nature

Sometimes we take walks in the woods behind our property “to see what we can see.” Sunday afternoon we took one such walk specifically to look for bloodroot. I have a fondness for it for no other reason than the fact that I think it’s pretty. We identified some of what we saw, but not all.

praying mantis egg case (not considered exciting by my kids, but Gabe will tell you “mommy’s excited about them.)

garlic mustard

We don’t know birds…does anyone know what species of bird may have made this nest?

common winter cress

cedar apple rust gall

fiddleheads, but I don’t know what type. I do have a field guide for ferns, but haven’t ever really looked through it!

This was the “once in a lifetime moment” of our walk. Gabe pushed on a standing dead tree and out flew a southern flying squirrel! If you look closely, you can see it on the tree to the left of Seth in this photo. When I heard the kids crying out, “flying squirrel!” I thought they were kidding.

Flying squirrels are the only nocturnal tree squirrels, and therefore it’s not too often that you see one! This was a first for me.

The squirrel seemed disoriented and allowed me to get pretty close with my camera before scampering on up the tree. I was worried about it finding it’s way back over to it’s home in the dead tree, but in our research tonight we learned that flying squirrels have exceptional homing abilities from far greater distances than just the tree next door.

Cute little guy! I read that they store up to 15,000 nuts in a season.

may apple

star chickweed

shining club moss?

Bloodroot

most haven’t bloomed yet

I found this one with it’s flower almost ready to open up. tomorrow.

I was the first to spy a morel.

Soon we had an entire handful. We’ll saute them in butter. The kids love them. Jonny and I don’t eat fungi.

We aren’t sure what this is yet; an orchid of some sort. We’ll be visiting every day until it blooms.

Blue blister beetle. Do you see that orange fluid on it’s head? Blister beetles exude a nasty liquid that can cause a blister if it comes in contact with your skin.

jack-in-the-pulpit

downy rattlesnake plantain (orchid)

That little seedling on the right that hasn’t unfurled it’s cotyledons is an Amercian beech. I know because the seed’s shell was perched on top before I pulled it off to look at it.

moss reproduction

Spring is my favorite time of year in the forest, at least until it’s autumn. Then autumn will be my favorite.

p.s. I used my 35 mm lens for these photos. I haven’t used it in awhile and had forgotten that it really allows for some nice up close photos! I’ll be using this lens on all of our nature walks!

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My children, and Seth in particular, love to make natural dyes. They like to try dyeing pieces of cotton yarn or scraps of fabric, typically with poor results. The other day, Seth made a few little bottles of pale yellow liquid using the petals from some tickseed sunflowers that I had in a vase on the kitchen windowsill. I suggested that we go and pick enough flowers to dye a few skeins of yarn. So that is what we did, although Seth got bored and ended up complaining about the picking the entire time, while Larkspur proclaimed that we should have named her “Flower Girl’ because she loved picking the flowers so very much. I remarked to her that we came pretty close with her name.

Back at home we already had our wool yarn soaking in a mordant solution that included alum, and cream of tartar, both things we had on our pantry shelf.

That evening, I dumped all those flowers into a big pot of hot water. Before we pushed them down into the water, we engaged in a little insect rescue mission as a few beetles and inchworms started crawling to the surface. We brought the water and flowers to a boil, and then turned the heat off, leaving the flowers to steep overnight.

Early the next morning, we poured the dye solution through cheesecloth.

Then it was time to add our yarn.

The dye process yielded a rich sweet potato orange colored yarn. It was pretty, but we wanted to keep playing, so we decided to try modifying it. After all, this was just a fun experiment anyway.

A soak in an acidic (vinegar and water) solution caused the yarn to shift to a slightly more yellow color.

Then we started wondering what would happen if we soaked it in an alkaline solution? So next our poor yarn got a dunk in a washing soda solution.

This caused the color to change to a deep red-orange. My boys all love it.

Beatrix likes it too.

Orange really isn’t my color, but I may end up knitting a little orange Peasy. What do you think? Beatrix says, “yes.” Seth wants orange socks.

(p.s. I got a bit of advice from Genevieve before starting this project. As she recommended, we turned to the book Wild Color for instructions and guidance. Another great book on dyeing in general is Hand Dyeing Yarn and Fleece. Also, because we needed pots that would not be used in the future for cooking I ended up using a canning pot and this reasonably priced one, after thrift store hunting proved fruitless.)

(p.p.s. Here are some sources for bare yarn: Pollika, Wool2Dye4, Knit Picks, and Catnip Yarns.)

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