Wordless Wednesday :: Garden Faeries

Weekly Wrap-Up ~ Gardening, Sad Nature Study, and Mind Maps

Another week with a day off! Monday was Victoria Day in Canada. We took the day off and planned our vegetable and flower garden. On Tuesday morning, we went to the garden centre. We were only able to find tomatoes and basil this time, but we will add more to our vegetable garden soon. In our flower garden, I chose mostly perennials this year.

We completed our regular school work during the rest of the week. We all can't wait to be finished! We will be taking one month off during the summer, but June will be a much lighter month.

In Science, we studied colour: the visible light spectrum, dispersion, prism and more. We followed many of the internet links from the Usborne Encyclopedia of Science. One of Adrienne's favourite this time was an activity where you were the light designer for a concert.

We started working with the Mind Maps for Kids book this week. I chose this book to do together, including Celeste. We really enjoyed this introduction and first activity. Mind mapping will be hopefully be a helpful option for the writing process. I read aloud from the book and we each completed a mind map about our likes. You can see Adrienne's at the bottom of the photo.

A little nature study happened right in our driveway. On Wednesday morning, Celeste was looking outside and told me that one black bird (maybe a Common Grackle, not as big as a crow)attacked a smaller bird on its head (you can see on the first photo where it was hurt). The smaller bird, a House Sparrow we think, was hurt and not moving. I went to check it out and it was still breathing. We decided to move it to a safer spot and monitor it. Adrienne gave it some bird seeds and water. There was a big rain storm that day and we gave the bird a little shelter. Sadly, the bird didn't make it.

Another bit of nature study that happens right around our house is the rabbit that lives nearby. We always need to protect our vegetable garden and our strawberry plant from it! Our dog loves to watch it from our windows and when he goes outside, he is always looking for it. We think it lives in our neigbour's yard. Here are some recent photos:

If you would like to read more wrap-up posts, you can visit Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers!

A Little Summer Nature Study :: Tomato Hornworm with Parasites

While we were taking care of our vegetable garden, we found this little caterpillar. We didn't know at the time what type it was, but thought best to bring him to the field, in a home that would suit us better. I was curious to know what kind it was though, so last night Adrienne and I did a bit of googling.

We found out that the caterpillar is the Tomato Hornworm and by itself is actually quite a threat to the garden. It likes to eat the leaves of tomato plants as well as pepper plants and others. I found our orange sweet peppers had big holes in them a few days ago. Now I am pretty sure it was from this guy, as there were black droppings all around the pepper plants too.

The little white things you see all over the hornworm are parasites. They are the eggs of a small species of wasps. Once the eggs hatch, they feed on the caterpillar and also on any other hornworm catterpillars that might be around, which turns this into a helpful critter for the garden!

How interesting that a parasite can be a good thing!

You can read more about the Tomato Hornworm here and the type with the wasp eggs here. and here.

family garden ~ growing so fast!

zucchini

more zucchini

cherry tomatoes

blackberry flowers

cucumber flowers

family garden ~ progress

tomatoes

tomatoes

sunflower (from seed)

zucchini

moon flower (from seed - started indoors a few weeks ago)

learning together ~ family garden ~ the beginning

I am not a gardener, neither is my husband. But my grandparents had a big garden that pretty much sustained them, giving them vegetables, fruits, even flowers and my husband's grandfather used to garden a lot too, so we are hoping to have learned a bit from them and be able to grow a few vegetables, fruits, and some flowers too.

See the garden in the background? I loved helping my grandparents.

We like to learn along with our children. They have been very excited to be gardening and were part of the whole process, preparing the dirt, pulling out weeds in the two garden patches we  built last year, deciding where and what was planted. I didn't take a lot of photos while we were planting, because we were too busy planting!

What I am planning on doing on this blog is to give you a progress report every couple of weeks of our family garden. We bought some baby plants and also planted seeds. We built two beds last year and added dirt to settle over the past winter.

Here is a list of what we have planted so far, with a few photos:

the vegetable and herb garden

cherry tomatoes

tomatoes

orange peppers and sweet red peppers

basil (the 2 ligher plants)

leeks

zucchini

cucumber

thyme

rosemary

more tomatoes

In our flower patch, we planted a few baby flower plants and a few seeds as well. I didn't take pictures of the dirt, but added a list below the last flower photo.

golden creepy jenny

an Ontario native plant: white gayfeather

beebalm

black-eyed susan

hen and chick plant

in the dirt:

sunflower (mammoth)

green peas

cosmos

four o'clock

We also planted seeds on two different walls around the house:

this one will be (hopefully!) the scarlet runner bean pole

the future nasturtium

We planted this strawberry plant last year and it is doing wonderful this year! I hope the birds leave the fruits alone so we can try them.

Lastly, the children and I asked my husband to stop cutting the grass around our maple tree. We read a great picture book called On Meadowview Street  and we were inspired to try to create our own tiny meadow right in our backyard. Once we explained our idea, my husband was game and cut the grass a little longer and in a circle around the base of the tree. It's difficult to tell right now, but he won't cut it anymore from now on, so it will grow fast. He suggested we add some wildflower seeds and topsoil in the circle to help it along. So we did! We can't wait to see how it turns out.

Calling all gardeners...

Please visit my personal blog if you are a gardener...I have a question for you!

Thanks for your help!