Schoolless

Garden variety

I was going to post these pictures as these flowers were blooming. A long time ago. Last month... last week...
After this long winter, that dragged in one monotonous, snow-sodden day after another, you would think we deserve the have the pleasures of spring linger on. But she is a tease, and here are some of her cohorts.

This lilac is called Beauty of Moscow. She's also the beauty of my back yard. Can you just smell her? Gorgeous! Stays that way for about a week, then all this profusion turns brown and limp, and it is done for another 51 weeks. A nondescript, rather leggy bush in the corner of the yard.

The peony buds, big as golf balls, and seemingly as firm, burst open into their vulgar, gaudy display.

The magenta ones are the most obnoxious, but the white ones are not far behind.

They're even worse than the lilac. Once opened, the petals last only a couple of days (during which there invariably come violent thunderstorms which beat them mercilessly to the ground), and the they droop all over the surrounding foliage, as if a large bird had taken a rest there to commune with nature.

The shortest bloom award, however, has to go to the poppies.

Spectacular! But even in the best of circumstances, their blossoms don't last more than a day or two, but since they bloom at the same time as the peonies, they also fall victim to the storms.

I love these extravagant flowers, but I have to admit that I find them a little stressful: the anticipation while the buds take their sweet time to open, the high drama of the peak bloom combined with the constant fear of impending storms, and the keen disappointment after the flowers fade...

Although I vastly prefer this ever-changing display to the monotony of a lawn and its constant and unvaried maintenance, I breathe a sigh of relief when these drama queens are finished, and summer brings in the somewhat plainer, but more dependable summer cast.

Attracting wildlife to your garden

I'm not sure this is what they mean, but I'll take whatever wildlife I can get.

Spying on the life of plants

I'm feeling too lazy to write, so please sit back and enjoy this photo essay of sorts on our exploration of seeds.

We put on fuzzy wool socks and gathered some of last year's seeds. We also gathered seeds by hand.

Here are some examples of the seeds we gathered. Some were neat and tidy like these. The big surprise was the cottonwood seedpod, resembling a small bunch of grapes. We had no idea that's what they look like before they burst open.

Other seeds were less cooperative, and made a tangled, spiky, fluttery, fuzzy and tickly mess.

Like these.

And these.

Some landed where they weren't supposed to.

Here is our dissecting lab.

We were especially proud of this beauty.

Its babies look like little bisons, or perhaps mythical horned slugs.

Here we are making a model seed out of a balloon, strips of newspaper and paste.

Finished seed model. Note that this seed is unusual, as two different plants seem to be growing out of it. This is not a result of a genetic mutation, but rather of having to accommodate two different artists with only one balloon in the house.

The end result of our explorations. Pretty, no? But it was all in the process.

earth

a little of this

and a handful of these

turn into these

then these,

and finally: this!

Love your Mother.

It's coming down...

A nest for birds
there ain't no words
for the beauty
the splendor
the wonder...

OK, not my hair, my tree! My elm is coming down today, and I'm sad...

Who's there?

The other day we decided to go and find the dang woodpeckers. For a few weeks now,the neighborhood has reverberated with their incessant t-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d! T-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d! In stereo!

It stops people in their tracks. They stand there, with their noses pointing up at the sky, searching. They get off their bikes and look up, hoping to glimpse the source of the noise. "I can sure hear'em, but I can't see'em."

It took some effort. Peter and I clambered over heaps of dead leaves and broken logs, being careful not to get swallowed by the bog that the recent thaw created on the edge of the woods. We craned our necks this way and that, we peered into the thicket of branches over our heads, and - lo and behold - there it was. Way above our heads, pecking furiously, pausing only to give my camera the evil eye...

On a nearby branch, we could also see the ample evidence of his labors.

The guy at the other end of the block wasn't such a good sport about being photographed, so this is the best I could do:

Even now, as I write this, I can hear them. While other birds sing their hearts out in search of love, the woodpeckers work away.

Thaw

I.
The snow is gone. There are still a few black lumps clinging to the sides of the road here and there, but the white, powdery, fluffy, gorgeous, infuriatingly inconvenient stuff is gone. The sharp early March sun, that we so much looked forward to, came, and exposed the sodden earth in its barren ugliness.

Snowy winter covered up man's excesses in the woods with exuberant flair. Now that she retreated, here they sit, exposed to the naked eye:

Yes, it is, in fact, a dead domestic fowl, stuffed in a box, one of several found along the edge of a residential street in LaBagh woods on a recent walk.

II.
Controlled burns have begun in LaBagh woods. Whereas most area residents who are lucky enough to live in the vicinity of Cook County Forest Preserve embrace active forest management, Sauganash and Edgebrook have a small but vocal (shrill?) contingent of long time residents who vehemently oppose what appear to be sound conservation and management practices. Recently, members of my family elbowed our way through a gauntlet of hackling neighbors as we joined other volunteers in clearing invasive plants from our woods.

III.
As the ice melts, so do our brains.

Someone recently landed on my website as a result of the following search question: "is there math in lego?"

