Winter Rain Walk in the Woods

Crustose lichen and moss

We had a rainstorm from Thursday to Monday which dropped more than eight inches of rain...forgot to dump my rain gauge so I don't have an accurate total. The rain was so very refreshing and brought a measure of relief to my dry yard. I know we still need more rain but it is nice to have a break now to enjoy the sparkling air, the warm sunshine, and the revived plants and bushes.

Sunday we took advantage of a small break in the rain to walk to the river, probably about a mile's hike. The woods there are mostly oaks with a few pines and a couple of old madrones. Madrones have such wonderfully smooth red bark and perfectly leaf-shaped leaves. They are not common enough for me to pass by without taking note of just what a pretty tree they are. I didn't stop to take a photo of a madrone this time but I promise to next time we are on this particular trail.

Cold gray winter day at the river

The river was roaring down the canyon and we didn't stay long to enjoy its beauty since we weren't sure how long the rain was going to hold off. Besides, it was really cold...much colder than I expected and my fleece jacket really wasn't enough.

Foliose lichen and bracket fungus

We stopped along the trail coming back to inspect and appreciate the many colors and textures of the lichen on the tree trunks and rocks. Can I call the fungus beautiful too? It was.

Fruticose lichen

We made it back to the car and home just in time for it to pour rain again. I am glad we didn't miss the chance to experience the winter rain in this little woods...it was quiet, green, and refreshing.

Interested in studying moss and lichen more? You can click over to read a past Outdoor Hour Challenge:
#42 Moss and Lichen

Moss and Poppies: Living in the Cracks

I love carrying my little point and shoot camera with me when I walk. If something grabs my attention, I can seize the opportunity to capture the moment.

This morning the sun was shining, although the air was crisp. I was the only one out and about the neighborhood. I love that.

We live near a school and a few summers ago they built a sidewalk to nowhere. There really is no rhyme or reason to where it starts and ends. As puzzling as this sidewalk is, it allows me to walk with Kona any time I want without worrying that my shoes will get muddy. We take the brisk walk on the cement down the street to where the sidewalk dead-ends and then we turn around and come back. I have decided they built this sidewalk for me since I rarely see anyone walking on it at any time of the day.


Here is the view at our turn around spot. There is a busy road here but the view is pretty with mostly oaks but also a nice mix of conifers.


The creek that runs here seasonally is covered in blackberries. I snapped this photo and then realized that there are thistles down here as well! I have my own little thistle patch within walking distance of my front door. You know I will be following their progress throughout the winter and then into spring.

We arrived back at the house in a much better mood than we started out...funny how that always happens no matter how short the walk. I took Kona off the leash and she did what she loves to do....run up to the deck to sit in the sun. I actually took a minute to notice that we have a welcome addition to the remodeled frontyard.


We didn't plan for this to happen but it is a great touch to our new paver walkway. Moss is growing in the cracks. I have always wanted a walkway with moss between the bricks. Thanks moss for inviting yourself!


Not only moss but on closer inspection I noticed that there are California poppies emerging from between the cracks as well. I am going to leave them and see what happens as the winter progresses. We planted a scatter garden last fall and these must be volunteers from that batch.


One last image for you: Here is one of the decorative rocks in our front garden with a bit of moss growing. But, isn't it pretty with the sage blossoms that have fallen there...love the mix of color. My favorite combination of purple and green.

Another terrific day to be outside enjoying all the bounteous gifts to be seen. Now to make a cup of something warm to heat up these cold hands. Tea or coffee?

How is your November World nature study coming along? Make sure to share your posts with the OHC Blog Carnival. The link is on my sidebar >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

December World - Texture

We had a break in our rainy weather so that meant we seized the opportunity to get out and walk with the dog on the walking trail. Our surprise nature study subject of the day was "mushrooms". They were in abundance on this trip down the trail.

After looking at all the photos when we got home, I decided the theme of the day was "texture".


Must be something rotting underneath the debris....makes for a great photo.



Lots of things going on in this photo...reds and greens make a nice contrast to each other.


This is my favorite image of the day....wow! Look all those textures and colors and layers.



Someone or something had knocked a bunch of mushrooms loose along another section of the trail. Love the gills in this mushroom image.


Last one for today....mushrooms and brown grass make an interesting composition for this image.

