Nature Study is Easy in the Spring

Les tulipes Angelique sont tres jolie!

Dear Reader,

Good morning to you! Thank you so much for your friendship and kind comments. We feel so blessed to have discovered so many wonderful friends around the world; you have enriched our lives.

We had to share with you our beautiful Angelique tulips, which thankfully have short stems and can withstand our windy weather. We wish we had planted more and more and more, and could spend all day in a cloud of pink!

The girls have been busy lately, besides playing with Paper People (Their own invention),
having art contests for imaginary children from around the U.S.,

and creating a Twig Folks Town in the backyard (Complete with spruce cone "horses"),

Brother and Sister Twig

Twig horses

the local birds have provided lots of science projects, by building nests in locations which are easily reached!

We have had to rescue one starling fledgling from the cats (We used to despise starlings, being the stinkers that they are, till we learned how many bugs they eat.), and captured a few squabs just for fun. Instead of having to build and put up birdhouses here, we ARE a birdhouse! At last count, there were two pigeon nests in the carport/garage area, and two or three starling nests built right into the outside walls. Now all we have to do is grab our "Handbook of Nature Study", and we have built-in science lessons enough for a long while.

Molly Pigeon?

We have been able to go to our local pond by the river, and caught another frog, but didn't get pictures. We also brought home a tadpole shrimp, which was not in our field guide or on the internet (But was in the good ole' "Handbook of Nature Study" by Anna B. Comstock). We wish we could somehow scan a picture into a search engine and ask the computer to find out what something is! There are some things that the internet cannot do.

Here is a picture we found on the internet~our little guy died the day after we brought him home.

We hope you are having lots of fun exploring this beautiful world, and all that it has for us to discover, wherever we are.

Love,

Marqueta

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"Nature study cultivate the child's imagination, since there are so many wonderful and true stories that he may read with his own eyes, which affect his imagination as much as does fairy lore; at the same time nature-study cultivates in him a perception and a regard for what is true, and the power to express it. All things seem possible in nature; yet this seeming is always guarded by the eager quest of what is true. Perhaps half the falsehood in the world is due to lack of power to detect the truth and to express it. Nature-study aids both in discernment and in expression of things as they are."

~Anna Botsford Comstock, "Handbook of Nature Study"