Nature Study When You Travel - Kona Coffee Farms

Vacation nature study is a great way to learn more about the natural beauty and richness of a new place. We always try to include learning in our travel time and Hawaii affords some unique opportunities.

Especially for coffee lovers. Which I am....a lover of Kona coffee.

We visited two coffee farms on the Big Island of Hawaii and were able to tag along on a coffee tour at both places. The first farm was Mountain Thunder and we drove up the side of the mountain/volcano to try out their organic coffees. We met up with the tour and the first thing the guide showed us were the coffee trees.



Did you know that coffee continually blooms from February to October...at the upper elevation of this particular farm? You can have blossoms, green cherries, and red cherries all on the same branch. You harvest the berries when they are red so with coffee there is no one time harvest, it is a continual process.



We picked a few cherries ourselves, opened them up and tasted the sweet, slimy inside around the bean. There are normally two beans in every cherry (when there is only one round bean it is called a "peaberry"). The red skins are not wasted. They either compost them or make them into "Kona Red" which is a product rich in antioxidants. We were able to taste Kona Red tea and it was light and tasty.


Can you smell the heavenly aroma of coffee beans roasting? We were able to observe the whole process from bean picking to roasting at Mountain Thunder. Afterwards, we tasted coffee, sipping the steaming cups and delighting in the heady fragrance of the,100% Kona coffee. I chose a package of whole beans to bring home and enjoy here in California plus a box of dark chocolate espresso beans (haven't cracked the box yet...waiting).



Here was the resident cat at Mountain Thunder.....she looks like she needs a cup of the good stuff.


We also visited a coffee farm lower down in elevation. Greenwell Farms is a popular tourist stop and they were geared up for lots of tasting there. This was our second visit but our first time touring the farm. We were able to actually walk out and see the rows and rows of trees.



Here we saw the beans as "parchment" where they are drying in the sheds. They pull back the sliding roof and stir the beans. It was amazing how much work goes into a coffee bean to make my little cup of coffee. I know one of my readers is also a lover of Kona coffee and she drinks Greenwell Farms Chocolate Macadamia Nut Coffee (Hi Ellen!) but I am in love with their Chameleon Blend Kona Coffee. 


One last photo especially for Tricia over at Hodgepodge. Can you believe the size of these hydrangeas? These were along the road near Mountain Thunder and I thought of you when I saw them...had to stop to take a photo.


We really enjoyed the coffee farms on our trip but that was not the only opportunity we made for nature study related activities. I will post soon about our ocean adventures.

California Poppies - Using the Handbook of Nature Study and a Nature Journal Tutorial

The California poppies are late this year but right on time for our May Outdoor Hour Challenge for wildflowers. (See the May Newsletter for all the May topics to choose from.) We have both wild and cultivated poppies in our yard, hoping that the ones we planted with seed will self-seed for next year's crop.

As the state flower of California, you could expect that there would be lots to see in the spring and this year there are many.



There is a section of our walking trail that has a large garden of poppies in various stages of development. One of the interesting things that we have noticed about poppies are the way the petals unfold when it is ready to bloom. The "cap" comes off and reveals the flower underneath. After the flower blooms the petals fall and a pod is revealed that looks sort of like a bean pod. Here is look at it close up.



We took the idea from Lesson 155 in the Handbook of Nature Study (#7) and looked closer at the pod. We cut the seed pod open lengthwise to examine the seeds with a lens. We observed the ribs and how the seeds were attached inside.



Here is a close-up through the magnifying lens of the seeds inside the pod....amazing! All of us were fascinated with the way the seeds are in the pod like you see in a pea pod. We are going to continue watching the pods as they dry up to see exactly when they become black because we know the seeds we planted were not green but black.



Here is Mr. B's sketch of the dissected poppy pod.


Mr. B and I worked on notebook pages for our nature journals using the California Poppy pages from NotebookingPages.com. I highly recommend the Wildflower, Weeds, and Garden Flowers set because it has every flower listed in the Handbook of Nature Study...perfect companion to your nature study. If you own the Treasury Membership it is included so take a look for it in your files.

