Nature Journal: Bogs

Honestly, I was pretty skeptical about the whole Nature Journal Thing when I started. I mean, Nature Study, yes, that makes a lot of sense, and I was excited. We started to do it pretty early, after a fashion: we'd go outside and look for Interesting Things. It wasn't until much later that we started to carry sketchbooks with us, and even then, there was a while where dragging them around was pretty much all we did. But I'm halfway through my second volume now: the first one filled up. And it's gradually become something that I absolutely love doing. There are so many Interesting Things, and drawing them is both fun and educational: it helps me remember what I've learned. (Bonus points for getting some watercolor on the page!)

So this past week, I went to Cub Scout daycamp with Dragon, and we had a good time. We had to drive a little way to get there, and the environment was just a little bit different from what we see closer to home. Amazing how a relatively short distance can change things! It was a little different, except for one area: they have a bog.

The bog was very different.

And so very fascinating: I could have gone in there with my nature book every day for a long time and not been done looking at All The Things.

This isn't exactly the same as the place that we visited, but it was similar: our bog was a "quaking bog": when the guide told the boys to jump, the trees and everything around us shook. It was pretty amazing.



So I took some pictures, and I've been putting the stuff that I saw in my book in the past week since I got home. I started with a page about Monarch butterflies. Didn't see those in the bog, but I did get a picture, and I'm glad I did: it was fun to paint, and very interesting to learn about their migration patterns.

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But once I'd finished learning about Monarchs, then I wanted to know more about bogs. Because that place was amazing. Turns out, I've had to work a bit to find out much about them.

National Geographic has a nice overview.

And this crazy bit of news about a "wandering bog" came up in one of my searches. I would never have guessed that was possible!




I've got some cool photos of carniverous plants to include as well: it's likely that this project of recording what I saw in our 30 minutes or so in the bog will take more than one page to get into my book, because it's just so different from "regular" ecosystems. I'm excited to see what I can learn about it all.

Frog Study: Blanchard's Cricket Frog

We're learning about local frogs this year, in the hope of possibly recognizing them better when we're out and about. Our State has only about 12 of them, so I've slipped them in here and there on our schedule. Today's frog is a cutie: Blanchard's Cricket Frog.

This is the first time I've done a study like this, and I'm not quite sure how to take it from our kitchen table to being able to actually being able to identify frogs when we find them next summer, but I figure the chances are better with a inexpert effort than they are if we don't try at all! So right now, we're drawing them. And listening to some YouTube recordings of their song. And that's pretty much it. Today we did Blanchard's Cricket Frog, which is a cute little thing: fits on a fingertip with plenty of room to spare.

This is the drawing from Dragon(6). In addition to learning about these cute little guys, he's also learning to see well enough to draw. I have him sit on my lap (ufta! he's not little anymore!) and help him know what to look at, and how to really see it in a way that works for drawing:

He draws a circle for the eye, which is the most prominent feature.
"Look, the eye is cool, but it's easiest to start with the outline of the whole frog, and worry about the inside details later; let's save the eyeball for last, so you can tell more easily where it belongs. Look at the frog's nose, instead. See how this part is part of a circle?" -I run a pencil along the curve of the frog's mouth, showing him the circle-
"Next to that big circle part, there's this small curve, where the other eye is hiding. See how those connect?"
"Yes."
"Do you think you can draw the big circle part and the little one? Can you see how they go?"
"Yes." And he did it pretty credibly.
"Good. Now, look, first. Put your eyes up here on the picture. See how his back goes along like this, not super round, but not quite curvy, either?"

We went along like that, trying to help him to see what he needs, and reminding him to look at the picture before he draws, and at the end, his frog is pretty credible, particularly the front half, and the front leg, which he did entirely by himself. He's making good progress with his drawings, though judging from his comments after it was done, I don't think he can see his progress, yet. Unfortunately, his nature book is lost right now, so we didn't put this in there, just on regular paper, which makes it hard to look back and see how progress really has been happening. Hopefully, we'll find it soon and tape in this drawing.

Hero(10) is well past the point where he needs me to sit and hold his hand. He's been turning out stacks of ever-improving drawings for quite a while, now, and I didn't have to do any more than just show him the frog I wanted him to observe, and let him choose which picture he was going to do; he takes care of the rest.

It's been too busy a day for me to get this drawing into my own nature book, but I'm hoping that, here in the next little bit, I can put a cute little frog in my notebook, and possibly even paint him a little to show his lovely colors. I've got a cottonwood leaf pressed in my book that I'm finishing up this evening.

