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Variety is the Spice of…Education!
Tag: nature journaling
Snowflake Bentley
One of my favorite books I read with my girls when they were younger was Snowflake Bentley, a true story about the history of snowflake photography. In the late 1800’s Wilson Bentley was a Vermont farmer-scientist whose love for snow crystals started very young. His parents donated their savings to support his dreams to photograph snow! His book Snow Crystals is the “source text” for the modern day scientists who are continuing his enormous efforts in understanding the structure of snowflakes.
I brought Snowflake Bentley in today so the Maple Key girls could learn some natural history and more about drawing snow crystals.
We worked on how to draw basic snowflakes. I showed them how to form the 6 branches of a crystal by drawing 3 lines and then adding any oiLs (look at the shapes in the letters of oiLs — circles, straight lines, dots, angled lines, curved lines) to make a snowflakes.
I told them they could make them as simple or complex as they wanted. I told them that if they thought they were JUST doodling that they ought to compare what they were doing to real photos of snowflakes.
The oiLs pop out at you and the snowflake becomes less intimidating to draw because you see the shapes!
I hope that the next time we get even the least little bit of snow they will grab a black tray and a microscope and head outside to look at the flakes just a little bit closer.
Bushhogging Your Writing
If you’ve never been exposed to the verb bushhoggin’ (which spellcheck says is not actually a verb), it’s a great one, useful as a metaphor for so many scenarios in life.
The word actually came from two words “brush” and “hog” because of the nature of the machine — a tractor attachment that whacks big or stubborn plants like small trees and bushes down by sheer force of a dull rotary blade. To be clear, it’s not a tiller which has sharp blades to disrupt the soil and dig it all up. It is said that a farmer noted the machine worked like a “hog eating brush” and the rest is history.
Jill, the farm manager, has had her neighbor come bushhog our garden area twice before and we got to see it in full action for the spring. She said it’s about time for a summer cleanse against all the pigweed that is growing way too fast. I tell her it’s hard to see the crops get demolished.
The backstory… When I got to the farm this week, I was so overwhelmed by how bad the weeds had gotten in just 3 weeks since we left school. With no one to really help me, I just did what I could, but it still seemed like it was just a jungle of mess — a cluttered room of grass, pigweed, clover, random flowers, fire ant hills. This was the exact opposite of what I experienced in the fall with virtually no weeds to contend with. Ultimately, it seemed that the only logical option was to knock it all down so the plants could decompose (i.e. self-compost) on the land to be ready to plant in August.
But truthfully, I didn’t want it to be bushhogged. I just wanted the monstrous weeds to go away so I could hold on to all the hours of work we put into the kale crops. There are still so many greens that are viable in including some basil near the potatoes and various lettuces scattered about. The okra also has sort of popped up in between the strawberries. I just want to keep bits and pieces of the garden going, but that’s not how a bushhogger works. It’s a HUGE attachment, so it’s more like an all or nothing proposition. If I want a better crop in fall, I have to let go of the work that has been done that is not as fresh or organized as it once was.
Part of this “letting go” work meant relocating the fruiting strawberry plants we cared for so meticulously during the year. I salvaged what ripe berries I could to eat and had to say goodbye to the rest of the small white ones. My daughter and I dug them up after we located each plant in the middle of all the weeds. We then snipped all the runners and replanted them safely in a raised bed Jill donated to us. It took about 2 exhausting hours from wedging the plants out of the garden to watering them generously in their bed at the end. Now, even if they can’t produce anymore fruit this season, they can safely grow next year for my students to eat and tend and perhaps for nature journaling for the students at Ingleside (who use the farm before we get there in the afternoon).
I was telling a close college friend about having to say goodbye to the garden and we started discussing how bushhogging can be like the writing process. You have to be willing to knock down the labor you have already put in if it no longer serves your purpose or it’s got too many weeds. You may have to move your words to a new bed. It’s painful to see the words and imagery get deleted, moved, rearranged, saved for another piece in the future. Bushhogging your words means you will have to do some hard aspects of writing and revising all again.
However, there is a silver lining for both the garden and writing: having the plants decompose doesn’t meant they just die. Rather, through the plants you’re actually enriching the soil for the next go round. As I mentioned in a previous post, the garden already has magic dirt so the plants, through decomposition, are giving back the nitrogen and all the other goodness the soil already provided the plant. When you understand that bushhogging is not a zero sum game, but rather part of the process of enrichment and discipline it’s less heartbreaking and more like a tool to help increase your ability to write better.