Fill In The Circle Tutorial

Many of you asked to have me give you more step-by-step tutorials on how I put my nature journal pages together. Here is one for the Fill In The Circle idea that is found in the May Newsletter. (All supplies are shown in the Amazon widget at the bottom of this blog entry - you may need to click over to the blog to see them.)



I started off with a large pencil circle for my poppy sketch. I also used pencil lines for the poem stanza that I wanted to include in this journal entry. I don't always draw lines so it is up to you whether you need them or not.



I added watercolor pencil to the poppy and then made a larger box with pen around the two pages I am working on. I like the "window frame" look to tie two pages together. I copied the poem onto the page using a black pen. I used Prang Semi-Moist watercolors to paint the yellow background....sort of a wash technique using just a little color. I decided I wanted some funky bubble letters so I added those next.



I printed one poppy photo to include on the left page and used watercolors to paint the bubble letters. I added the date to the bottom corner. You can use this idea with any topic you want to include in your nature journal. I would love to see your results so post them in your entry and then submit it to the Outdoor Hour Challenge Blog Carnival.

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Creating a Bee Habitat Garden - Suggestions and Ideas

We are starting to build our new garden area to replace a huge portion of our backyard lawn area. It has been a dream of mine to take the water-hungry lawn out and replace it with color and attractive plants for birds, bees, and butterflies. My husband and I finally agreed on a plan and we started a week or so ago to build the first two garden boxes from recycled blocks that came out of our frontyard remodel last fall. We are on a limited budget for this project so we are reusing materials we have on hand and it is going to be a long range plan to add more as we have time and money. We did end up purchasing and hauling in a yard of garden soil that we added some of our homemade compost to so we could fill up our boxes. We didn't use the complete yard of soil in the boxes but used the balance to top off our vegetable garden boxes and fill two pots for patio tomatoes.


Here is the first square which will anchor the whole project. We found some lavender on sale at Home Depot and we added four plants.....bees no extra charge. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that there are bees on these blossoms every day, at all times of the day.



We also have loads of bees in the dandelions over on the other end of the yard. I counted quite a number of bees in the yellow blossoms as I sat and enjoyed their cheerfulness one afternoon. My husband is not convinced to keep the dandelions and wants to pull them up. I asked him to wait a bit and then he can mow them over.

Mr. B is my garden helper these days and we enjoy spending time outdoors together.

The larger box is going to hold my sunflowers and zinnias. I am including the Lemon Sunflowers in this box as part of the Great Sunflower Project. I was reading on their website about their change this year and they have added quite a number of other flowers to the project so you can count bees in your area.

If you want to check it out, click over and read on their website but it looks like you can count bees on include Bee balm, Cosmos, Rosemary, Tickseed, and Purple coneflower.

The two brown piles of leaf compost that you can see in the image above are going to become part of another bee garden that we may get to this year. The link will take you to Renee's Garden where she has collaborated with the Great Sunflower Project on a list of bee attractive plants for your garden.

The only other part we are planning on planting this spring is the Three Sisters Garden that will be a long row parallel to the sidewalk just behind where my son is working in the image above. The Three Sisters are pumpkins, corn, and beans that you plant as companions. I am excited just thinking about this part of the garden!!!


I am anxious to add in a few things as we have time and the weather warms up. My husband keeps telling me he doesn't see my vision for the yard but I told him to have faith and see what evolves. At the bottom of the post are the seeds that I am planting in the new larger box if you are interested.

That is what we accomplished this week in our new garden project but here are a few of our on-going bee/butterfly/hummingbird habitat garden projects that are a work in progress.


We have been working on this section of the garden for a few years now and it is filling in and growing more beautiful with each passing season. If you click the photo and go over to Flickr I have made notes of what each plant is in the image.


