Creatures of the Night

Thanks to emails from LocalHarvest.Org, we found out about and attended Creatures of the Night at the Fullerton Arboretum. Still daylight at 7:30p we headed out with a tic-tac-toe paper assignment with various things to check out. Some of the things to see on our assignment were looking into the palm fronds for owls, listening for frogs and crickets at the pond, looking for possom and/or skunk tracks in the desert area and keeping our eye out for jackrabbits in the garden. After about an hour or so, we had a lady with various creatures come talk to us about them. She showed us a possum, a snake and our all around favorite of the night, a fennec fox. I tried to document as much as could before the sun died down. 

I found out that they have plenty of volunteering positions for things like cultivating, potters, nature guides, etc. They also have a Victorian Society you can volunteer for where you can be a docent in Victorian attire. Volunteers for this learn historical facts about Dr. Clark, Heritage House, Fullerton and Orange County.

the little gatherer and other things

This weekend has proved to be another difficult one. I was in the ER for the seventh time and still with no answers. We just changed our medical group and I was able to see a Physician's Assistant yesterday and I am hoping to be hopeful (if that makes any sense). It's always harder when you don't see it coming, when you have been feeling good for a couple of weeks and then, it's here again. We are now waiting for another GI referral and we are hoping that whoever it is will be interested in what's going on and willing to help. A couple of things that I hope they checked for is Crohn's Disease and to give me extensive allergy tests. We'll see...

Other than that, it is Spring Break around here. On top of whatever it is that I have, I also have a cold. I didn't want to put a damper on Natalie being home with me this week and so I decided we would make a craft and take a walk. I put on Kiki's Delivery Service (it was a part of her easter basket goods, a long with a the parent trap (lindsay lohan version), a book, a skelanimal chick, several flower seeds and just a tad bit of candy) and we began to make a couple of God's Eyes. She did hers with different strings/yarns and colors and it became a bit of a rectangle shape. I thought it would make a perfect natural canvas and told her to get her basket so we could take a walk across the school to see what things she could find.

The day was beautiful and sunny without being hot. It seemed liked it just glowed and we both kept remarking on how pretty everything was.

Posing by the tree, with her 'serious closed eye' modeling...

It was a very nice walk until we had a little accident with her camera. It fell and now it only takes blurry photos. I can't stand not having a camera, even a little cheap one and we've seem to just have had rotten luck with keeping one.

My parents returned from their mini-vacation in San Diego and Nat recieved a beautiful dress from a store called Naartjie. I wished these photos had better focus but I hope you can get the idea. By the way, you can't really define them, but she is wearing owl earrings given to her so sweetly by Miss Helena (she gave me a pair too)!..





I had to resort to using my camera phone to show our little woven branches and what natural objects we used with them:

I also was catching up on my blog reading and found a perfectly timed post from my friend Lisa over at 5 Orange Potatoes about children and nature awareness. The Children and Nature Network , chairman Richard Louv, has declared the month of April to be Children and Nature Awareness Month. Lisa and her girls are always doing amazing natural crafts and activities and she has posted a great outdoor challenge button for anyone who would like to participate. I definitely need to post this over at Believing Nature but I thought since Nat and I had a mini nature sort of day, that it would perfect to post here first.

I am hoping that this cold will leave soon as well as any other thing that might get in the way of Natalie and I enjoying the outdoors during this pretty Spring week...

resurrection inspiration

one of my favorite blogs to visit is resurrection fern. it is always filled with pure, natural magic. inspirations from everything that surrounds us in nature. sometimes when i just need to have that deep inhale and a bit of rejuvenation, i like to peruse the entries and photos there. it is always filled with photos from nature and of course, the very talented works of margaret oomen. i am always blown away to see her crocheted works over stones of the earth. i love it and hopefully one day, i'll have one of her special works to dwell with me here.

i am always inspired when i visit her blog and began thinking of displaying some of my found things the way she does. i've always collected leaves, stone, shells, pine cones, feathers ever since i was a child. there is just something so simple and fascinating about bringing something home that once had it's own life in a world we may never know. i'll take the things in which i've collected and have them strewn about on windowsills, in boxes for safekeeping or jars for display.  on yesterday's walk, natalie and i both picked up a few tokens. i was looking for more rounded smooth stones and pebbles and she picked up the more jagged, rigid ones.


i washed and dried my stones and put them in a little bamboo container box i have. i picked two of the bigger stones and wrapped them with hemp twine and then stuck a feather in each of them (the feathers, from another walk, all put away in a jar too).

i looked for the first little thing i knitted a few weeks ago (i'm learning) and put my favorite rock on it. i can't quite remember where i got it from. i know it's not from here, in california, i believe i picked it up in arizona but i do know why i took it. i like its size and that it looked like a big, smooth egg. 
i tried wrapping it with my little red knitted 'thing' after i had made it into a little pocket of sorts using my hemp twine to 'sew' it together. natalie loved it so much, she wanted one too. since i am still learning and don't have any others, i gave her mine and we lovingly put her rock that she got from the san diego zoo in it.

She never went out on horseback but she brought home something - something found, or something bought. If she trotted to town or village, her burden was books [or distant melodies]. If to hills, woods, or the seashore, it was wonderful mosses, abnormal twigs, a handkerchief of wet shells or seaweed.”

— Thomas Hardy