Bases Loaded with One on Deck

Our Future Veggies!

Oh sure, he's smiling now....

 

But that was before he was told he would have to eat them some day!

 

I think we'll just stay inside!

I'm starting to get a bit nervous about the wildlife in our backyard.  We've come across a couple of distressing sites since being here. 

The first one was last week.  It actually started out as an exciting discovery.  It was a birds nest with 4 eggs in it.  The nest was built between two spotlights right outside the screen porch.  We were looking forward to watching them hatch, and were hoping to observe a feeding or two since it was in such an open and easily visable area.  We never got to see the eggs hatch, and James was the first to discover the baby birds, when he almost stepped on one.  At the time 3 had already fallen out of the nest, and the 4th one was on it's way.  I grabbed two sticks and tried placing them back in their nest without touching them, but the nest was a bit slanted and they just kept falling out.  I finally just had to leave them on the ground.  I went out the next morning and they were dead.  Something must have gotten to them that night, because the morning after that they were gone.

Today I see the boys hovering around something in the yard.  The screen door was open and I could hear some of what they were saying.

"I think it's head got bit off!"

"No." (pause while further inspection takes place) "Well, not it's whole head, just half of it!"

I sat there debating for a bit, but curiosity finally got the better of me.  I slipped on my shoes, grabbed the camera and headed out.  Sure enough there was a pretty big frog with only half his head.  The top part must have been eaten by something.  He was still alive, even hopped a time or two.  No eyes, no nose, just a bottom lip and a throat that you could see straight down.

Poor Kent has missed most of this, but he did have a run in with Punxsutawney Phil this morning.  We knew we had some sort of critter getting into our trash each night.  This morning Kent got to meet him when he went to dispose of his yogurt cup before getting in his car.  

For those of you wanting to attract some groundhogs of your own, they seem to be particularly fond of chicken legs.

Friends Don't Let Friends Drink and Handle Snakes

We had the pleasure of attending a "Snakes of Georgia" presentation at a friends house today.  The boys and I, along with several other homeschooling families got to see a sampling of snakes (venomous and non venomous) native to our area.  It was extremely informative, and we all certainly learned a lot, but I must admit the parts that I found the most interesting had nothing to do with our Georgia serpents.

First, the presenter and snake handler was named Patrick Ireland.  I kid you not!  This is his real name.  (If you fail to see the irony in this you need to read up on this guy.)  

One of the first things Patrick Ireland shared with us was his knowledge of certain television shows.  Shows that because I have four boys, I am very familiar with and have most likely seen every episode.  Ever watch "Crocodile Hunter" or "Jeff Corwin"?  Ever get nervous watching those shows, cause you just know one of these times their luck is going to run out and they're going to get bit?   If so, you worried in vain, because it's all pretty much fake!  The live snakes are most likely from their own personal collection, not from deep in the jungles of Borneo.  And the snakes that Steve Irwin would rush up and grab by the tail, were mostly likely dead snakes that had been frozen, then thawed for the shoot.   I guess it all makes sense.  The crews for those shows must be huge, and it would probably be a most cumbersome and time consuming task following Jeff and Steve through the Amazon looking for that perfect specimen, much easier to bring your own and stage it!  Patrick also explained that most snakes found in the wild aren't as "attractive" as the snakes raised in captivity, since they are not as well feed and can often be scared from encounters with other animals in the wild.  

This lead to the discussion of who gets bit more; men or women?  And where do people get bit most often; near home or in the wild?  The answer: Men, who find a venomous snake on their property and instead of calling in a professional they either try to kill the snake themselves, or imitate what they've seen on "Animal Planet".  Many times there is alcohol involved.   I certainly believed this because after hearing this bit of information, I immediately thought that it was a good thing these shows didn't exist when my dad was in college, who after drinking a bit to much with his fraternity brothers, decided to imitate what he saw on one of his favorite shows.  In this instance it was an ax being thrown into a tree.  In the show the ax would embed itself into the trunk of the tree and stay there.  In real life, it bounced off the trunk of the tree and back into my dad's foot. 

To sum it all up this is what we learned today:

• Copperheads are the only venomous snake that we would possibly see slithering around our house.
• Non-venomous snakes are good!  They eat venomous snakes.
• Hollywood is a magical place, and not everything you see is real, so please, don't try this at home!

              

Fresh Food by the Foot

When I made our plans for science this year, one of the things I wanted to do was botany.  To study botany we were going to plant a garden and various types of plants, including some carnivorous ones, and we were going to start in the spring.  This was before the drought took full effect and we were banned from outdoor watering.  Our county has eased up on restrictions a bit, and we are now allowed 25 minutes of hand watering, on certain days of the week, at ridiculous hours in the morning, so I'm not sure how great our garden will be this year, but we are giving it a whirl anyways.  (I'm sure there's lots of good lessons to be learned about growing a garden in less than stellar conditions, right!?)

One book that has given me hope for success is Mel Bartholomew's "All New Square Foot Gardening".  There was a write up in the paper on it a few weeks ago, and I was able to quickly secure a copy at the library.  Kent, the boys and I all fell in love with it, so it is now sitting in my Amazon.com cart waiting to be purchased in the next day or two, along with a whittling book for Michael and a resource book for me.  (Gotta meet that $25 for free shipping!) 

