resurrection fern

Pine Cones

This week we had good news for the forest of Canada, more specifically the boreal forest.. I decided in celebration of this news it was a wonderful opportunity to share with you some pine cone love. .

That is the basket of pine cones I have gathered from areas in my community where they would otherwise by swept up or turned into mulch by lawn and garden machinery. I don't gather them from the conservation areas or forests because they are an important part of the ecosystem there. I also remove the seeds and place them outdoors in the garden or park so they might have a chance to propagate. An easy way to do this and a little project you can do with your children is to place some fresh pine cones on a baking sheet, and place in a low oven ( 200 degrees works) for about 10 minutes. Then remove and cool. When they have cooled you can get your children to shake them and watch the pine seeds fall out. It would be fun to plant some in a little pot with rich well drained soil to see if you can grow a little pine tree.

Pine cones, like people come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. In general the rounder ones are from different types of pine trees and the elongated ones are from spruce trees but we don't call them spruce cones for some reason. Here is what I found.

The pattern in pine cones is a example of the fibonacci sequence I have spoken about previously.

They can be used to make beautiful patterns in clay.

I had wanted to make a crochet pine cone but I haven't had the chance this week. I have been so busy. I will share with you my softie that I made, the little boy that became a tree. I designed his little cap to look like a pine cone. He is very dear to my heart in so many ways. Have a great weekend!!!

Is Lavender Blue Dilly Dilly?

In my garden mid july brings the fragrant scent of lavender to mind. As I was sitting in my favorite garden chair one day, enveloped in this scent I thought about that 17th century english folk song.. I grew up with the Burl Ives version on a record my parents owned. I got to thinking why isn't it lavender purple not blue because I definitely think of the lavender in my garden as a shades of purple. I decided to conduct a little experiment to find the answer to my question.

I gathered up some flower heads from the two bushes in the garden. I think I have both french and english lavender represented. I added a few ounces of vodka, only ethanol I could find that was colorless in my laboratory.

Sorry about the bad picture quality but sometimes experiments go well into the night. Now I had to heat the lavender infused vodka up a little to extract the pigments , then I filtered the solution into a clear jar with a lid and placed in it a strip of watercolor paper ( no chromatography paper in the kitchen :( ) and placed the lid on the jar. It took all night for the liquid to reach the top of the paper which was about 4 inches tall. I let the paper dry and observed it. What was definitely a light mauve colored liquid in the jar separated into 4 different pigments on the paper. Now I think you might need to take my word for it since photographing this was very difficult and it wouldn't be recognized by the scanner. The bottom was dark green, next a lighter shade of green, then BLUE, and the top layer was yellow. If there is a next time I will have to concentrate the extract first before the separation.

Every science experiment needs a little craft break while your chromatography is progressing . I made a little crochet sleeve with a loop for hanging for a test tube. Makes a great little vessel for a single flower and you can hang it just about anywhere, I might even put one in the car for natural air freshening.

So yes , lavender is blue. and I used to think dilly was someone's name like billy not an adjective . I guess that's why I am not an english major. The last picture of this post is the last item in my knitting with paper experiments and it just so happens to have the color lavender in it. Coincidence???

The Family is growing, The Mushroom family that is

In the beginning there was one, then two and now they are a small family.

Oh , but those aren't the mushrooms you were expecting to see. You want to see the ones that have been created with the materials contained in the magic red suitcase and brought to fruition on the porch.

Here they are all lined up ready to meet you.

Their names from left to right are Nat, Baby Rosie, Marigold, Bess and Aurora. They love to dance the mushroom dance when they get together.

I was thinking about fairy rings and wondered if no one has seen the fairies dancing in rings maybe it is actually the mushrooms themselves that are dancing and making those patterns in the grass and earth. Someone should conduct some experiments to clear up this misconception. I also read that the largest fairy circle in the world is somewhere in france and is 800 meters in diameter. That is a whole lot of mushrooms getting together. If anyone knows where in france this is I would love an email . I would love to see that for myself. A few more pictures and then I have to run to work. A few of these mushrooms are all grown up and leaving home soon so I wanted to make sure I had a nice family portrait before it was too late. Don't you hate when you make something, send it to someone and then say oh my, I forgot to take a picture of it.

Nymphaea odorata Blooms for Only a Few Hours a Day

A few years ago I had the great fortune to visit Monet's gardens in Giverney, France with my family. The above picture was taken there and you can see how he was inspired by the nature around him. Here is a couple of other pictures that I am sure you will recognize if you are at all familiar with his paintings.

