Bird and Little Bird

Farm Trips and Nature Boxes.

Yesterday afternoon, in the hours between toddler nap and dinner prep, we made a trip out to Drumlin Farm. A combination of working farm, animal rehabilitation center, and nature sanctuary, Drumlin Farm is just the kind of mixed bag of an outing that my people tend to enjoy. We picked carrots and flowers, ogled a very attractive fox, and Z. yelled joyfully at the resident bunny for about fifteen minutes without taking a break. There were sheep and pumpkins and weird bugs and the gift shop has a good price on my favorite series of field guides. An all around good time was had.

In other news, we are organizing a super fun family nature box exchange over at Mud Puddles to Meteors. If you would like to swap some of your local nature finds with another family, hop on over and check it out.

The Boston Nature Center.

Last weekend, we were lured to South Boston by the promise of close proximity to birds of prey. I am, after all, the sort of girl who braves traffic and distance for things like sea urchins and feathered predators. But we were predictably slow in actually getting out to the Boston Nature Center, in part because the previous week's schedule of work, school, and sick had left us a little lacking in oomph. By the time that we actually got there, it looked as if the visiting birds had been put back into their travel compartments for the return journey to the sanctuary where they actually reside.

Not easily deterred, the big kid and I hung around the bird table for a few minutes, asking general and seemingly casual questions of the guy working there. Eventually, I innocently inquired as to what might possibly be inside the boxes behind the table, and we were, in short order, rewarded for our curiousity with very, very close-up views of a couple of good looking owls. The screech owl, for her part, seemed to have a bit of an attitude problem. But what are you going to do?

After our owl viewing, we tromped around the woods a bit, and then headed home via a Chinese grocery store near downtown where we picked up fresh rice noodles and a hunk of taro root the size of my head.

Not a bad Saturday at all by my flexible and somewhat unusual standards.

Boston's Finest.

A couple of weekends back, we went with visiting family to wander around the Boston Public Garden. I had been there once before, when we were here for Dan's interview last winter. But that trip was primarily accidental, the result of having not followed a map to the science museum closely enough, and we didn't stay long. It was a windy day in January, and outside wasn't really the place to be.

This time around, we decided to really go all out and have the entire Make Way for Ducklings experience. Swan boat rides and all that. It was pretty fantastic, actually. The toddler doesn't know the book well yet, but the big kid does. She has been an avowed McCloskey fan from the beginning and was absolutely stunned by her good luck that day. Swan boats, friendly ducks; all of it. She kept saying "I can't believe we are finally and actually doing this!"

This friend, however, was not impressed.

For more great duck photos and a printable activity sheet for duck identification, check out this post from the Mud Puddles blog last week.

Say Hello to Mud Puddles to Meteors.

We had one of those days around here today. Two kids just enough under the weather to be especially grumpy and unconvinced that there are, indeed, nicer ways to be. That sort of thing. But, it was still a good day in many ways, because a fun and interesting and very cool thing finally happened. After a lot of behind the scenes toiling away on things like photo editing and writing html, Dawn and I have officially launched our collaborative nature blog.

I first met Dawn a number of years back when the two of us were both regular contributors to a family oriented nature blog that has since fallen off the internet. The other folks involved had various big life changes come along, and in the end, Dawn and I couldn't keep it going on our own. But we stayed in touch, and it wasn't too long before we started working on little projects together here and there. Fast forward a bit, and we now find ourselves working on a few pretty huge projects together. And texting one another approximately one thousand times a day about everything from dinner planning to frog catching. And today, one of our top secret projects is finally ready to share with all of you.

Mud Puddles to Meteors is a landing place for families who aim to raise nature literate kids who regard the world around them, and its many wild inhabitants, with a sense of wonder and respect. A place where a community can grow and thrive around the concept that the space between the natural world and ourselves is much narrower and less real than we make it out to be. That really, there is only one world, and it is the one that we are raising our children in, alongside the other creatures that also call it home. And, the new blog will also be a cozy spot for me to let loose with some of the more nature and science types of activities and ideas that rattle around in my head. I can nerd rant over there, and do more of the waxing philosophical about baby pajamas over here.