In our front yard we added some Moonshine Yarrow....this has become another favorite of the bees this spring. I am anxious to see how it grows over the summer since it says it needs very little water.



I have to share my new yard art piece that my dear husband found for me. It is a metal butterfly balanced on top of a pole with river rocks stacked. It is the perfect piece for our front yard. I love the way it moves in the slightest breeze and is a great addition to the look of the front yard. I decided it is all about movement...the grasses, the forsythia, the butterfly bushes, and now the sculpture.


It looks like you can purchase it on Amazon.com! This is a much better price than my dear husband paid at our local garden shop. I may just have to buy one for a friend of mine who loves this sort of sculpture and would appreciate it too.

I have enjoyed reading all the entries over on Jami's blog An Oregon Cottage as part of her Tuesday Garden Party. Welcome to all who have clicked over to read my entry!

Barb-Harmony Art Mom
I welcome all readers to subscribe to my blog...see the sidebar for a place to enter your email.



Jami's Tuesday Garden Party meme is open from Tuesday to Thursday so there is still time for you to jump in and participate!

Early Spring Bulb Study: Watercolor Time

I started dreaming of spring bulbs blossoming way back in the fall. Although I didn't feel like getting out and digging the holes and actually planting them, I knew that if we did there would be a springtime show of color.

Well here it comes!

Here is our Early Spring Flower entry for the last challenge of the Winter Series of Outdoor Hour Challenges.



Our fall planted daffodils are adding splashes of yellow to our front yard. You might remember we did a complete remodel of our landscaping last summer/fall and we are just now starting to see the new plants getting green again. It is amazing to look out my front window and see how things are shaping up.



We have had lots of vases inside filled with daffodils....the new ones have rather large blooms.We can all clearly identify all the parts because of previously studying daffodils, including dissecting them. They are still an amazing flower to observe and to marvel at when you think that they come from a dried up old bulb you stick in the ground months ahead of time. They seem to know just when to start growing.



Don't you think they are even lovely from the back?



We have jonquils blooming in the yard as well which smell heavenly.

Part of my goal for 2011 is to learn more about my digital camera. I am on the page in the manual that talks about time lapse movies and I had a brainstorm yesterday to have Mr. A set up a spot to do a little experiment with the time lapse feature. We should have had it take frames more frequently and left the camera set up longer but you get the idea of how fast the buds opened up in the house from the video.


Another watercolor nature journal today....this one was fun because I used paint splotches at the end to sort of fill in the page. I would love to know from my readers whether my nature journal entries encourage you or discourage you from doing some of your own pages. Leave me a comment or send me an email....



I have enjoyed seeing your early spring flowers this week and it has recharged me to get going on the next series of spring challenges tomorrow. If you are still experiencing lots of snow and cold temperatures....be encouraged by those of us who are through to the other side of winter already.

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Family Mammal Study - Unexpected Deer and Our Usual Squirrels

As part of preparing for our mammal study this week, I pulled our mammal field guide from our shelf to have for easy reference. I opened to the introductory pages and I would love to share a few thoughts from those pages with you in this post.

• Most mammals are creatures of the darkness, only becoming active at night after dark and returning home again before dawn.
• Most nocturnal mammals communicate by odor which humans cannot detect and with sounds which are frequently high pitched and low in volume.
• Direct observation of most mammals is difficult except for a few species like chipmunks and squirrels.
• The vocalizations of mammals have not been extensively explored and most make brief sounds called "call notes".

We were walking along our usual trail having a great conversation when my son twirled me around to get me to look up on the hill. He had spotted a few young deer not too far from where we were. They were slowly moving along, not really paying too much attention to us. 

California mule deer are very common in our area and we often see groups of 8-10 deer alongside the road or in grassy meadows. My husband actually hit a deer with his truck last month when he was coming home from work...minimal damage and the deer bounced back up and ran off into the woods. He was lucky. He once hit a deer and it totaled the vehicle.