Nymphaea Odorata is a hardy white water lily that is very common in ponds and small lakes in our area of Ontario. It is on of my favorite reason to be out in a canoe at this time of year. If you are canoeing down a stream in the middle of the day and a soft breeze is blowing in your direction you will often smell its beautiful scent long before you see the flowers around the next turn. I love paddling into the middle of a water lily garden and then just floating there amidst the beauty and fragrance. To grow in our cold climate they have adapted in a way to only bloom for a few hours a day. In tropical countries water lilies bloom day and night. I am feeling really worn out right now, my mom is very sick and has been in and out of the hospital in the last two weeks. I am taking a lesson from the nymphaea , when living in a harsh, stressful climate one has to adapt oneself to go all out for a few hours a day and then rest and rejuvenate yourself for the remainder of the day so that you can do it again tomorrow. I am going to try that and I will let you know if it works. I searched our local pond to see if I could take some pictures to show you but they aren't quite in bloom yet. I think they will open up in another week. The lily pads and buds looked very beautiful and very monet like.

Since I couldn't find a lily friend in bloom I decided to make one out of felt and knit and felt a lily pad for it to rest on.

Wishing you all a peaceful, restorative weekend. Don't forget to check out elsita's pin party, I almost fell off my chair when I saw how fantastic, creative and colorful they all are. If you are really quick you might even be able to purchase one in her shop but hurry when I last checked there were only 3 left. Honestly I don't know how she parted with any of them.

Making Berries : A very quick craft idea

I love berries but my absolute favorites are raspberries and blackberries. I had some berry colored felt balls lying around in a little bowl and I thought I have seen a great many textile strawberries being made but no raspberries. I took one of the felt balls, matching embroidery thread and proceeded to make french knots randomly placed over the surface. I added a tiny crochet stem loop so it could be hung from a necklace and a leaf. It is so simple but I love how it turned out. I made another purple one.

I picked a plate of black raspberries from the wild garden area on the west side of my home last night. They were delicious !!

What Happens to Nature Happens to Each One of Us

· We are all an integral part of nature – what happens to nature happens to each and every one of us, young and old . I have been thinking about stewardship of nature. How the ecosystems are so vulnerable and need our protection. I see so many examples of this all around me even with in my own garden. I want to show you some of the plants and animals I have had the pleasure of meeting this past week to show you some of what we need to protect. Share these with your children because after us it will be up to them to continue this very important job. Nature is all around us for us to enjoy, you don't need to travel far and wide. Most of these encounters have been within an hour from my home and quite a few of them just outside my front or back door. It worries me when people write me and say they never see snails or other small creatures. I don't know if they just aren't looking hard enough or know where to look or if they have already left that ecosystem because of climate change or pollution. I find snails everywhere I go. Here is my nature slide show . Sit back and enjoy the ride.

In just over a week I saw a great many animals and plants all very close to my home. Did you see the baby bird ( a cardinal) that we rescued after it fell out of its nest. We really enjoyed watching mom and dad cardinals feeding the little one all weekend. One picture I didn't get was the little chipmunk that I managed to get out of Edgar's mouth . It was scared but otherwise intact and quickly scurried up the nearest tree. You can look after the wildlife in your own yard and come to it's assistance . You can also look for opportunities to volunteer with nature conservation groups in your area. My daughter wants to volunteer this weekend to act as a bodyguard for 3 little baby plovers at the beach just north of here. Their were only two nesting pairs and one family was wiped out by a hail storm a few weeks ago. The second family hatched after the storm and needs our protection. After seeing pictures of the little darlings who wouldn't want to volunteer.

I can't think of a better way to spend a summer weekend. The volunteers will also be allowed to camp near the beach if they want to spend the night. Have you had any encounters with wildlife this week?

Mosses, Lichens and Liverworts

Every time I prepare to write a blog post about something I think I know I always realize that I don't really know it at all. Have I ever told you how much I love mosses, lichens and liverworts. I think this love started a long time ago when hiking in the Rocky Mountains with my husband and two oldest children. I didn't realize it at the time but I was pregnant with my daughter Rebekah and I was having a little difficulty hiking with a pack or a child on my back at high altitude so I was taking many more rests than usual for me and admiring the wonderful plants growing on the rocks. At one of the tourism offices I purchased a poster of alpine lichen and I still have it framed and up on the wall. Did you know that spanish, reindeer and irish moss are actually not mosses at all. Mosses , of which there are thousands of varieties are leafy plants that do not have seeds. Spanish moss is related to the pineapple, reindeer moss is a lichen and irish moss is a seaweed. So then what does a true moss look like.

Although I am not an expert I think this is a typical sphagnum moss. I love walking barefoot on stones covered in these plants. So soft and cool on your toes!! I would love to have a living carpet that felt like this under my feet. Lichens are usually the first thing to grow on a rock or tree.

Those lichen look like lace and sea coral to me. So the lichen moves in and cover the surface and then next the moss arrives usually taking up residence on top of the lichen especially when it is growing on the rocks. As the moss grows it traps some soil underneath its surface and thus creates a medium for other plants to start to grow on the stones. These initial layers are essential for the ecosystem to allow the growth of more complicated vascular plants with roots and seeds.

