Snakes on the Plain

THE discovery of a small brown snake lying in the grass in a park, with a big chunk out of its neck, led to discussions about snakes - what they eat, where they are found and whether they are harmful. It turns out there are 36 different kinds of non-venomous snakes in Georgia, and 6 venomous.

What's the difference between venomous and poisonous? It's all in the delivery and the motive. Venomous creatures store toxins internally, delivering their toxic delight by fangs or a stinger to capture prey. Poisonous animals on the other hand usually release poison through their skin, when the animal is touched or consumed. Venomous animals use toxins to make dinner, poisonous animals to avoid becoming dinner.

Easy catch though it was, we left the ailing snake in the grass to become someone else's dinner.

Pumpkin Time

AFTER several years of this, I have got over the grossness of the pumpkin goop that you have to pull out by hand, but I don't think I'll ever actually enjoy this part of the carving. Nevertheless, a beautiful Jack o'Lantern came into being, and the seeds became a crispy snack. Other pumpkins became pumpkin bread and pumpkin soup. Mmmh!

Jack o'lantern, jack o'lantern

You are such a funny sight

As you sit there at my window

Looking out at the night.

You were once a yellow pumpkin

Growing on a sturdy vine.

Now you are a jack o'lantern

May your candle light shine.

Beanpods, Acorns and Autumn Finds

WE'VE had so much fun collecting nature items this Autumn and finding different ways to use them. Acorn people, leaf fairies and crowns, doll food from nuts and berries, pinecone animals.


One of our most surprising finds was a gigantic seed pod. We've still not managed to identify it, but it is about 30cm long! It was used in many different ways; I believe it was its role as tractor ramp that caused it to finally give in and beg to be returned to the earth.

Apples!

WELL I thought we had picked enough apples to last us a lifetime. (We certainly picked enough for me to carry once the little ones grew tired of carrying their own sack.) But after making some jars of apple butter, a crumble or two, apple sauce and our favourite - apple leather - I found myself going to the farmer's market and having to buy apples from - horror - Washington State!! Not that there's anything wrong with Washington State, just that it's an awfully long way from here, when there are orchards right here in Georgia. Maybe we'll squeeze in another day trip to an orchard before the season's over.

Way up high in the apple tree

Two little apples smiled at me

I shook that tree as hard as I could

Down came the apples... mmh were they good!

Feeding the Hungry

THE weather's getting colder. In our driveway, we had hundreds of acorns fallen, but now we only have the caps. Same with dogwood berries. They're all gone. And when we went out for a walk, we tried to find some really big acorns for crafts, but also only found the caps. Well of course - they have all been snapped up by hard working little animals building up their winter stores. This might seem obvious, but I have never noticed them disappearing before.

While it's not quite a snow-covered wasteland (food wise), it must be getting harder for all the animals to find food. We hung up bird seed and filled our coconut shell feeder with fruit peels. I found some old popcorn that never got popped. I wonder if the birds and squirrels will like that?

Home for a Gnome

THIS Autumn's nature table has - as always - been a work in progress. We like for our table to be a living part of our family life rather than something to be looked at only, and it is played with every day. But as the 'treasures' threatened to turn our living room into a wild, unbridled forest, the nature table gnomes visited more and more frequently at night for a little clean up.

Then, one of them decided to stay. He is a little fellow with a felted head, chubby acorn body and a golden cloak. He lives in a house of bark, next to the squirrel's giant leaf, the rabbit's burrow and the lizard's log pile. Each of them has their own store of food for the winter and they have a different adventure each day.

Commitment Phobic Weather

THERE'S no greater justification for dressing in layers than weather that just cannot make up its mind! By mid October it was getting consistently chilly enough to switch out summer for winter wardrobes, especially when we had our first night frosts. Definitely coats, hats and gloves in the morning, but now it's warming up to summer temperatures by the afternoon.

It's been so wet and warm, the bale of straw Emma uses to swing from is sprouting! On this particular afternoon, it got super hot and after some heavy gardening and a game of chase, there was nothing for it but to strip off. Weather forecasts call for a cold and wet winter, so we're making the most of this sun!

