With the start of the new school year, our wonderful nature walk group has started again and in full gear! We have so many new members. It's so fun to enjoy nature with a group. We have missed our walks.
There are some great benefits to observing nature with a group. Our group involves all ages. We get to see things that we might not have observed before because there are more of us to find the treasures that God has placed for us. Short and tall, we get to see it all. :-) At Eisenhower Park, there are many dog walkers that don't clean up some of the messes their dogs have made. The Lord so thoughtfully created many different clean-up crews. This is one of them.
All of the kids enjoyed doggie doo when they saw what these guys were doing with it. Dung Beetles clean up all that mess and they can have the path spic and span by the end of the day... ready for the next days messes. Another great benefit to walking with a group is not being alone! We love walking so much that we go on nature walks along. Sometimes I feel that it's not the safest thing to do. We try to go to places that are open and populated. If you are on a nature walk alone with your kids, you should be sure to be prepared.
- Keep your cell phone with you and make sure you have a connection.
- Teach your kids how to call 911 on it in case something happens.
- Bring first aid supplies with you, including Benedryl for allergic reactions.
- Always, always bring water.
- Always let someone know where you are going.
- Don't wander too far off path so you don't get lost.
- If you get nervous, your keys make a good weapon. My dad taught me to hold my keys in the palm of my hand and allow a key to stick out between fingers. This is good in a parking lot.
- For more intense hikes, check out this site for preparation: http://www.redcross.org/SERVICES/HSS/TIPS/HIKING.HTML
Okay, now that you're safe, let's continue on our walk. :-) We found these neat fruits on a vine. They're probably not good for us to eat. Many bright-colored fruits/ berries are poisonous for us, so be sure you know what you're doing before tasting something. If you try something and it's sweet, it's likely okay. Bitter fruit is often bad.
These yellow flowers were in bloom in the park. We found that they are called Lindheimer's Senna. If you want to identify some of your flowers, here's a great site to bookmark: http://www.texaswildflowerpictures.com/wf_index.htm. Something special we noticed about them is that their leaves are very soft and velvety. If you find one, feel the leaves. For those of you that have been on the trail here recently, you might be interested in looking up Dayflower on that site.
On one of the paths, there was a pile of chopped cedar. I found this cedar cut very interesting. You can see some of the age lines, but we were interested in the hollowing center. If you haven't studied trees, have you ever wondered how trees stay alive when they're completely hollow? Well, the center of the tree is called the heartwood. This wood is actually dead. The living, growing part of the tree is the outer layer called the xylem which is the part that sucks water up from the roots to the leaves. As layers of the tree build up the inside layers die. We learned about this when we studied Exploring Creation with Botany four years ago. You can review this book at http://www.apologia.com/ under Elementary Science.
AND, here's what we decided was our best find of the day! This is a Metallic Green Bee. That's really it's name. I expected something a little more creative, but there you go. We thought these were flies buzzing around the tree we found them on, but upon close inspection, we spotted the yellow pollen pouches on his legs! Wow! What a beautiful bee!
0 comments: