Backyard

{this moment} - A Friday ritual began by Amanda at Soule Mama. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment you want to pause, savor and remember.

Have a lovely weekend ~ Kimara and Michelle

After several days (or was it weeks?) of miserable heat and humidity that was making everyone cranky, the weather broke and we are now free to enjoy being outdoors again. We've spent hours outside in the last few days making up for lost time. Although Pixie loves being outside, she can't go long without her art supplies. This often includes water colors at the picnic table, sidewalk chalk on the front porch and now since my grandma's move and we have piles of packing paper she has added to the mix soy egg crayons on the driveway. She has been very busy coloring on a large scale and we now have many, many, many colorful sheets of paper that will make wonderful wrapping paper for all of our upcoming fall birthdays.

This summer we have discovered a fun new hobby... Letterboxing or as my kids call it... Treasure Hunting.

What is Letterboxing? It is a fun hobby that combines hiking, clues/maps and stamp collecting. You follow the clue to find a box. Inside the box you will find a special stamp and a notebook in a waterproof container. You stamp your notebook with the found stamp and the Letterbox notebook with your signature stamp, then you re-hide the box. This is a great way to encourage kids to hike! The first time out my little ones did a 3 mile hike and wanted to keep going for the next box.

What do you need to get started... just a journal for collecting stamps, a signature stamp to leave your mark (homemade or store bought), an ink pad and pen, possibly a compass and a clue map. I also keep sunblock, bug spray and a water bottle in our pack.

To find lettingboxing hunts in your area log on to Atlas Quest. Choose a hunt that is active (been found recently) and has in fact been found before. Some letterboxes are not maintained well and it is very discouraging if you can't find the box, especially the first time out.

I have printed out a bunch of hunts in our area and we leave our letterboxing kit in the car. It has become a fun spur of the moment, afternoon activity for us. We have not created our own signature stamps... yet. We will sometime soon but I was anxious to get started so we grabbed what we already had and set off on an adventure.

Have any of you tried letterboxing yet? Our favorite find so far was found in a small, old cemetery. It was a very cool fairy stamp.

Today I spent an entirely exhausting but wonderfully fulfilling day in the gardens. Michelle's family came over to "Help Gammy". Seven year old Bug learned to prune a small crab apple tree. Five year old Fairy showed her might as she hauled bags of mulch. And three year old Pixie impressed us all as she shoveled pea gravel into the wheelbarrow with "Othy". (Othy... their name for Tim, as in Timothy... Tim Othy... Othy. Cute, right?) Anyway... At one point Fairy came over and asked, "What's that plant called?" Over the winter some of the plant markers got shifted or the growing spring plants covered our painted rocks that bear their names. Together we went through the garden we were working on to make sure all the name rocks were visible and by the correct plant. By each plant, Fairy used her budding reading skills to try to decipher the names. There were lovely names like Foam Flower, Coral Bells, and Porcupine Grass. For the rest of the day, each time she passed a plant, she'd look at the rock and proudly say the plant's name. It reminded of this blog I had written for One Generation to Another May 20, 2008. I hope you enjoy it!  

Tim: (Getting into the car after popping into Kroger to pick up some milk.) Peggy said there are tornado warnings.

Me: (More perplexed by the name Peggy then the impeding doom, I rack my brain trying to figure out who Peggy is. Coming up blank…) Who the heck is Peggy?

Tim: The cashier.

Me: How do you know her?

Tim: I just told you she was the check out clerk.

Me: Do you know her from somewhere else?

Tim: No.

Me: Then how do you know her name?

Tim: It was on her badge.

Me: Then why use her name like it means something to me?

Tim: Because it’s her name.

Me: You’re very odd.

This gives you some kind of understanding of the riveting conversions Tim and I have! Having said that…to me a name is personal…the use of one’s name implies intimacy. To Tim it simply conveys friendliness. Truth be told, people respond surprisingly well to him. I’m the kind of person whose dander flies with the first sign of confrontation. Tim becomes all smiles…and uses people’s names. Actually, this is a tried and true marketing strategy. Next time you get a telemarketing phone call notice how they utilize your name thus suggesting friendship and closeness. It’s much harder to turn down “Bob” when he keeps calling you “Kathy” than a nameless voice calling you ma’am or sir. (Unless, of course, your name isn’t Kathy!)

