How to plant a Three Sister's Garden
We first heard about a three sister's garden at the Forest Hill Nature Center, near our home. With our emphasis on gardening I thought we should try to plant one this year. We saved our pumpkin seeds to plant.The beans came from our bag of soup mix beans.

Basic Directions: 1.In late May or early June, hoe up the ground and heap the earth into piles about a foot high and about 24 inches across. The centers of your mounds should be about four feet apart and should have flattened tops.
2. First, in the center of each mound, plant five or six corn kernels in a small circle.
3. After a week or two, when the corn has grown to be five inches or so, plant seven or eight pole beans in a circle about six inches away from the corn kernels. 4. A week later, at the edge of the mound about a foot away from the beans, plant seven or eight squash or pumpkin seeds.(We are doing half and half so at least the kids will have zucchini to harvest)
5. When the plants begin to grow, you will need to weed out all but a few of the sturdiest of the corn plants from each mound. Also keep the sturdiest of the bean and squash plants and weed out the weaker ones.
6. As the corn and beans grow up, you want to make sure that the beans are supported by cornstalks, wrapping around the corn. The squash will crawl out between the mounds, around the corn and beans.

St Patricks Day

We went exploring by boat this time. We took the boat up the pine river behind our house. We found several Mallard ducks, Canadian Geese, A pair of Swans, seagulls, a Muskrat, painter turtles, snapping turtles, squirrel nests, muskrat lodges. It was 77 degrees and beautiful weather to go exploring by boat! Who would think we would be boating instead of walking on the ice in March in Michigan. It was a great day to go explore nature.

progress

Tippy-toe read three more BOB books today. Then while little-man took his nap, Tippy-toe, Pitty-pat and I did the "Smithsonian rock and gem dig" activity I paid $9.99 for at Meijer. DO NOT BUY IT! It is a rip-off! The 11 rock and gems are not even the size of my pinky fingernail! The tiny magnifying glass that comes with it can't even pick them up. I was really disappointed. The stones were way too small to identify and nothing I would add to our collection! Don't waste your time or money on them. The only good thing is they did sweep the floor for me afterwards because of the sandy mess.The poster inside wasn't even anything we could use either. I must say Tippy-toe did enjoy digging them out.

Leaf collection

Last fall we started a leaf collection and added on to it this spring--- so where did it go now that Cam needs to make one for Pathfinder Scouts? Of course we have 60 mile per hour wind gusts all this week so all our Michigan leaves are in Lake Huron by now. But a couple of my coworkers were kind enough to bring her leaves from their yard. So we  have all 35 she needed to identify. She  has started a new scrapbook to keep them in. I hope we don't loose this one. I do love these projects and think the kids learn alot. Now she just needs to to find 35 seeds. We did find this cool osage orange ball at the golf course near our house. I stopped the car and thought it was a black walnut for her to pick up but that thing was huge. Still loooking for that black walnut and leaves from a black walnut tree. Maybe a walk around this halloween eve will find a few leaves left on the trees or seeds.

michigan map

Today I am cutting out a map of michigan and will be glueing it on posterboard then adding pictures for each place we go see this summer. Of course a few places we've already been will be added now.

Yesterday we picked flowers and pressed them in a phonebook for a later project. I think we will put them betweeen glass to make coasters for homemade christmas presents later this year. My friend Gayla at work makes beautiful coasters and I plan to copy her idea. I bought two for patterns friday. If I start now we may have them done in time for christmas. Good thing nobody reads this anyway.

My raised bed garden will never be ready in time. I still need a load of black dirt. I have been composting and puttting all my old leaves in the bottom but still need to go get soil. so far noneof our growing projects have worked out the pineapple got roots then died and the avacado never sprouted. I hope this works--for a few tomato plants, carrots,beans and peas. Everuyyone should know where food comes from and how much work it is to grow food.

This blurry picture is the little garder snake Aaron found during our nature walk and we brought home to study. Don't worry we will relese him back where we found him (Soon since he is trying to escape already). We have fed him worms and crickets but he only eats the worms. It was so good for the kids to see the the little guy eat and live here with us for a time.

tree fungus

We found this cool tree fungus while out on one of our walks at Aaron's favorite woods. I couldn't resist taking a picture of it to put in our nature journal.

Nature walks

The best way to study nature is to just explore the outdoors. we go out to Aaron's mom's woods and just walk as often as we can.  the kids love it out there and it is just so good for them. Little-man just loves going for walks.I love to get out of town and let them explore.



Falling Leaves

We took another nature walk on the Rail Trail near our home. Collected more leaves for our book. Studied the parts of the leaf and chlorophyll. Made leaf rubs and compared sizes of leaves. The hickory tree in our back yard was the biggestleaves. Words this week: yellow and four.