Frog Study 2016-2017

I want to include some reading about and drawing critters, to help the kids be able to identify more when we are out and about. This will also help them to develop drawing and coloring/painting skills, as well as observation and classification skills, which are key to science work. We keep finding frogs when we are out and about - according to the DNR our State has 12 species of frog - so I think we'll start with some frogs This project will be done irregularly, in "off weeks" opposite Picture Study.



American Toad



Blanchard's Cricket Frog



Boreal Chorus Frog



Bullfrog



Cope's Gray Treefrog
Gray Treefrog



Green Frog



Mink Frog



Northern Leopard Frog



Pickerel Frog



Spring Peeper



Wood Frog

What's Your LiLi?

I took a quiz this evening to discover my "energy impact," though, for the record, I think that global warming is at best blown all out of proportion and more likely a hoax. After all, we haven't seen global temperature increases in the past 10 years or so. Additionally, I heard on the radio tonight that Mr. Gore's been taken to court for 9 counts of faulty information in his "An Inconvenient Truth" in Great Britain, and he lost. Nevertheless, it seems to me that we have a duty to be responsible with our use of the earth's resources, so I still find this sort of thing useful.

The quiz is a pretty comprehensive one, and flexible enough to give you ideas for projects you could do to reduce your impact. I admit, I did have to simply guess on how much of our yard is covered in cement, and how big our lot is. But otherwise, it was pretty easy. The average score is 100, and I came in at about 66 after I'd made my adjustments. Not too shabby. Though I did decide that all the mileage that my husband puts on for work should count in his employer's impact! If I include the work truck, it puts our impact up to 100. He travels quite a bit, though happily he's nearly always back home again by bedtime.

So, what's your score?

Intresting Use of Fabric

Here's a site that's suggesting a number of interesting uses of fabric - calico, to be precise, though I don't see that it would make a lot of difference what type of 100% cotton you used, myself. Anybody ever tried keeping their cheese in a cloth bag? Hmmm.

My First Refashion

I made a bag. Read all about it here.

Green Hour #1

Andy had some schoolwork that he needed to do for one of the classes that he's taking right now, involving going to a bit of "wild land" and making some observations and then writing a paper about it. I've been wanting to do some Green Hour stuff with Monkey, so it "counts" for him too. For the Monkey, it was more an exercise in exploration, observation and walking on uneven terrain. It was quite enjoyable watching him explore the little section of State Park that we were in! The last picture is Monkey and Daddy looking at a rock they found on the ground.






I did a little bit of bird watching while we were there. Several times we have gone to this part and seen these beautiful birds. This time, I came armed with camera and binoculars, determined to make an identification. Turns out that those big birds are turkey vultures - a new one for my life list!

Grocery Bag Impact

A while back I found this tutorial for making cloth shopping bags. I made up 4 of them and I've got fabric for another that is cut out and ready to go if I'd just sew it up, which takes about an hour once you get the hang of it. They're nice to use: one of these is stronger than plastic, so you can load it down more, and they're nicer on the hands to carry. When they get dirty, I toss them down the laundry chute. So I'd have to say that the cloth bag experiment has been working out well for us. And it has definitely cut down on the number of those annoying plastic bags on top of my fridge.

Turns out that little things add up quickly. MSN has an interactive article on paper vs. plastic bags. Turns out neither one of them is really all that wonderful for the environment. At the end is a fun little impact calculator. I used it to guesstimate our bag usage at around 288 bags a year. There's really only one store around here that offers paper bags, so I selected 100% plastic use. If I reduce my bag use by 70%, then I save 230 plastic bags. That is, as Andy pointed out to me when I started using the cloth bags, a drop in the bucket. (But it's a lot of bags that aren't filling up the top of my fridge!) But the cool thing about this calculator is that it lets you see what would happen if other folks did it with you. I selected 10% of Americans also reducing their plastic bag usage by 70%, and supposing that they were all using and reducing in the very same way that I did, it would save more than 13 billion bags a year. That's 1.16 million barrels of oil!

That's something concrete and immediate that we can do to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. I've got 6 cloth bags now. Four I made, and 2 were $1 each at one of the grocery stores I shop at. I like the homemade ones better: they're pretty. But the green store bags work just as well, so you don't even have to be a carfty sewer type to do it.

Pretty Easy Bags

Well, I've now finished the first of my bags and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I had some fabric left over from some other projects, so I grabbed that & started playing. Looks like it'd take 1/3 to 1/2 yard of 45", depending on if you do a pocket or not and how big your bag is. I did just a standard size bag.