We are enjoying our winter break and spending lots of time outdoors, both in the yard and out on walks. I haven't had any nature study subjects in mind except to enjoy the pleasures that December has offered. I am sort of itching to get started on a more focused nature study plan again in January.

The Winter Series of Outdoor Hour Challenges is available from last year on the sidebar of my blog if you are interested in working through those this year. I also am writing a complete set of notebook pages and compiling last year's Winter Wednesday challenges into an ebook with some updated information and links. I hope to have that book available to purchase by the end of the week. I am thinking if you completed the Winter Series of Outdoor Hour Challenges last year, you can use the Winter Wednesday ebook this year with the notebook pages. You can look at the Winter Wednesday topics if you click the Winter tab at the top of my blog. I am writing the WW ebook in such a way that you DO NOT need the Discover Nature in Winter book to complete them, it is suggested but not necessary. This will cut your investment considerably since you really only need the ebook to complete all the WW challenges.

I hope that explains what I am up to for the winter season of nature study. Please feel free to email me if you have any confusion or any questions.

I am off to San Francisco today to spend the day looking at some great art....Post-Impressionists! Of course the museum is in Golden Gate Park so we will more than likely be taking a walk to see what we can find.

Have a great week!
Barb-Harmony Art Mom

December World - Colors

Our December days are accented with color....right in our own yard.

My husband brought some granite rocks into the front yard when we remodeled and I am so happy to see that they are alive with moss and lichens of a variety of colors. Now when I walk down my front path I will see some living things that have made themselves at home...that makes me happy.

There are still leaves falling each day from the colorful trees and I love the way this red leaf fell among the yellow-green leaves. Now that I look at the photo closely, I notice there is a mushroom peeking through on the top left side.

The gray skies of December have a different feel to them and give the afternoon a somber cast. The sweet gum tree is all dressed up with its sticker balls and a few remaining red-orange leaves. I find myself looking up at the sky more in the winter....checking the sky for clouds, looking for birds, viewing the world that opens up when the leaves are gone.

I feel a whole series of December World posts coming on as I work my way through my photos from this week. Using photography to capture your world is not only an easy way to document your time outdoors but it can be therapeutic to see the world through the lens of your camera. You get to focus on the small and the big.

Hope you are enjoying the series so far.

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Greens of Winter-Wow!

It was a cold, wet day but if you stopped and looked closely....there was beauty all around us.



This lichen is just so interesting!



Even on the tree trunks it was beautiful.

On the Trail of Some Mammals: Outdoor Hour Challenge #44

We do not have many rabbits in our neighborhood although we have seen tracks in the snow up in the mountains not far from here. We read up on rabbits but we also tried to brainstorm other mammals we might see or see signs of on our Outdoor Hour hike this week. Here is our running list:
Western Grey Squirrel
Fox
Raccoon
Opposum
Skunk
Mule deer
Mole
Gopher
Deer mouse
Coyote

Many of these mammals are rarely seen during daylight hours but we thought we might see signs of them along the trail if we looked closely.

Here is a little glimpse of what we saw along the trail as we kept our eyes out for signs of mammals. We obviously don't have any snow at the moment so we were looking for tracks in the damp earth. My husband thought it might be a deer trail but the branches of the bushes are too low for a deer to easily slip through. I think it must be a smaller mammal...maybe a fox? We looked very carefully but we could not see any clear tracks in the mud which is even more curious to us.


We also found several holes that looked promising and this one looked freshly dug. No prints in the dirt though.


Here is a pine cone that shows signs of having been someone's dinner. Scattered around this area were parts of the cone as well.

Now for the photos for the more serious mammal hunters. Scroll down for some scat photos or you can finish here. :) Seriously, these are really graphic animal dropping photos. Don't feel bad if you skip them.












This was full of fur and very black. After looking in several reference books, including the Discover Nature in Winter book, I think this is fox scat.


This one was full of some kind of red skins, maybe from some berries or fruit. I am not sure at all who it belongs to.

How about some nice photos to finish with?


Pretty green moss from my frontyard.


Great winter weeds from our weekend hike.

Although we didn't see any rabbits or signs of rabbits, we had a great time looking for other mammals during our afternoon walk.