Duh? (I'm sorry, I don't usually say "duh?", but this is too much).

Ready?

Manipulatives (The best! Don't waste your money on any others. Especially since you probably already own these.) Addition. Subtraction. Multiplication (make a table). Division. Value (count the dots; use'm as money). Area. Volume. Fractions. Squares and square roots. Right angles. Parallel lines. Equivalents. Measurement. Triangle numbers. Patterns. Spatial representation. Geometry. Architecture. Problem-solving. Exploring the unknown. Enthusiasm. Joy. Inspiration. Fun. Play. Math?

Yes. Math.

IV.
Nature Awakening notebook.

The ice is melting, but you can still walk on it. It probably goes down a good six to eight inches right here. It held up not just the kids, but me as well.

Where the deer have left their droppings, little pools form under the ice.

You can pretend you are a bird looking for last remnants of food in this barren landscape. Poke a small screwdriver (your "beak") into the loose bark of a fallen tree, and you may find tasty morsels:

Juicy ants.

Beetles. Eeek! This one is alive. Gotta act quick.

Praying mantis cocoon. This one was lucky we weren't really birds. We photographed it, and left it alone.

But we did learn something about finding food in the wild this time of the year.

What if you were a predator, and spotted this nest -- apparently within sight and easy reach?

Well, you might just learn an important lesson about thorny plants. And if you were a homeschooler, you might learn a lesson about using features of your environment to advantage.

V.

The real birds. They yell. We look up, aim, and take our best shot.

You know what this one is. The other one is, I think, a sharp-shinned hawk.

Happy spring.

Pellet or poo?

A couple of years ago, I didn't even know owl pellets existed, let alone what they were.
Today, I went hunting for them.
Although I purchased a commercial owl pellet lab kit, I felt a little sheepish about spending actual cash on something that should be free for the taking for anyone who cares to look. A nature book helpfully suggested that I could find "piles of them in places where a pellet-producing bird, such as an owl, has roosted." No prob: not fifty paces from my front door is a forest preserve with numerous mature trees, and a large population of small animals and birds: a veritable owl paradise. The website for the forest preserve further assured me that both Eastern Screech Owls and Great Horned Owls are permanent and common residents of these parts.
So, today, I went to find some pellets.
I came home with a pocketful of ... er ... something.

Unless you have a barn, where mice figure regularly on the menu for local barn owls, finding owl pellets is harder than it sounds. From my earlier literary experiences, notably Winnie the Pooh, I believed that owls favored trees with holes in them. Large oak trees with solid, and conveniently perpendicular limbs are a common sight in our woods. Many boast inviting and commodious looking holes. Initially, I got very excited about finding little piles of matter under one such tree. I poked the piles hopefully with a pointed stick, eager to uncover ground animal bones, fur, eyeballs, I dunno.
The piles were quite crumbly, and they did, in fact contain copious quantities of fur.

Unhappily, the piles were made up of remarkably consistent cylindrical shapes that resembled the less crumbly, more glistening, and smellier ones scattered nearby. Upon more thoughtful consideration, I realized that in these woods, large, comfortable oak tree holes are most likely inhabited by raccoons. I further speculated that no self-respecting owl would care to share a perch with a noisy and untidy bunch of masked hoodlums. Therefore, I would have to search for my owl pellets elsewhere.
By that time, I was starting to feel a bit dispirited and cold. I examined the ground beneath some trees with fewer holes and a more upright habit. But these efforts were perfunctory. Why, I thought, was it so hard to find evidence of owls? If only I had been conducting research on the eating, not to mention drinking, habits of humans, I could produce ample evidence. Fast food and candy wrappers, and heaps upon heaps of beverage cans and broken bottles may perhaps excite some future archaeologist.

Dearly Departed

Since Halloween this year falls midweek, many of us will celebrate it today. I am going to resurrect (pun intended) a nifty little post I ran on another blog last spring, because I think it is fitting. I really should have waited until All Saints Day, but I don't think it would get as much traction then. So, here we go:

What's this?

(For the record, this photo was taken through a hole in the fence located just east of the defunct train track at Bryn Mawr and Kostner. The Sauganash Woods residential development is visible in the background.)

It all started when Chris and Peter discovered a granite headstone on a disused train track that runs behind our house. Chris dutifully notified the authorities at the local cemetery, who took keen interest in the abandoned stone, and vowed to return it to its rightful owner, ehm... resting place.

For as long as we have lived in this neighborhood, there have been rumors that when the cemetery sold the land that would later become the Sauganash Woods development, graves were displaced to make room for the homes.

Seems that there is a little more substance to these rumors than I thought. While on a family walk earlier this year, we spotted something weird. Don't be shy. Follow me, as we go exploring. Enter here:

The picture becomes clearer and more puzzling at the same time.

I don't want to take down this tree...

We have a sickly elm in our back yard. It's huge. The other day, I was just sitting around in the back yard, enjoying the incredible weather, looking up. I spotted six individual woodpeckers in this one ailing tree. See if you can spot them too.