Roots, Fruits & Leaves

WE'RE deep into an Autumn bounty that spans the gamut from fruits to seeds to leaves to roots, including some late summer crops. In recent weeks we've brought home from the farmers' market: sweet potatoes, apples, turnips, all manner of greens and herbs, beans, field peas, pecans, aubergine, peppers, muscadines, squashes, kohl rabi, pumpkins and more.

Butternut squash soup, wild rice pilaf, Asian garlic greens, sweet potato-lentil casserole, kale and sausage stew, kasha-aubergine patties... aah delicious. We have a new family favourite: roasted apples and sweet potatoes with maple glaze, served with a salad of fresh greens, dried cranberries, chili-toasted pecans and goat cheese with a lime-yoghurt dressing. YUM!

Splatter Painting Leaves

AFTER looking for leaves shaped liked stars and hands in nature class last week, we continued our study of leaf shapes in our own back garden. Autumn is so often about the colour of leaves, but having them all around on the ground is such a great opportunity to look at their other attributes! We found leaves with fingers, with noses, with teeth, with holes. Even to me it was quite a revelation to ignore the colours and look at other things. Of course, most leaves were from trees in our own garden, but we found a stray tulip tree leaf and couldn't even identify the source in neighbouring properties. I said it must have floated a long way on a breeze, and Emma contemplated: "Perhaps it heard we were having a Michaelmas Celebration and wanted to come to the party." Perhaps indeed.

With our leaf collection we preserved the shapes by splatter painting all around the edges with old toothbrushes. It took a few tries to get the paint consistency right, but they turned out quite pretty. We'll do some more for our nature table, I think.

Seed Pod Art

AUTUMN is such a great time for gathering items from nature to use in art and craft projects! So far this year we've made acorn necklaces, leaf mosaics, seed pod boats and here's our latest creation. I'm calling it a Mimosa Fairy, as it's made from the seed pods of a mimosa silk tree. You can't see it well in the picture but the eyes and mouth are made from seeds that Emma painstakingly removed from the seed pods while trying to keep the pod intact.

New Discovery

WHAT better season to discover a new park and lake in than Autumn? This park is one we've hashed through many a time, but with eyes only for the trail of flour, we had never fully experienced it. So, with vague recollections of a playground hidden in the woods, I took a drive with the children to scout it out.

What a find! A lake surrounded by wooded paths, and a well-equipped playground and covered pavilion right next to, but completely hidden from, the car park. It was a great place to gather leaves and seed pods and the wall of railroad ties around the playground was apparently the place to be if you are a harvestman. At the weekend, we returned with Thomas and Basil to investigate the trails, and this time we came prepared with a picnic.

Autumn Winds

AUTUMN is now in full swing and the woods are breathtakingly beautiful. It is easy to understand how Wordsworth and other great Romantic poets found such inspiration in nature.

We've spent many hours this week in the woods. When the wind blows, leaves fall all around like rain and we rush this way and that trying to catch them, laughing as we bump into things while looking in the air. Some leaves are still green and cling proudly to their branches. Others in shades of yellow, gold, brown, orange, red and burgundy wave gently against a background of brilliant blue, waiting for the breeze that will send them on their downward journey. The low sun glints through the canopy overhead, turning the yellow hickory trees to gold and sparkling on water like magic. The leaves crunch under our feet, rustle as they float down, nuts and acorns freefall and land with a soft thud, and squirrels are having a ball racing around the trees and chirping to one another. Dried leaves on the ground can be piled up, jumped in, thrown in the air, admired and collected.

Like a leaf or a feather in the windy autumn weather

We turn around and turn around then all float down together.

Needle Felting 101

YESTERDAY saw my first attempt at needle felting, with the intent to create a squirrel for our nature table. It started with a vague framework made from a pipe cleaner, then I wound wool batting rounded and round, needling it to adhere the strands to one another. From a strange form resembling... not a lot... it gradually metamorphed to an animal, then something maybe like a beaver, and eventually with a little more detailed shaping it looked more and more like a squirrel. Just in the nick of time, as the needle snapped and the project was brought abruptly to a close. Emma came excitedly to breakfast asking if the squirrel was finished, and when she spotted it on the nature table, declared immediately that it needed a nappy. How silly of me not to felt a nappy onto the squirrel!

