Nature Study

One of my friends organized a field trip recently to the Hassayampa Preserve. We had never been there before and were looking forward to visiting this beautiful area of Arizona.

The building has a neat little museum, where the kids are encouraged to touch and explore.

All my kids managed to get in this shot!

S, R and J are in the front

E and K are in the middle

and A has her back to the camera looking towards the shelves.

All the kids were exploring before heading out on our hike.

We broke into two groups, my family and our good friends made up one group, everyone else made up the second group! My kids were excited to be with their friends for the morning as we headed out of the museum with our guide.

Our guide talking to the kids about what we were going to do

This area is just beautiful. You would never know you were in a desert! It's a riparian preserve w/ springs feeding the lake and river. Our hike took us towards the lake where we walked around looking at the nature and doing a sensory exercise.

I told Mark when we got home that I felt like I was in Ohio with all the vegetation and water around us. Ohio without the mosquitoes! It was a beautiful day all the way around. The weather was perfect, the bugs weren't pestering us and the time spent with friends was priceless.

E. took over the camera pretty early on and took over 200 pictures while we were there! I won't share all of them with you, just some of our favorites.  There are a lot in here, hope you enjoy them!

She had the camera setting on Aquarium, because she likes the way it looks. It gives everything a yellowish glow. 

Our guide told us that in the 1960's people would come and water ski on this lake! There was also a trailer park located on it's banks at one time.  Sometime in the 70's the land was donated to the Nature Conservancy and they let it go back to it's natural state. It's hard to imagine water skiing in this place now!

stopping for their sensory exercise - this one was on sight

E, A, and R drawing what they see

J. adding to his nature book what he sees

Mistletoe!

water level. Last year, the banks were flooding. This year, the water level is down.

Kids and guide looking out on Palm Lake

Not a bad picture for a point and shoot camera!

My little bug. She was loving this hike, walking up at the front with the guide. 

I had to run and get her a few times so she didn't walk right on into the water.

Ants working together to move this large object

Lots of palm trees around "Palm Lake" :)

More, very old, palm trees

picnic area

Yep, still the desert just outside of this oasis. 

Such a juxtaposition, lush, green vegetation and dry, rocky cactus on the hill just on the other side of the river. 

After walking around the lake, we walked down to the river to look for tadpoles and other naturey things.

a small branch of the river. 

you might be able to make out the tadpoles (click to make picture bigger)

 

Nature on nature! All the red spots are some type of bug

Is this stick bug looking thing the mother, or is it getting ready to have a feast!

being "sworn in" as junior deputies. 

 Nice shot of everyone squinting into the sun, don't you think!  

After our hike, quite a few of us drove in to Wickenburg for lunch at a neighborhood park. The kids ate and played and got to know each other better while the moms talked. It was a perfect ending to a beautiful morning.

We're going to try to go monthly to see the changes that take place throughout the year. The kids are really looking forward to going back again.

Garden Tour

Today was so much fun. Not only did I get to spend time with my friend, who also happens to me my neighbor (so blessed by her friendship), but we spent the day, all by ourselves, on an Edible Garden Tour!  How fun is that!  Through the next few posts, I'll share my tour with you! If your area has anything like this, GO! You'll be so happy you did. Spending time with people who are passionate about what they are doing and want to share their passion with others, is a wonderful experience.

We started with a garden in the neighborhood I grew up in. :)  I was actually in this house once or twice way back when. It has now been transformed into a beautiful oasis in the desert.

Boho Farm

Caroline, from Boho Farm loves everything French. She is an interior designer by trade, and you can see her magical touch extends out into her outdoor spaces as well.  

When you walk into her backyard you are greeted with overflowing beds of flowers, big beautiful flowers! Chickens are roaming and veggies are growing everywhere. Everything was so beautifully done, truly a showcase.

Veggies growing underneath a window

Part of the flower gardens w/ cute bird houses

Same flower bed, back view looking towards the house

 

Look at those Hollyhocks! Aren't they beautiful?

 Arbor leading to the back half of the yard

Espaliered apple trees along the back fence

Veggies and yard

part of the patio area

Since we're in the process of building our own chicken coop, I took a lot of pictures of everyone's designs for their chickens. I won't show you all the coops, but I do have to show you Caroline's!