Kent has made a list of the wood we need to build our first box, along with some smaller square foot boxes to adorn the steps of our deck.  We also have a list a mile long of everything we want to plant, so I guess we'll have to narrow that down a bit.  According to the book, 12 square feet can grow quite a bit of food, but not 40 different kinds of plants, vegetables, herbs, and berries. 

As for the carnivorous plants, I bought a seed packet when I ordered my school books last year, and the library actually has a book on how to grow them, so we'll see how far we get with that. If we do not have success on our own, I've been assured by our local nursery that they carry a variety of carvinorous plants there.  I've promised the boys bug eating plants, and they shall have them! 

I'll keep you posted as we go along.  Hopefully over the next few months all of our thumbs will be turning a lovely shade of green!

All Things Fall

Yesterday marked the first day of fall, so we at the Bases Loaded house decided to fill our day with everything autumn.

After lunch we headed up to Kennesaw Mountain for our first nature hike of the season.  A few days ago Dawn posted a great autumn nature scavenger hunt, which we decided to take along with us today.  The boys wasted no time in finding things on the list.

Change leaves, including a red, yellow and orange leaf, and a leaf with three colors.  The first picture also features the nut we found.

 

A leaf with holes in it.

  A tree with no leaves or very few at all.

An insect home, kind of.

Some fungus.

It took us to the very end of the hike, and we didn't think we'd find any at all, so we were very excited to find these holly berries towards the end of trail we were on.  The list didn't specify that they had to be edible right?  I'm sure some living creature eats these things.

A conifer tree and it's pine cones

An example of decomposition

Something that lives under a log

Signs of animal activity and presence

An animal home

 

Aside from a few ants, we didn't really see any insects, let alone get pictures of them, but we did find this beetle in our yard the other night.

Had no luck with flowers that were still in bloom, but our neighbors have some beautiful flowerbeds planted in their yard so we took a picture of those.

And what about those autumn sounds?  Well, every time a breeze came along you could hear and see lots of leaves and oak seeds falling to the ground.

Thank you Dawn, for sharing your list, it was lots of fun!

When we returned home it was time to bake our first treat of the fall.  Nothing says fall like pumpkins, so I settled on these "Pumpkin Whoopie Pies" from Martha Stewart.  Kent, James and I enjoyed ours very much.  And just to let you know, should you ever make them, they taste better after they have been refrigerated and the filling has set.  Matthew and John just ate the cookie part and Michael had leftover Hershey chocolate from last night.   

On the blog of my friend Jen, I discovered a painting by Guiseppe Arcimboldo entitled "Autumn", that I thought was very cool.  He has one for each season.

It gave me and idea for our next unit of art study.  I showed it to the boys tonight and told them that over the next few weeks we'll be looking at optical illusions, or "deceptive" type art.  We'll definitely include Arcimboldo's work, as well as some stuff by M.C. Escher, "The Water Hole" by Graeme Base. Hopefully I can find one of those books that have those pictures that were so popular years ago where if stared at it long enough and let your eyes kind of unfocus you could see a 3-D image inside the picture.  Does anyone remember what these were called?  They were all the rage 12 years ago when Kent and I got married, there was even a Seinfeld episode on it.

After our art study we read our first fall book, "Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf".

And to end our night, I popped some popcorn for the boys and we watched "A Bugs Life".  It might be a stretch to call it a fall movie, but they are foraging food to prepare for winter, and they do make that fake bird out of beautiful fall leaves, so it works for us!

Hope you all had a wonderful first day of fall!  We will be celebrating all week, except for Wednesday, because that's Johnny Appleseed Day , but apples are very fallish, so it will be a perfect addition!

Bambi x 2

If our children know that a baby deer is called a fawn, they certainly didn't learn it from us. 

Kent calls me from his cell phone, "Megan, if you look out the side window of the playroom you'll see a doe and two bambies"  I in turn tell the same thing to the kids.

Can a doe have twins?

After doing some research on the Internet this is what we found out: (this information is only on white tail deer)

• A young doe usually has just one fawn.
• Adult deer usually have twins.
• 10-15% can actually have triplets. 

Wow!  Who knew?  And considering our backyard is Grand Central Station for the MANY deer in our neighborhood, I'm surprised this is the first time we've seen this:

Bambi 1

Bambi 2

As a final note, John was just in here looking at the pictures.  Out of curiosity I asked him if he knew what a baby deer was called.  He replied, "A bambi."  Oh well!  As long as he doesn't add "I learned that in homeschool" after he shares his wealth of knowledge with someone, I guess we're OK! 

Feed the Birds

Lately Michael has expressed a great interest in nature photography, so we decided to play around with the camera this weekend and take a few pictures of the part of nature that just so happens to fly right up to our kitchen windows everyday.

Female American Goldfinch

Male American Goldfinch

Female House Finch

Male House Finch

Mutant Molting Male Cardinal (all the cardinals are losing their head feathers right now, we haven't seen the females at the feeder since this started happening)

Tufted Titmouse

Redheaded Woodpecker. 

John gets the credit for the above picture, they're hard ones to get.  He sat at the kitchen table a good long while waiting for that little beauty to come along.

The boys did an awesome job, and we had sure had a lot of fun.  This has motivated us to try and find the instruction book that came with our camera to see if there are any useful tips there, and I will also be browsing the library catalog to see what I can find in the way of beginning photography books.