Anyway, names are powerful and the use of names does provide us with a sense of ownership, intimacy and responsibility. Right now I’m reading a very interesting book titled Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv. I’m only a quarter of the way into the book but being a true believer that the average American child does not spend nearly enough “exploratory” time outside, I found the phrase Nature-Deficit Disorder to be intriguing. The author shares a conversation with naturalist and educator Elaine Brooks. She believes that people are unlikely to value things they cannot name. “One of my students told me that every time she learns the name of a plant, she feels as if she is meeting someone new. Giving a name to something is a way of knowing it.”

If we want our children to become intimately involved with their environment, the best way to do that is to “properly” introduce them to nature. Start in your backyard. Instead of talking about “the birds” use their names. (If you don’t know them get yourself a backyard bird book like Backyard Birds (Peterson Field Guides for Young Naturalists) by Jonathan Latimer or Birds, Nests & Eggs (Take-Along Guides) by Mel Boring. Start a bird watching journal. What about the trees and plants in your yard? What insects populate your yard? Helping your children discover the diversity in their own yard and learning to identify many of them by name might be the single greatest thing you can do to help your child become ecologically responsible. Names lead to intimacy…intimacy leads to caring…caring leads to action.

The other day we were at The Metro Park. We are so lucky to have this 5,000 acre park just 4 miles from the house. We went to see the egrets nesting and after hiking down to the long expansion bridge on one of the lakes, we pulled out our binoculars and watched the beautiful birds. I was with my daughter and her children. Along with the egrets we saw blue herons, a nesting swan, a northern water snake, a family of snapping turtles sunning on a log, and scores of red winged blackbirds. I enjoyed listening to my 5 year old grandson talk about his surroundings. He kept asking for the name of everything he saw. He already knows most of the local birds by name but his thirst for information is infinite. While listening to him it was apparent that he felt a sense of intimacy with the creatures and plants around him…you might say he’s becoming one with nature. To him nature is not something foreign “out there”. It is something personal, that he is involved with, and knows by name!

Over the years we have often gone one step further and have actually give proper names to things. My daughter named the weeping cherry she gave me one Mother’s Day, Julie. The boys named the matching dogwoods Barkley and Bob. My daughter's children name their squirrels. Now, I’m willing to bet the farm that they aren’t always identifying the same squirrel…but it doesn’t matter! What matters is they feel a connection to the animals in their backyard!

We take the time to get to know the names of a people we deal with regularly. We learn the name of streets we frequent. We remember the names of delicious dishes at favorite restaurants, and we can list by name the television shows we watch every week. Learning names makes is easier to talk about things accurately. It also suggests a level of involvement. So, the next time you’re in the great outdoors with your children, take the time to meet some new friends…friends you can call by name!

It's summer. Ever since I was a child summer equalled excessive reading! My tastes in reading ran the gamut of literary genres, BUT the one commonality amongst all my summer books I read was my ability to chose them for myself. These were not books selected by my teachers, although I often read books that would have pleased them, nor did they need to be books off anyone's reading list. The freedom was exhilarating! As an adult I can now chose any book I want to read at anytime, HOWEVER, there is something so sweet and self indulgent about a summer read. We take books to the beach, on vacation, and out to the hammock under the trees. I have many nooks and crannies where I can be found reading on a summer's afternoon. As a parent I enjoyed sharing summer reading with my children, and now, as a Gammy, with my grandbabies.

The picture above is a special area in our green belt at the back of our property. We refer to this area as our Serenity Garden, for obvious reasons. Although the bench is cement and does not have back support, it is still a wonderful spot to read for a while, especially if reading short stories or poetry.

And although summer reading is indulgent and fun, having a special bookmark accompany you on your literary journey just makes it that much more enjoyable! Today I'm sharing a pattern for a sweet little mouse bookmark, donning a very long and useful tail. This bookmark could easily be made by even young children if you glued it together instead of sewing it together and you could use paper instead of felt. Directions and patterns for the Mouse Bookmark can be found HERE or in our FREE Pattern Section. Enjoy!

BTW... Do you have a favorite animal you would like a bookmark pattern for? If so, leave a comment and we'll pick at least one other animal to turn into a bookmark!