A week ago Mike surprised me. He had an errand to run for work that brought him and our van near our house. So he picked us all up, and then I had the car for the afternoon! So we took that opportunity to go somewhere for nature study.
I picked a little park just outside the city. I'd driven to it before, but never really been in the park - so I thought it might be a nice little change. As we pulled up, I was a bit worried, as it really didn't look like it would be much - it was just fields, a few patches of trees (of the no-underbrush variety), the river, and that looked like about it.
Boy, was I wrong!
Of course, I didn't get the pictures going early enough... We went through a little patch of trees - and one of the kids noticed that the forest floor was different - so we looked at it closely (picking up a bit) - and they realized it was like really tiny wood-chips... from trees long ago.
We also looked at lichen and moss on the trees.
Then there was a nice hill to roll down, which they all enjoyed doing.
 |
| Delta rolling down a hill |
Then Echo noticed some clover and picked a couple of flowers. She also noticed there was some Purple Flowers as well as White ones.
 |
| Echo with Clover |
Then everyone had to look at them
 |
| Clover Flowers! |
Soon we were to a different area - and there were purple flowers. I don't know what they are called.
 |
| Golf examining Flowers |
 |
| Flower Closeup |
Then we made it to the river. It wasn't flowing very fast, so it has a bunch of algae growing on the top. It makes almost a rainbow effect.
 |
| Delta looking at River |
Walking along the river we found a tree stump with a lot of mushrooms growing nearby. I made sure the kids didn't touch them.
 |
| Mushrooms! |
 |
| Of course you HAVE to throw pebbles into a river |
Then we found some yellow flowers. (Sorry, I don't know how to rotate the picture on here). Delta noticed 2 flowers had 6 petals, while the rest have 5. I suspect that it is similar to the number of leafs on clover?
 |
| Golf looking at yellow flowers |
Near the flowers we found a plant that I've always called Foxtails....
 |
| Foxtails? |
 |
| Echo and a foxtail |
Then we looked at the Beaver Dam built by the bridge...
 |
Beaver Dam
|
Then we started the trek back to the car. We found another area that had reeds and what I've always called Cats' Tails. (Brown poofy top that turns white...) - [no picture].
I was amazed at the variety of nature we found when we looked, when at first it seemed there wouldn't really be a lot.