We were planning on studying our backyard squirrels this week as part of our mammal study but we spent a little time reading up on the mule deer too. California mule deer are very graceful and agile mammals. They have lovely eyes but don't let those innocent looking eyes fool you. They have been known to eat my garden down to the ground in one night.


There are three fox squirrels and one gray squirrel in our yard just about every day. They are in the bird feeders and up in the trees chattering at us and the dog pretty much all day long. I started off trying to keep them out of the feeders but it is an impossible task.

They are very acrobatic and can get to just about any of our feeders.

We spend time each day watching these very acrobatic mammals hop from limb to limb and then hang upside down to eat from the feeders.

Here is a coloring page for a Fox Squirrel.  We found this website that has a recording of the sound the fox squirrel makes.


Again, I ended up including photos as part of my nature journal entry to show the differences between the Western gray squirrel and the Fox squirrel.

One of my sons told me that it used to be an "event" when the gray squirrel showed up in the yard but now we have so many squirrels that they are commonplace. We have started to think of them as rodent pests rather than welcome visitors.

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

OHC Winter Insects and Hike With a Waterfall

We had almost given up trying to fit in a winter insect study but it was such a perfect day today to get outdoors that we took advantage. I whipped up some sandwiches, we jumped in the car, and we had a little picnic before we took a hike on our close-by and most familiar trail.


What impressed me the most as we started to hike was the greenness all around us!  The grasses, the mosses, and the ferns are what Crayola would call "spring green". It felt good to get outside and hike...we saw a red-tailed hawk right above us and it was amazing! We heard robins and Western scrub jays as we went along, nice to hear the familiar spring sounds in the woods.


Then the sky and clouds captured my eye and the beauty made me stop to admire and try to get a good shot of just how beautiful the almost spring sky is in our neighborhood today. We had a hail storm around 5:30 AM today and then the storm passed and the clouds parted, revealing a bright blue sky.

So for our insect study I was hoping to find some oak galls or leaf miners and I was successful in finding one of those things.


Leaf miners are talked about in the Handbook of Nature Study starting on page 329 (Lesson 77).
"Among the most familiar of these are the serpentine miners, so called because the figure formed by the eating out of the green pulp of the leaf curves like a serpent.....The serpent-like marking and the blister-like blothces which we often see on leaves are made by the larve of insects which complete their growth by feeding upon the inner living substance of the leaf."


We saw evidence of other insects all around the trail when we stopped to look closely.


As I was taking these photos, I happened to see this guy. I have absolutely no idea what kind of insect it is but was great to observe him this afternoon, a sign of life in these woods.


The next leg of the hike had some surprises in store for us. Like these very first of the season Shooting Stars!


And these colorful and cheery buttercups...added bonus....some small fly-like insect.



I have been down this trail a hundred times and I haven't ever noticed how nicely this manzanita is shaped. It must be pretty old because it is taller than most of the manzanita in this area and looks more like a tree than a bush. See the nice oak on the left all covered with spring moss?


On the way back up the trail we stopped to admire the waterfall and I was excited to see the early spring saxifrage beginning to sprout. Soon it will be blooming and I will know it is spring.


Kona had to get in the water while she waited for me to finish my photo taking. She moved some rocks around in the water with her nose and got a drink.


Here is the waterfall from the trail. This is looking up and there is a section below where we are so the sound of rushing water is heard from the parking place all the way down to where we turn around and come back up. It is one of those very relaxing and comforting sounds that we enjoy on this hike.


Here is a red insect I spotted while I was crouched down taking photos of the saxifrage. I don't know what it is but it had wings and eventually flew away.

I think that wraps up our hike and our insects for our study. We are going to try to identify the red insect in the photo above and add it to our nature journals this week. What a great day outdoors! I think I have been color deprived because just seeing the few wildflowers, the greens of the grasses and mosses, and the colorful insect has brightened my mood. I think we all feel better. 

Update:
I updated my last entry with a photo from last summer....we were at the redwood forest in Northern California. Click over and scroll down to see how small we are in comparison to the base of the tree!