But…next year, I also plan to be more proactive in staying on top of the weeds with some new strategies and more help. Learn as you are going, I say!
Seasonal Learning
One of the books we read each year is called Turning of Days by Hannah Anderson. She has 7 short essays for each season. Her stories are very accessible because they are taken from everyday happenings on her property or in her community. In the very back of her book she has a “Field Guide” section where she discusses some skills to sharpen the reader’s connection to the outdoors. One thing she mentions is seasonal observation. When are things blooming? What’s going on when they bloom early or late or don’t bloom at all?
Our family regularly checks our front and backyard. We have a quarter acre lot, so while a limited area keeps the management of plants easy, it also means perennials can eat up that space. However, I love having plants that I can count on year after year*. My family and I can stroll by the beds and because we know where to look, we can know the plant names and watch the seasons unfold together year after year.
Here are some of the lovely things in bloom for April in my Tennessee neck of the woods.
*I know the sugar snap peas among these pictures aren’t perennials, but I will definitely keep planting them in this spot each year, so close enough!
Becoming Placed
If you haven’t had the chance to meet Jill, you should. She’s the property manager for her family’s farm (High Point Farms) where Maple Key is located. She is by far and away one of the most generous people I have ever met. Hers is the kind of generosity that is rooted in interdependence, a true and mutual joy in sharing life and resources together.
Jill has been the incubator for countless other people like me including Morgan at Creekside Flowers, who got her business started at High Point. As a side note: Before starting Maple Key, I worked for the tutorial that meets at the farm on M- Th and driving in each morning my girls and I would see Morgan working hard on maintaining the health of her plants. I know she learned a lot from Jill, who also raises flowers for weddings and for individual sale. Hearing Morgan’s story (delivered impeccably, I might add) was inspiring and reminded me a lot of getting Maple Key off the ground. You play, tinker, research, and experiment when you don’t know how to do something.
Such has been the case with our late fall garden this year.
Jill suggested that we start a garden this year and I told her I would need help. My vague cries for direction were met with her voluntarily having a portion of land tilled by the tractor and two big piles of manure from the animals on the farm waiting for us. She even called her neighbor, Joel, who lives a mile up the road from her to come get us started with the garden. I laughed when she said she told him we needed a lot of help because we didn’t know anything 🙂
He came out to the farm as promised and skeptical though he was, worked with us for 3 hours (barefoot!) with no breaks talking to us about soil health and the basics of working with minimal tools and dirt since we clearly didn’t have a plan. After we marked off our lines, we used the seeder to ensure a straight row of plants. We watered it heavily and Joel prayed over the land.
Doing all this work in mid October (instead of August like the internet suggested we should have), we had no idea if the 2 month drought and coming cold snap would ruin our crop, but lo and behold we kept coming back to a new surprise of growth each week.
We only used one-third of the area Jill gave us to grow plants because Joel told us not to bite off more than we could chew. He was right in that trying to weed and harvest that much would have taken more time than we have in our 4 and a half hours each week. We did add some strawberries donated by one of our families though.
The time finally came when we had our last day at the farm for December. We decided to harvest some radishes, kale, and stray turnips greens that ended up in the other rows. It was more than a complete success. We have more food than we know what to do with, so this year we’re using it in our homes and giving it away to friends. Perhaps in the future we can still enjoy it for ourselves and friends while also selling it to give the proceeds to charitable organizations the girls research or fundraise for a special project.
Either way, there is such profound gratitude in seeing the Lord’s provision and work of your hands.
When it comes to risk, I like to think of myself as being a cautious personality. However, the constructive criticism I hear from other people is that I tend to underestimate what yield could come from faithfulness. I can definitely be like the servant in Matthew 25 that buries his talent and convinces himself he’s being a good steward. My faith in many areas of life is lacking because I hedge my bets to avoid the pain of embarrassment or loss. Modest success is better than no success, right? Reading one of my favorite naturalist authors, Robin Wall Kimmerer, helps me to see a path forward in demonstrating responsibility to something other than just keeping my ego safe. She says in her book, Braiding Sweetgrass:
“Being naturalized to place means to live as if this is the land that feeds you, as if these are the streams from which you drink, that build your body and fill your spirit. To become naturalized is to know that your ancestors lie in this ground. Here you will give your gifts and meet your responsibilities. To become naturalized is to live as if your children’s future matters, to take care of the land as if our lives and the lives of all our relatives depend on it. Because they do.”
