April 2010 Blog Posts (22)

“Enchanted worlds still exist because the child within us never dies. The doorways may be more obscure, but we can still seek them out. There are still noble adventures to undertake. There are still trees that speak and caverns…

After spending the past few weeks writing about natural elements in children's play spaces, I inspired myself to build a bush cubby with the kids at preschool.



I gathered up some intrepid stick hunters and we headed outside to gather up some of the long, sturdy sticks we could see lying on the ground.

These boys love their sticks, and were quite thrilled that we were blatently breaking the "no sticks bigger than…

Good morning on this amazing Colorado blue bird day! Check out the photo of the week by Dylan during one of our photo workshops at Aspen Community
School! http://www.visualizeaplace.com

Thursday Workshop...BIRDS!

Continuing our discussion about how everything in nature is connected, we started our trail walk looking for signs and sounds of birds. We saw nesting Canada geese, a Wood Duck in a hollow tree, a squawking soaring Red Tailed Hawk, a Nuthatch scouting a nesting place, and we stopped to hear the concert of a beautiful male Cardinal. With a threat of rain, the woods seemed to be filled with a chorus of hundreds of songs from…

This is the time of year when we really notice the shapes of the trees. The deciduous trees are really showing off their “bone structure,” seeing the tree’s silhouette against a blue spring sky or seeing the darkness of the wet bark after a spring rain contrasting with the new chartreuse colors of early leaves…..so pretty!

We did a little activity today called Tree Body Sculptures, suggested by my sis Katrina who needed some pics of this activity for her arboretum brochure, we went…

I am one of the rare ones: I was born in Florida and have lived here my entire life. 23 years in Pensacola, 6 years in Tampa, and the last 12 in Jacksonville. In all that time, I've

taken my home state for granted. Summers swimming at Pensacola Beach,

camping at Fort Pickens, fishing in Tampa Bay, enjoying the St. Johns

River in Jacksonville. I remember complaining about beach and camping

trips, only wanting to stay inside to read books, watch…

These are the three elements to attracting wildlife. Most people begin with the food by putting up a feeder or two and food is a big attractant. Often the next step is adding a water feature. Water features can range from the complex and expensive to the simple and inexpensive.

I remember my uncle and I used to sit in his back yard. He had put in an elevated waterfall fountain where the water tumbled down like water in a mountain spring to a small sunken pond. On warm…