You never know what you’ll see when you go to a botanical garden. I take that back; you can be fairly certain you’ll see some plants, but other than that you won’t know what might be around the corner, especially if you visit during the time of a special exhibit. My family often makes a …
Tag Archives: outdoors
It’s a Milkweed Pod!
The plight of bees and monarchs are a cause for concern, and you might wonder what you can do to help them rebuild their populations. Allowing a few common milkweed plants, which can be found in at least 39 states and seven regions of Canada, to grow near your home is a fantastic way to …
Algae Art
A few summers ago I met an artist in Maine who makes beautiful framed artwork from algae. Using algae as a medium was news to me, so she explained where she finds her different types of algae and the best times of day to collect it. Algae come in various shades of greens, red and …
Make Your Own Bark Rubbing
Here’s an easy project to use an excuse to get outside in spring, summer or fall. As an added bonus, you probably already have all the materials on hand. What You Need: Paper Roll Rubbing Crayon (with the paper wrapper peeled off) Pencil, Markers, Stickers or Crayons Instructions: 1. Gather a sheet of paper …
It’s a Green Stink Bug!
The stink bugs I usually see are brown, but this one I snapped a photo of last summer is a green stink bug. You should be able to find this stink bug throughout North America as you are on your nature scavenger hunt. One summer during college I assisted in an aquatics laboratory. Any time …
It’s a Tulip Tree!
I first learned about tulip trees when I attended college at University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana. In my plant identification class we learned the nitty-gritty details of classifying trees by their bark texture, leaf shape, arrangement of branches, flowers and so on. There were two trees in particular we learned about that stuck with me. One …
The Purplicious Garden
My adventure in gardening this summer was all about one thing: the color purple. I ordered most of my plants through a seed catalog, so I’d have a greater selection, and then it was go time. There were some mishaps, such as the day I set my itty-bitty ‘Black Cherry’ tomato seedlings outside on my …
It’s Chicory!
A few years ago I said to my husband, “Ugh, I really gotta dig out that chicory from the grass next to the road.” To which he responded, “What’s chicory?” Well, I couldn’t believe he’d never heard of chicory, “You know, that purple flowering plant that’s next to each mile of highway you’ve ever driven …