Leaves and Letterboxing

 We headed out for a letterboxing adventure at a park in the middle of town this week.  Everyone was tired, showing the early signs of the colds the girls woke up with this morning, and enthusiasm was flagging.  Until we got there and saw how beautiful the woods were.  The path we took, following the letterboxing directions, was going to lead us past this pink haze that decorated the forest.

 I let the girls read and decipher the instructions...

 At the base of a two-stemmed tree, they began to search through the leaves.

We studied this hole for a very long time, sticking sticks and then arms in, but we found no box.  Wouldn't that be the perfect spot for hiding a spot? We circled and circled the tree, but found nothing.

 We all felt a little disappointed, but found a spot to clamber about and eat some snack (snack usually helps).  I'd also brought along The Tree Book for Kids and Their Grown-ups, so we sat among the leaves and talked about leaves.  Lovely.  I've been inspired by this post (it is not loading properly right now;  I will amend this later, but in the meantime, the blog is Small Things, and there is a button in their sidebar for their Tree Study) about their year-long tree study, and knowing that the girls are ready for more in-depth information about plants and trees, beyond identification, I've been thinking of ways to weave it into our days.

 They were eager to search for examples of simple and compound leaves - the ones remaining anyway! - and to notice whether they were growing in an opposite or alternate pattern on the branches.  We continued our walk, knowing that there was another letterbox yet to come...and this one was also disappointing! This time it was because it was so not hidden at all, but sat in its very own box out for everyone to see...and the log had long since run out of room for our scribblings and stampings.  Ah well, it just further convinced us that we need to start planning for our own planting of a letterbox.

 We at last reached the cloud of pink...this is a new tree to us (euonymus atropurpureus) - I think it is sometimes called Burning Bush, but we've learned it as Wahoo, which is also what we say when we see it now - WaHOO!!  It is gorgeous right now.

Its stems are really unusual, with lines or wings of a cork-like tissue along them.  

 

We pressed a few of the leaves we collected, and today we made leaf drawings, like those I saw here.

Doings

 Our week started with a lot of hula hooping; we made our own with friends at the park after choir Monday, and every morning since they've asked to go across the street to where the sun is to hula. It so happens that we live across from an elementary school, and I think it's kind of funny to watch them holler and hula down the hill from the kids in the little playground. We are so conspicuous where we live, that I have given up feeling self-conscious about what my kids are doing while hundreds of other kids are across the street spending their entire day inside. (for the record: I timed the recess the other day.  7 minutes.  I am hoping it was a "bonus" for good behavior, and not their regularly scheduled outside time.)

 Eliza's getting pretty good hooping around her neck, though it looks so uncomfortable to me!  She also spent time sitting on the hill drawing our house.  I wish we had purple windows and orange shades!

 We had a wacky day on Wednesday - Dan was home from school with a horrible cough and a thrown-out back, the girls and I had forty errands to run and another child to watch and then gymnastics and, and, and - but somehow we managed to turn an errand to the farm into a letterboxing excursion...that's the way to do it!

 the Wire Buffalo (which we've always called an armadillo)

 As I said, we were at the farm, and the statue that inspired the handmade stamp for this letterboxing site sits in the middle of the pasture.  Since we were there and since I hadn't seen them in so long, the girls tiptoed me across an empty cow pasture (warning me of the cow pies. Cow pies are HUGE, in case you didn't remember. HUGE.) to greet the pigs.

 Come on, now, making time for pigs makes a wonky day so much better...

sparkly autumn day

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One day last week we went letterboxing, which we've been wanting to do for a very long time.  There is so much that appeals to me about this activity, wherein a seeker follows a set of directions that lead to a hidden box containing a rubber stamp and a log, with which to exchange a stamp "signature" with your own log and stamp, returning it all to its hidden spot without being seen.  There is the hidden treasure aspect, which was SO THRILLING especially as this particular spot was located on a very busy part of the bike path.  There is the beauty of the individual stamps; the one we found was store-bought, but the one we used (which I haven't taken a photo of) was one I made last year from an eraser, and I know many of them are hand-made.  There is the "secret club" feel to the whole endeavor, and of course as soon as Eliza returned the box to its spot, covered in sticks and leaves, with Ani on the look-out for passersby, we all breathed a sigh of relief that we hadn't been spotted and then..."Let's do another one!"  I think we might have to find another this week...

The day was particularly lovely, and we continued down the path to our garden plot.  Along the way we talked about a book we've been reading, called Red Sings from Treetops, which is a lyrical journey through the year in colors.  I asked the girls to each choose a color they were drawn to on our walk and then write a few thoughts beginning with that color.   

Orange sniffs at white
Orange chases white
Orange leaps on white -----  Ani's thoughts about a fox-like dog we saw and some good imagining...I told her it reminded me of the orange sycamore leaves on the white white branches.

Brown. Shuffle of brown beaded moccasins
The wind rustles the brown wheat
Brown crunch of leaves under my feet
Brown tickle of wooly bear in my heand
Brown in my hair as it blows in the wind----Eliza

When we arrived at the garden, we set up at the picnic table and they worked on illustrations for their words while I checked in on the garden.  I can't believe how much hum and color there still is - the nasturtium are in their absolute glory, the bees are still working hard, the grasshoppers are making hay while the sun still shines, or something along those lines, and we're still getting cherry tomatoes by the handsful! Beautiful.