So, I hope that those of you who are engaged in the raising of nature loving and adventure minded kiddos will visit the new space and join in the fun. We would love to see the blog foster a vibrant community of families and educators, sharing what the nature in their little piece of the world looks like and the ways that they are interacting with it as a part of every day life. Good, good stuff.

And, We're Back.

 

 

 

Well, I suppose we didn't actually go much of anywhere. I mean, not so much that it then seems necessary to use a such dramatic title for this post. There were day trips, yes. And there were more forays out onto local beaches for purposes of making sand castles and searching for particularly nice little sea shells. But mostly we have been here, having our summer behind the scenes.

But come tomorrow morning, summer officially comes to a close. In the vacation sense of the word anyway. The big kid begins her new school year. She's got a reasonably new pair of pink kicks with matching laces and, thanks to a weekend shopping trip with grandma, some new socks to match. We are ready. Ready, I might add, to begin the fourth grade year. Yep. Fourth grade. I would wax philosophical about that one a bit if I were even the least bit capable of coming up with words to explain how I feel about my tiny little girl waking up one morning as a fourth grader. But, no such words are available just right now.

And while his big sister is off all day doing what fourth graders do, baby Z. and I will settle into a new routine of our own. It has been months since we had days without Mariam around the house, and I expect that at first he will miss her a not inconsiderable amount. But he will probably nap a bit better as well, and that will mean that I can resume my regularly scheduled posting here. Which is to say, my posting that follows no schedule or organized theme whatsoever, but is at least somewhat more frequent than these summer months of slack have led you to expect.

In other words, I'll be seeing you again soon. And then I'll be seeing you a little more often too.

 

In the meantime, I totally forgot to mention here that I have been running an Alphabet Glue back to school sale for the last week or two. Um, sorry? But since this is the first you have likely heard of it, I'll extend it a bit. Enter "school" at checkout between now and September 9th for 20% off all issues.

One Weekend in Maine.

We arrived home last night from a relatively unplanned weekend away on the coast of Maine. Visiting Vermont friends arrived Friday evening and suggested that we head up to their family's place near York the next day. So Saturday morning we packed up the beach bag, along with such practical considerations as tortilla chips, diapers, and everyone's toothbrushes, and headed north.

We stayed in a house perched above a salt water river, and spent the weekend procuring boxes of steamed lobsters and soaking up the last of summer's sunshine on the beach.

I have thoughts of attempting a return to the more regularly scheduled program here soon. Library Mondays, posting more than a couple of times a week. That sort of thing. But in the meantime, there are seafood suppers on the patio and sunny days spent not wearing shoes, and it seems wise to make the most of those before the coming of school routines and fall temperatures.

Visiting Home.

We are back home again after a trip up north to see some dear friends get married. The wedding was held in a little Vermont village, and my girl had her first chance to try her hand at flower girl responsibilities, along with her best friend, whose dad was the groom. Annie 2.0 flew out for the festivities as well, and spent the last week with us. She caught a flight out early this morning, and waking up to find her suitcase gone from the playroom rug was a bit sad for all.

 

It was a funny thing, going back to Vermont. I don't think I realized just how homesick I was for the good old Green Mountain State until I crossed the border back into it. As much as I love the adventerous spirit with which we are tackling urban living here in Massachusetts, the rolling green hills of sparsely populated Vermont speak to my soul in a way that few places ever have. I probably cried (just a little!) about four times the first day we were back there. And had to keep reminding myself how much I like living near the ocean. Ocean, ocean, ocean: my new mantra.

 

I thought a whole lot about home during those days in Vermont, and what it means to make a home somewhere. I decided that there is a reason that we often talk about home being wherever the people we love are at. It is somewhat about the comfort of family, and the power of community and friendship- sure. But, I think it is also a bit about the difficulty of attaching your feeling of home to a particular geographic location. At least for me. My life at the moment is one where the house number associated with home will change here and there for awhile longer. We aren't yet settled in the physical place where we feel we belong, or where we can imagine that we will stay. And it will be a few more years before the option of rooting ourselves more permanently even exists. I guess that this means that at least for now, the members of our little family will have to be home for each other.

That, and we are going to need a lot of trips to the beach to fill the Vermont-sized hole in my homesick heart. Ocean, ocean, ocean...

Old Friends, New Places.

At the end of last week, I gathered up the small folk and we headed up to a nearby wildlife preservation for a short hike. The plan was to meet up with a former student of mine and his parents, in town for a visit to family on their way home from a longer trip to the coast north of here. It ended up being a really nice visit. It had been years since we had seen our friends, and actually, that former student is now sixteen. I taught him in first and second grade. Yikes.

 

The little turtle pond at the refuge was ridiculously full of all kinds of animals. Turtles poking their heads out of the water every few feet, dragonflies zooming past, tadpoles the size of my hand. Mariam was mesmerized by this. And possibly a little overwhelmed. There was a lot of stuff in there! But it was very cool to see the buzzing and bustling diversity of life in the little pond, especially because it is so close to such a densely packed urban area. They put up traffic signs along the side of the road here that say "thickly settled." Which I guess is supposed to translate to: "There are a lot of people all over this place. Be careful, eh?" Somehow, I find this kind of funny.

As we were leaving, we came across this cicada. I occasionally find the empty molts of these guys in the yard here, but this is the first time that I have seen one all put together properly.

 

So, I don't know. Is this the part where we talk a little bit about how many people keep things like china in their dining room cabinets, but I am amassing a small collection of empty bird's nests, eggshells, and dead insects instead? No? Okay, nevermind then.

Carry on.

Maybe One More?

Can we still be friends if I do one more post about the beach? I promise to talk about something else really soon. Something that you really like. Like knitting or cookies or books. Like, really promise. But having never been one to write posts simply for the sake of writing something, this blog does tend to reflect what we are actually doing with our days during any given period of time. And what we are doing right now is beach.

 

Over the weekend, we took the suggestion that some of you gave in the comments on last week's beach post, and headed to the New Hampshire coast. Some friends from Vermont were going to be in the area, giving us a good excuse to make a little more of a trek than we normally might. Of course, we hit ridiculous mystery traffic going up, but it was okay. I feel like it is fine for it to take a long time to get where you are going, as long as you can get home quickly enough when it is time. Because that is when your children are tired and no longer have a sense of adventure.

 

By the time we arrived, it was nearly high tide, so a lot of the beach was hidden by the sea. This meant that our tide pooling aspirations were squashed a bit, but we did still find various little shells and a good number of crabs and their associated parts. So, still a success in my humble opinion.

I am not, it turns out, difficult to please.

On Walden Pond.

As it turns out, if you go to Walden Pond, and then write about it, you are pretty much obligated to use the above title for said writing. True story. Which is to say that we drove out to Walden Pond yesterday morning, something that we have been meaning to do since just after our arrival here in Massachusetts. And, I must say, Thoreau had a good thing going. Walden Pond is truly beautiful, and may be the among the best places we have visited here so far.

We initially thought that we might walk around the pond, but the weather was that sticky kind of hot that makes walking seem unpleasant, so hiking plans were quickly abandoned in favor of pond-side relaxing and swimming. The kids thought it was both bizarre and wonderful to swim in water that was clear enough that you could see the little fish swimming along with you. We saw this makeshift turtle habitat on the shore of the pond, and briefly discussed its veracity with another beach-goer who was walking by. We came to the conclusion that we weren't sure if the sign was telling the truth or not, but that we liked the idea that it was, so would go with that.

We also found handful of empty insect galls in the wooded area surrounding the beach. I'm not sure who came out of these, but they were perfect, papery little spheres. They seemed delicate at first, but upon further inspection, they were sturdier than they looked. I would have poked around in the woods a bit more, but the baby kept running off down the shore and required chasing, particularly because his swim trunks are a little bit too big for him, causing a good deal of tripping when he gets going too fast.

Which is essentially one big metaphor for life at the moment. Oh, toddlerhood!