Scarecrows In The Garden

THE Atlanta Botanical Gardens holds an annual festival of scarecrows, which sounded like a good place to visit on a beautiful Autumn day.

Sponsored by various companies and organisations, the scarecrow installations were scattered throughout the gardens. Whether constructed all from a particular material, depicting a scene, serving as a means of outreach or merely a witty statement, the designs and their accompanying titles were nothing if not imaginative.

Just as appealing as the exhibition however were the permanent residents of the gardens and incidental visitors from the animal world. In the waterfall pond, snapping turtles swam beneath draping tropical plants, while outside enormous bullfrogs basked in the sun. We also spotted a tiny gecko and a hummingbird, which thankfully were interesting enough to stop a preschool meltdown in its tracks.

Pop quiz: What's the difference between frogs and toads?

Generally frogs spend most of their lives in or near water. Toads on the other hand, get out on land a little more and find their way into gardens and yards. Frogs also usually have moist slimy skin, while toads have dry bumpy skin. (From www.sciencebob.com)

Pumpkin Pickin'

LAST year was our first visit to a pumpkin farm. I was quite amazed, I must say. So when we had company from England in October this year, I knew this would be an obligatory part of the week's itinerary.

The visit began with a hayride sitting in a wagon actually filled with hay. Emma was intrigued that we were sitting on the "horse's food". We drove through fields of vines with pumpkins still ripening, and rows of picked fruit waiting for transportation.

The main visitor area was filled with the usual cheesy accoutrements such as country music and painted photo ops, but it was fascinating to see quite how many pumpkin and gourd varieties could be grown locally. As the picture shows, Emma "can't know which one I like".

In comparison to the bustle of the farm, lunch was a peaceful affair enjoyed on the bank of a nearby creek. We hesitantly made our way on wobbly stones across the water, trying for once not to get our feet wet. We failed. Our slippery crossing did however show us the way to a shed snake skin and a mottled brown grasshopper-type creature that was so well disguised in the pebbles that it almost met a very sticky end from my hand.

That evening, a delicious butternut squash soup was just the ticket. We would have enjoyed the pumpkin bread we'd bought at the farm along with it, except we couldn't find it. The wrapper turned up later in the yard. Chewed. Hmm, I wonder who that could have been... BASIL.

Squirrel Study

NOW that Autumn is here, the squirrels are hard at work gathering food for their winter stores. We have squandered many an hour sitting in the garden watching them. One time a squirrel was travelling back and forth across our garden collecting large nuts from a neighbour's property and hoarding them in our black tupelo tree. The squirrel would disappear behind our house and be gone for a while before returning with a prize almost as big as his head. I never did discover the source of this bounty, but the nut was obviously worth the arduous trek. Not to mention the dangers of this quest! After two successful journeys, on the third return trip the squirrel had to make a mad dash into a tree to avoid a beast of prey - namely our excited labrador. The nimble creature managed to schlepp the nut with it, taking the longer route home in the safety of the trees around the perimeter instead of shortcutting across the lawn. Not to be deterred, it set off once again. This time when the dog pounced, the nut was jettisoned as the squirrel leapt to safety. We banished the dog to the house and warily the squirrel returned to ground level to reclaim his abandoned nut.

Another time we lay on the grass looking up at the sun glinting through the light green leaves and red berries of the dogwood. This tree is adjacent to the squirrels' tupelo, and the squirrels were hopping about in time to the tunes of a mockingbird. I thought the berries were only consumed by birds, but the squirrels were eating them too. They would scamper to the ends of the twigs to collect the berries, causing the branches to bend precariously under their weight, then retire to a safer fork further down the branch to eat. I have heard that squirrels are smart enough to discern which fruits and nuts will spoil quickest and eat them first. Naturally berries don't last long, so they just had to gobble up these juicy little morsels on the spot. Little did I know we had a 'hop-thru' on the premises.