When I showed my husband the pictures each week, he kept saying, “That dirt must be magic!” Though I know he was kidding, the truth is the dirt has been cared for for decades. They don’t use pesticides. Their compost is fresh. They make sure the pH balances. It is also reasonable to assume that the land was cared for by the Cherokee, a vital part of the history of this land.
The garden has reminded me how much part of “becoming placed” as essayist Wendell Berry says, means growing to love an area through being fully present and acting in faith and commitment to its history of care.
Mycology Morning
When you homeschool and do sports, your field options are limited. My middle daughters are both running cross country this fall, so public spaces are our friends. We have been at three different locations for team practice and they have all been verdant, humid, and somewhat muddy because well, Chattanooga is like that sometimes. This year we had a very dry season followed by an incredibly rainy season and when the rains come down the mushrooms come up!
So while patrolling the trail the students run on, I snapped a lot of pictures of those mushrooms because I want to get to know them at least a little better. I have an app called iNaturalist that I upload them to in order to attempt to identify them (but it’s still hard!). Of course, I have no intentions of being a mycologist or forager, but I do want to always be an observer and discoverer.
In the book Atomic Habits, the author explains that if you want to become something you have to have the habits of someone who is that. For instance, if you say to yourself, “I am someone who observes things closely.” Guess what you have to start doing? Act like someone who observes things more closely. You might start noticing what color your co-workers are wearing. You might count how many stairs you have to climb to get to your bedroom. You might start looking for mushrooms on your nature walks when it’s soggy.
For me, my default can be inattentiveness. I have tons of exciting ideas visions swirling around in my head, so taking time to notice what’s been showing up in creation year after year is often a big effort on my part. However, as I have been developing this habit (and encouraging it in others) a whole new world of wonder has opened up to me. Something breathtaking finds me when I least expect it.
Learning even the tiniest bit about mushrooms in one local spot means I will also learn to call them by name around my house and that’s exciting news. I can start asking more questions about them. I can paint them. I can enjoy them with my kids. I can understand my region better. The possibilities are endless when you’re curious!
So next time you’re out at Enterprise South for a run, say hello to the runners, bikers, walkers, and fungi you meet! Trust me, with as many varieties as there are out there, it will keep you busy for a lifetime…
On that note, here’s a poem to encourage you on your way to more observing!
The Trees of the Field
In the Baptist church I grew up in, there weren’t too many songs we could make a ruckus with. An occasional holiday song like “Up From the Grave” on Easter or “Go Tell It on the Mountain” at Christmas raised our volume, but otherwise we sang solid hymns each week. Our minister of music was a man of robed choirs and tradition during the years when vapid praise songs were invading the churches in the early to mid 90’s. However, there was one song, based off of Isaiah 55, that I could always count on to get us moving — The Trees of the Fields by Bill and Gloria Gaither. We got to clap our hands because the lyrics implied that you were supposed to mimic the praise of the trees. Generally it was only pulled out on Sunday night church, further implying that it could never make the big time on Sunday morning. As a child, that always saddened me. That song’s odd status led me to believe that joyful, embodied worship in church was an anomaly.
When I sang that song as a child, I always pictured the trees like something out of a Disney cartoon. Lush and vibrant maples rustling their green leaves loudly together. I never thought about the trees being barren and cooperating with the wind like this:
As I walked through the winter woods in eastern North Carolina, I saw the naked trees clapping their hands and wondered if I was seeing Scripture. Could it be that these trees were worshiping the Lord with their creaks, squeaks, and groans, no leaves to muffle their noises’ ascent to heaven? Watching the black birches sway on the side of the mountain was nothing short of mesmerizing. Being a small person engulfed in the middle of a forest of dancing trees took me back to the song:
You shall go out with joy
And be led forth with peace
The mountains and the hills
Will break forth before you
There’ll be shouts of joy
And all the trees of the field
Will clap, will clap their hands
I believe there are shouts of joy even in winter, but it requires a different kind of listening and expectation. The acclamation is not showy, but rather raw with creaky echoes and no wilderness voices to add to the sound. As we await the New Jerusalem, our own creaks, squeaks, and groans are no less important than the smiling praises we might sing in a different season. Both are testifying that the Lord reigns.
