I have always enjoyed nature. As a child I couldn't wait to be at the beach, go camping, to the park, or just hang out in Granny's yard. Her landscaping (as well as my parents'... thanks to Dad) was amazing. I'm fortunate enough to have a husband and boys who love nature as well.
There are some familiar trees here and some not so familiar trees. The boys are working on a report of the tree of their choice. Once again we headed to Ulmstead Park. It was nice to have a wonderful ranger spend time showing us trees and a bit about them.
Jordan is sticking with our new (to us) state tree, the Flowering Dogwood. It is also Virginia's state tree and British Columbia's provincial tree. It'll be beautiful to see them in bloom come spring.
Joseph was really wanting to write about the Loblolly Pine and was thrilled to discover those are the pines in our apartment complex and most of the pines in the area. Nothing like a tree to make one's day! It's amazing how tall they are. Joseph did find one more his height. :)
A break from trees to show y'all the lizard we came upon. My first lizard in NC! Growing up in Florida, I loved watching lizards and trying to catch them. During trips down, my Young Men (still my Little Men), now like to do the same. We were all singin' and dancin' to meet this little fellow. The poor lizard thought we were crazy!
John chose a new favorite of mine. We had been finding these very intersting 'cones' outside our patio. Mom came up with the clever idea of using them for decorations, a wreath? There they were at Ulmstead's! Come to find out it's Sweetgum from the Witch Hazel family. The 'cones' are its fruit... a multicapsular spherical head filled with seeds.
I've include the pic of the shrooms amongst the trees, for I am a shroom person. I'm obsessed with the numerous different fungi. So beautiful and unique. So savoury or deadly. There were many around our Northern home I often wondered about cooking. Tim said his mother used to cook them up ~ yum!
~Jenny~
<3 How do I ever make a heart for my blog when using the laptop? Hmmm.... help?
I brought one of those picky thingies home from your place, remember? They are too cool..using them for decorating is a great idea!
ReplyDeleteCopy a finished heart from facebook and save it in a notepad file then copy and paste the heart into your blog as you need to. It works...since my netbook doesnt have a keypad, I couldnt do the heart so I copy & pasted...until I learned the other way to do it from the regular keyboard. Copy and paste should work for you though. :)
That's right! They're soooooo cool! I'll try to copy/paste, Val. It's strange it doesn't accept <3.
ReplyDelete