Category: Nature

Two days ago, the neighbor’s alpaca had a cria.  Luke is an adorable little guy! He was looking great and doing all he was supposed to do.

Last night though, they discovered that he is not eating.  He went to the vets and had a check up.  The neighbors are now feeding Luke a goat’s milk and yogurt meal until he learns to nurse properly.

I believe that God enjoys listening and helping his children when they need help.  I don’t think that he thinks anything is too silly to ask about.  Would you please pray with us about the new cria?

He needs to learn to eat and he needs to start growing.  The kids already love him.  I know that they are learning a lot watching him be sick.  They will learn more as they learn to bottle feed him and take care of him to help the neighbors.  Please pray for them through this lesson!  Pray too for the neighbors as they take care of the little guy.

 

 

A few years ago, Allan found an article about a canoe trip down the Eleven Point River in Missouri.  He cut it out, thinking it sounded like a great idea.  When we starting talking about what to do for vacation this year, he remembered the article and we started researching it more.

The kids thought canoing sounded like fun.  Allan and I knew it would also be challenging.  Five days on canoes with everything we needed in backpacks.  We would need to filter all our water.  Bathrooms would be scarce. We would sleep in tents no matter the weather.  There would be bugs and “scary” animals.

We planned for months.  We dehydrated meals.  We made gorp and biltong.  We got the kids ready the best we could.

The day arrived, it was time to go.  Allan got off work early and we left as soon as we could.  The next day we got up and drove some more.

Finally we arrived!  We spent the night at our chosen outfitters.  We double checked our supplies and repacked our bags.  We asked more questions.

After a good night sleep, we loaded all of our needs into a van.  We were driven to our chosen starting point and then dropped off.  It was time to officially start our canoing trip!

 

We saw our first hummingbird!  We quickly made some sugar water and put our feeders up. Now to relax and watch them enjoy their free meal.

For the last few years, we have been raising butterflies.  We started out with some Painted Ladies that we had ordered. They were fun, but the caterpillar’s food was premade and they were supposed to stay in the little container they came in until they formed chrysalises.

We learned how to raise monarchs and have raised them from eggs for years. Some years we have raised over a hundred while last year we only raised a few because we could not find eggs or caterpillars.

Audrey decided it was time to do more.  Last year she collected any caterpillar she could find and learned what she could about it.  She discovered the Eastern Black Swallowtail.

We learned more than expected.  Ichneumon Wasps will lay their eggs in the caterpillar.  They are parasites and will feed on the caterpillar.  You will not discover the problem until you have a wasp emerge instead of a butterfly from the chrysalis.

A much more fun lesson is that these butterflies overwinter. If put in a safe place during the winter, they will emerge in early spring.  Audrey put some in the garage this winter. After bringing them inside in April, they are starting to emerge!

 

 

This is one of my favorite trees.

We have been on the lookout for spring flowers.  We find most of them in the woods, but we found a few in our yard and a neighbor’s yard. Our goal was to discover and name as many different types of flowers that we could.

I did not take photographs of all the flowers we found. We have also discovered tulips, Narcissuss, assorted colored violets plus others we did not know the names of.

How many of these have you discovered this spring?

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It is officially spring around here.  Mark and Adrian were outside cleaning up the yard while the girls worked inside. Mark let us know that they found the first snake of the year in our back yard. Everyone went outside to see it, and then the boys tried to catch it.  It was a very aggressive garter snake, so they decided to leave it alone.

 I love foggy mornings. The neighborhood looks so different, almost as if I am somewhere else.

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