In Praise of Reciprocal Memberships
One way I encourage families to keep a family culture of being outdoors is through a “hack” we learned about several years ago — reciprocal memberships. Where we are in Chattanooga, we have access to a place called Reflection Riding which is a member of the American Horticultural Society. This association allows its members access to any other affiliated gardens on their list for a discounted price or usually FREE. Financially speaking, it’s a no brainer to join. Here’s some math:
Visit Atlanta Botanical Gardens once = $126 for our family of 6
Family membership to Reflection Riding = $70 AND we can go to any of the 330+ gardens for discount or free.
If you have access to gardens that offers these benefits, take advantage of them for you and your family, especially in the winter season when you might be less encouraged to be outdoors. Sometimes you get a surprise like we did yesterday, having a beautiful day in the upper 50’s. In addition, some places have greenhouses year round. Seeing how they will decorate the poinsettia tree (see below) is one of the highlights of the winter break for us. Actually, it might be the largest reason we created the tradition of going every year right before Christmas!
Shades of Bronze
Last week my family and I drove up to see my in-laws in North Carolina for Thanksgiving. It’s a day where we usually think of bright pumpkins and yellow and green striped gourds with fall leaves in a cornucopia. However, I saw a different side of the season this year while taking a walk with my husband and two of our daughters down to a frozen pond.
I’m actually ashamed to say that I never noticed it before then; I had walked that property in the fall many times over the 15 years my husband and I have been married. This year the shades of bronze from all the spent plants on their 23 acres (and neighboring property) sang to me. The milkweed pods with their wispy white interior and curved shapes, the playful beige fluff of the goldenrod stalks, the crispy four-lobed pattern of tan hydrangea petals, the scraggly splash of lemon yellow from the witch hazel.
The next day we took pruners and a leftover cardboard box, snipping anything bronze, off-white, or muted yellow. After reaching the garage, I sat and made an arrangement of mostly dead things. As I worked, it struck me that what I was constructing was the opposite color palette of those bright fall images you see in Thanksgiving kid crafts and Hobby Lobby decorations. The items in the vase were devoid of the colors we are used to identifying them by, which would signify to many that the “abundance” has already passed or the usefulness of the plants were withered or diminished. But that’s not what my eyes saw as I strolled down the chunky gravel road.
I noticed two things:
1. Even if the color and shapes had changed some of these plants, it did not detract from their fundamental beauty. The textures, shades, and lines were simply stunning. It was almost like once their usual color was stripped away you could see aspects of their character that would have otherwise been concealed.
2. The arrangement wasn’t there to show creation’s abundance had left and was no more, but its beauty was actually a reminder that abundance is still here, albeit a different, but no less lovely form. It served as a reminder these plants will show up (and show off) abundantly again next year and for years to come.
One of the Nature Connection videos (from John Muir Laws) the Maple Key girls and I watched was on drawing and making collections based on a theme you notice as you spend time outdoors. I truly believe I noticed the shades of bronze last week because my eyes are getting sharper. Not literally, of course (I inch closer to the big 4-0 each year!), but rather through being diligent to listen to Laws’ lessons on what it means to live a reflective life outdoors. He gives his viewers better eyes to observe even when they don’t know they’re supposed to be looking.
What a gift to be able to notice God’s generosity through walking in His free wonders and delights.
Flower in the Crannied Wall
Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower—but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
Alfred Lord Tennyson
This poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson is what my 6 year old is working on for recitation this term in her tutorial. I had her read me the title and was about to proceed when I thought to ask, “Do you know what the word cranny means?” She didn’t “dictionary define” it but instead said something I didn’t expect, “Mom, is it like the snapdragons we found growing out of the wall in the front yard?”
YES.
I smiled and said, “That is the perfect picture for this poem!”
She read it through twice and asked what it meant, so we talked for another minute about the poem. However, the joy for both of us was not “the point of the poem is…” (like so many of us were taught to treat poetry) but the shared connection to it from our own front yard. As she gets older and revisits the poem for insight, that picture will be etched on her heart.
Being in nature, noticing the most seemingly insignificant things can lead to much inquiry. I asked my husband (who knows all the plant things) how that large cluster of plants could grow out of a crack. He said a seed must have somehow gotten in there and with all the rain we have had, decided to live.
Truly an everyday miracle from God.
Maple Key Tutoring 