back to the car. :)

So here we are at Monday again, and our week looks to be busy (again). The plan had been to dive right back into work this morning, but as soon as we'd finished math we couldn't help but gravitate outside. So I called it Nature Study in the backyard because a day like this is too good to pass up.

As I filled the birdfeeders, I noticed the cherry tree had buds and they look ready to pop.

The bleeding heart blossomed seemingly overnight:

The spruce tree sprouted purple-red coneberries all over its south-facing side. Crackerjack held a grown cone up for comparison.

 

Close-up of a coneberry (left) and coneflower (right).

 (Note: I'm totally making those terms up - they just sound pretty):

 

The kids were digging in the dirt, noticing the difference in color. We have a lot of clay in our soil.

Bookworm found a sprouting maple seed way down inside the earth. We surmised it fell to the ground last fall, started to sprout recently and then got covered in soil at some point.

Lovely little fairy flowers in the sideyard.

The huge maple out front is blushing green and red:

Walking back from getting the mail I noticed a spider's web glistening in the sun. I gently tapped the edge of the web with a pine needle and was rewarded with a brief appearance by the spider itself. If you click open this picture you can see him heading back inside the boxwood bush.

A blue jay under the feeders. Something's up with the jays today - they are making some kind of racket. Screeches, calls, gurlges, clicks, etc. They're really fun to watch.

Before I go, let me share a few plans and goals for the week ahead:

Find time to write and outline for May-June, the last two months of our academic year.

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April is ending, May Day is upon us. Make jam-jar lanterns for cherry tree. 

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Catch up on questions left by readers and make good on promised posts.

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Install remaining window screens; clean windowsills.

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Take down Easter garland; put up ivy and twine ball lights instead.

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Go see Monsters vs. Aliens with CJ's Boys' Club.

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Wash out and refill hummingbird feeders

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Blueberry smoothies for an alfresco breakfast on Friday (May Day).

Well, thanks for joining me here today. I hope your day's been as lovely as ours. :)

Early Morning Magic ~ Fairies at our Door?

Every morning the boys (the ones who are awake anyways) and I stand at the front door and wave to Bill as he drives off to work. Me clutching my coffee mug, the boys with their sleepy eyes, and all of us in our pajamas. We also take this moment to make note of the day unfolding before us - is it sunny and warm? cold and brittle? dark and wet?

On this particular morning - which was soft and springlike, btw - we noticed strange impressions all over the exterior of the storm door - tiny markings that looked, curiously enough, just like wings! The boys immediately thought something magical was afoot ...

These pictures did not come out very clear but I thought I'd post them anyway. (And please, if you can offer a scientific explanation for these pictures, don't share it with us. It's more fun to let our imaginations get carried away ...)

 

 

Neat, don't you think? :)

It's easy to believe in magic when you're young.  Anything you couldn't explain was magic then.  It didn't matter if it was science or a fairy tale.  Electricity and elves were both infinitely mysterious and equally possible - elves probably more so.  ~ Charles de Lint