I loaded it up with some refried beans and pizza sauce from my cupboard and it looks like it's going to do the job quite neatly. In addition, it should hold books nicely when we go to the library. If I ever catch up with my fines. I swear, sometimes I wonder why I don't just go to the bookstore instead!



Anyway, my bottom didn't turn out quite the same as the pattern's, and I haven't exactly figured out why yet. I'm going to try some things a little differently on the next bag because this one doesn't close up very nicely. The bottom seam is just a little weird. Getting the gusset to do its magic & also be a french seam is going to take a little practice.



Also, my pocket is just a little bit big, so I cut down the pattern that I made, and the next one will be nearly square. Because the fabric's got a right side & a wrong side, the pocket looks inside out when it's folded up. But I think that I'm going to do it the same next time: I'd prefer an inside-out look folded in my purse, rather than it being obvious when I'm using it. But I think that if you did the pocket in a solid color it wouldn't be so obvious. And of course you could pick fabric that is patterned but not obvious about its right side/wrong side. But this was stuff that I had leftover from some project. I think it must be some project I forgot to do because there's a lot of the stuff, and I don't think I've ever made anything out of it before.

Altogether, including figuring out the directions and using a towel on the kitchen counter to avoid setting up my ironing board so the Monkey doesn't get a hot iron on his head, it probably took less than 2 hours to do, but I did it in 3 settings, so I'm not positive exactly how long it was. Not too bad.

Looks Like Fun

Seems like a couple of sturdy shopping bags are always nice to have around. I'm thinking of making up a couple of these Singlet Style Shopping Bags - the Craftster's pattern even has a pocket for the bag to fold up into, much like a quillow, so that you can tuck it into your purse when you're not using it & it'll be ready for you when you need it. I'm thinking that I've probably already got fabric that would work for this. Now all I need to find is the time...

Looking at Light Bulbs

After doing some reading about fluorescent bulbs, it turns out they are full of mercury & you'd just better not break them, so Andy and I took at look at LED bulbs.

We looked at this LED bulb, which according to the lumens rating, is approximately the same brightness as a regular 60-watt bulb. It costs $67.95. My first thought was "There is no way that's going to be competitive, call back in a few years." Then we started doing some math.

The LED bulb lasts for 30,000 hours. The 60-watt incandescent lasts for 1,000 hours. So you need 30 blubs to last the same amount of time as just 1 of the LED bulbs. That's $56.18 right there ($1.83 per bulb was the price we found online), just to get the same amount of hours from your bulbs. Not sounding so outrageous anymore.

Then we did the math for what the electricity would cost. The incandescent bulbs will cost 179.79 at our current electric rate. The LED bulb would cost 96.41 for the same amount of time. I can think of a few things to do with an extra $80 or so, per bulb in my house!

Clearly, the LED is cheaper to have. It's just gonna hurt more up front.

PS. Andy, after doing some more looking around says that:
1. GE says the mercury's not dangerous, and
2. LEDs use less electricity than fluorescent.

I'd give it a shot but...

They're not COST effective!

Been looking at gDiapers, which are flushable & compostable & generally environmentally friendlier than the disposable we currently use. But until I'm independently wealthy, I can't afford an increase like that in my diaper bill!

Right now I get a case of Huggies at Sam's Club. There's about 170 size 4 diapers in there. It runs about $30. (I didn't have to buy any this last shopping trip, so I don't remember the exact numbers.) I buy the Huggies. No extra parts needed.

The super-cool gDiapers cost $52 for 128 liners. You also have to buy the cute (and they are very cute, especially the Hawaiian one) covers, called "little g pants." And those are $15 a pop. And you periodically have to buy new ones, cuz like all little clothing, babies are going to grow out of them on a regular (or in our case, accelerated) rate (he's 8 months old but currently growing out of his 12 months clothes).

I'm all for doing things naturally & organically, but there are limits of practicality. In this case, it's a financial limit. These, like so many other "green" products, are prohibitively expensive. Which is not to say it's a bad idea. Maybe they'll catch on. Maybe by the time I'm working on diapering child 3 this will have a couple of knock-off brands, or maybe Huggies will imitate them & those will be affordable. But in the mean time, I'm stuck with a landfill, as unpleasant as that is. Unless we decide to give up eating.

Earth Day: a little late

I loved this article about Earth Day observance & the environmental zero population garbage that often goes with it.