In many of these photographs you will see the sporophyte, the long thin projections with a capsule on the top that contains the spores allowing the mosses to reproduce. The best photographs I have ever seen of these can be found in the the flickr pictures of Bonnie Mathews. I am totally in awe of her macro shots. My favorite lichen is the one with the tiny green goblets called false pixie cup . Can you pick it out in the next photograph?

Again don't take my word for it but I think the next one is a liverwort.

As well as these bright orange ones /

I was so entranced by these little ecosystems that I just couldn't stop taking pictures. I would love to try to recreate one of these in some fiber art project one day.

I loved the little moss in a bowl that my sister , Zina had on her deck table last weekend.
Her back yard was like a wonderful green haven , I posted some pictures of it on flickr earlier if you want to see what I mean. I went for a long hike today in the Garanaska River Valley and collected a few types of moss to make a little moss garden of my own. No sooner had I placed it on the porch when a few snails had to check it out. These are not the usual garden variety snail. Last evening I was thinking how much I am going to miss the snails after the summer so I decided to make a few year round snails. I made one with liberty tana lawn fabric and the other from vintage handmade lace trim. The base of both is wool felt and the antennae I crocheted from vintage cotton. I think they would make really cute pins but for now they just want to hang out in the moss.

If you want to see some amazing snail photographs check out http://www.flickr.com/photos/8618469@N02/.

Make Room for Mushrooms

The month of June was extremely wet where I live and this has lead to an abundance of mushrooms in the forests much earlier than usual. Here are some pictures I took on the weekend near my sister's cottage in Quebec. There was so much variety and I was very excited to find a large amanita muscaria. Identifying mushrooms is not easy so I am not going to try to tell you the names of all of these species. I will leave that up to the mycologists.

I love making mushrooms and never have trouble finding friends and family to give them to. I came up with a method of joining a fabric circle to knitting and made these a few months ago. I posted a tutorial on this subject as well.

I wanted to make a smaller, delicate, crochet version so I gathered up my supplies. The fabric circles were cut from some liberty tana lawn I had in my stash.

Edgar sat watching me as I added the crochet gills and stem.

I really like how small it is although making the stem was a challenge.

It is less than an inch tall and looked really cute with this crochet covered wooden person I made the other night on the porch .

I am thinking of turning it into a mushroom pendant for a necklace. I will work on making a few more today in between work and chores.

I hope to get out into the woods this weekend and I am going to be looking for more mushrooms. I would love to find a fairy circle to share with you . I have seen a few over the years but never had a camera with me . Have a wonderful 4th of July to all my american friends !!!

The First Sunday of Summer , the day in pictures

Here is my day in pictures with a little comic relief to start if you remember the snails ended the day yesterday consoling themselves with a heineken after the netherlands lost at Euro 2008 to Russia and this morning they were a little hung over. I made them some kasha to start the day. My father was born in St petersburg, Russia so I think I might just start cheering for Russia now.

Then we had a little garden drama involving Edgar the cat and a young bird.

I did a little crafting on the porch , covering some small smooth rocks with crochet . I am not sure what I will do with these but they remind me of a more natural sort of cameo. I don't even like to crochet, it seems to make my fingers numb but I find myself strangely drawn to cover all sorts of natural things with crochet lately. I have some others to show on a future post.

We went for a beautiful hike in a wonderful place a short drive from our home. It had amazing views, wonderful smelling meadows, beautiful stones, babbling brooks, many varieties of butterflies, tadpoles in the pond and the largest jack in the pulpit I have ever seen.

That is the day so far, I am going to catch the end of the Spain vs Italy game and then think about dinner. I love these long summer days. Have a great remainder of your weekend.

Transition State Complex

School's out and today marks the official start of summer this evening. For most families this is a time of transition . You may have exciting things planned for the summer like trips to far away places.

Or lazy days at the beach.

Or you may be planning a green vacation or eco friendly activities with your children.

What ever you have planned you may feel overwhelmed by this transition. You may feel like you will never be able to accomplish the things you need to do to get to that place where you can relax and enjoy all the wonderful experiences summertime has to offer you.

You look all around to find a way to get to the place you need to be but all directions look very difficult.

You just don't have enough energy to take that big step.

In chemistry the intermediary stage of a chemical reaction is called the transition state and sometimes it requires a lot of chemical energy to get to that state and it can be very slow and difficult. In chemistry to reduce the amount of energy required chemists make use of helpers like enzymes, cofactors and catalysts.

The helpers reduce the amount of energy required to get to the transition state.

The help you receive really makes all the difference and you are ready to embark/

Phew!!! That was so much easier with help. Break the "good mother myth" you don't have to do it all or do it all alone. With everyone pitching in to help just think of the places you can get to and the fun you can have. Happy summer!!!!

No snails were harmed in the photographing of these pictures. Did you know that snails are hermaphrodites having both male and female sexual organs. They still require another snail to mate. They have 4 tentacles, 2 longer eye stocks and the 2 shorter feeler tentacles. Some think of them as garden pests but I love them so much . They eat mostly dead organic matter of which there is always a lot of that in my garden and they always make me smile.