Entrance to chicken coop and run

They took a shed, knocked out some walls, added some mesh (and Caroline's touch) and Voila! A thing of beauty!

Notice the Cupola on the roof? Her husband made that! I love the shutters and cute screen door. But wait until you see the inside...

Cute hand lettered sign on the nesting box,

Chalkboard signs letting us know the occupants names 

and what's that?

a chandelier in the chicken coop! Tres Chic!

There were sweet little areas to sit set up throughout the yard that just begged you to grab a class of iced tea and sit awhile.  The yard was inviting enough, but Caroline's gracious hospitality and warm heart, made me want to stay and linger away the entire day just talking with this amazing lady. You know how some people just make you feel like you're a friend right away, that's Caroline. :) 

Make sure you check out her blog, linked above and here again, and be inspired.   Her pictures on the blog are much better than mine! :)

 

Garden Days

We're slowly making our backyard a place where we enjoy sitting out and relaxing in. These past few weekends, while the weather has been so beautiful, we've been working on beautifying our little space.

First, we decided to double our gardening space this year! We figured out where we wanted to put our new beds, S. and I scraped away all the gravel, we went to Home Depot to buy the wood, came home and got busy!

Mark and S. put together the beds and brought the irrigation to our new beds all last weekend. On Friday, they delivered 3 yards of soil. Today, we went to the nursery and bought some plants and came home and planted them. :)  Such a wonderful sense of accomplishment to get it all done. :)  We've started with fewer plants than we have had in the past. We may add more to this but for now, we're good with this amount. It seems like we always over buy and the plants get so crowded!

Here's our garden for this year. :)

New Beds

A., S., and R. planting tomatoes

Tomatoes

 Green beans and a lonely watermelon plant

Planters

Mint from last year (such an invasive little bugger!)

 Tomato and some herbs

Zucchini 

We also have some planters on our back patio that I wanted to utilize more this year for cooking. 

Lettuce 

Leftover thyme from last year, basil and swiss chard

This planter had a mixture planted in it from last year. We have shamrock, that's coming back from a year ago! Chives from last year and the remains of our basil plant (the wood). I added some Swiss Chard because I didn't know where else to put it! :)

In our old home I had an arbor that I just loved. It had become part of the landscaping so when we moved, I had to leave it there. :(  Recently I found another arbor at Hobby Lobby that I thought would look nice in our new backyard. :)  It went on sale this past weekend and Mark gave his blessing to purchase it. :)  When we placed it in the back, over by our gardening area, S. had a great idea of grabbing our bistro table and chairs from the front yard and moving them over to sit in front of the arbor. 

New arbor w/ bistro table and chairs

As you can see, we need some more landscaping to make the place a little more cozy, but I think S. had a great idea. Can you imagine the arbor w/ some climbing flowering plants, a little shade tree off to the side and sitting there w/ your favorite beverage and a great book to read? It's a great location w/ some awesome views of our yard. 

The next spot we beautified is the gate that goes between our neighbors backyard and ours. We put the gate in when we moved in so the kids could go back and forth easily. There's a little speak easy cut into the gate so they can see if we're out and come over to play.  Love the idea of the gate but, the gate was just ick. LOL It's a pretty cheap gate that the painters never stained and is already showing a lot of wear after just over a year of being installed. Everytime I'd look over in that part of the yard, which has absolutely nothing in it, I would try to think of a way to make that area look a little happier and brighter.  I came up with the idea of adding a window box w/ flowers (fake!) under the speak easy. Once that was up, I grabbed our "W" from our old house and put it above the little cut out. And here's the results!

My "new" gate! Didn't it turn a rather drab gate into something fun?

S. and Mark set the pavers a few weeks ago, in anticipation of our garden. The bunnies were coming in from under the gate. Can't have that w/ fresh lettuce and other goodies newly planted! I like the way they look and think it would look even better extending them out a little bit more. Think they'll agree? Yeah, probably not. LOL

That's how we've been spending our last few weekends!  The next project is to string some fun lights around our patio. When we get that done, I'll post more pictures.

Hope you've enjoyed our beautification project! :)  How have you made your space a little brighter and happier?