Have a great week.
Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Outdoor Hour Challenge #42 Moss and Lichen

Welcome to this week's Outdoor Hour Challenge. If you are reading your entries via an email subscription, you probably missed yesterday's video....you might want to to click over to the actual blog entry and view it there.
Moss Walk

I have had done more research and observation for this challenge than any we have done so far because it is a topic that I am totally uneducated about and felt the need to bring myself up to speed. Last week were looking out for fungus and ferns...our family learned about what kind of mushrooms we have in our area.

Here is another great link for fungi if you are still working on last week's challenge:
Backyard Fungi

This week the challenge is going to focus on moss and lichen. My hope is that even those of you who live where it is cold or where you already have snow that you can possibly find some lichen on tree trunks even at this time of the year.
Here a few pages to get you started.

Crustose Lichen (crusty)

Foliose Lichen (leafy)


Fruticose Lichen (shrubby)



I found this artwork on WikiMedia Commons and since it is in the public domain we are able to share it here on the blog. Please see the link for more of his great artwork. You can be sure you will be seeing more of it here in the future.

“The mosses are a special delight to children because they are green and beautiful before other plants have gained their greenness in the spring and after they have lost it in the fall; to the discerning eye, a mossy bank or a mossy log is a thing of beauty always.”
Handbook of Nature Study, page 709





Outdoor Hour Challenge #42
Flowerless Plants-Moss and Lichens


1. Read about mosses on pages 709-714 of the Handbook of Nature Study. The information on mosses is limited in the book so I found a link about moss for you to preview and then share if you would like with your children.

Life Cycle of Moss (animated and narrated)

There also is limited information in the Handbook of Nature Study on lichen which I think we should study along with moss . I actually like the information on Wikipedia, especially the photo gallery at the end of the article.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lichen (As always preview any material you wish to share with your children.)

Or you can try these links for a simple, child-friendly explanation and some photos:
Crustose Lichen (crusty)
Fruticose Lichen (bushy)
Foliose Lichen (leafy)

Use the descriptions and photos on pages 712 and 713of the Handbook of Nature Study to see if you recognize any mosses that you have locally. Make sure to pay attention to the diagram on page 710 that labels the different parts of the hair-cap moss so when you are outdoors you can look for the spore capsules and stalks.

I found this printable guide to twelve kinds of lichen to be helpful. 

2. Find 15 minutes to take a walk outdoors and look for some mosses or lichens. Mosses are found in all habitats and if you look hard enough you might be surprised where you find moss growing. Look in sidewalk cracks, along the edges of buildings, and on stones in the garden,. Lichen will be found on tree trunks or branches or on rock faces. Bring a hand lens along with you on your walk and use it to examine any moss or lichen you find. See if you can find the spore capsules and the places where the spores sift out. Children will want to touch the moss to observe how soft it feels. If possible, use a few minutes to compare samples of mosses and lichens. If you don’t find any moss or lichen, use your observation skills to find something new to look at during your fifteen minutes of the Outdoor Hour.

3. If you are able, try sketching any moss or lichens that you find during this challenge while you are in the field. If you are limited in your time outdoors due to weather conditions, decide if you can bring a small amount of moss or lichen indoors to put on your nature table or in a terrarium. Use this sample and a hand lens to draw a sketch into your nature journal. Make sure to observe how it feels and smells as well as how it looks and record these thoughts in your nature journal as well. If you were not able to find any moss or lichen for this challenge, keep your eyes open as the seasons progress and perhaps you will find some moss to draw in the future. If your child is very young, skip the nature journal this week and have a discussion about what you saw during your Outdoor Hour time.

4. Update your list of mushrooms and ferns if you discovered any new kinds during this challenge. Start a list of mosses and lichens if you wish. You can document each item with a photo for later identification if necessary.

5. After you finish your challenge, make sure to share your link on Mr. Linky. All the challenges are listed in the sidebar of the Handbook of Nature Study blog. Please be sure to link to the specific blog entry for this challenge.

If you would like to have the first ten challenges in eBook format, they are now available for purchase.

Moss Walk

This entry more or less shows you what I subject my children to on a nature walk. They are always telling me that I get excited about the funniest things. Well here you go, proof that they are right.

This trail is the one we take all the time and is about three miles from my front door. I view it as my own little nature study laboratory. We have started taking our pup on this hike with us and she is happy that we love nature study since it gives her time to explore a little out in the woods.

This is the view at this time of year with no leaves on the deciduous trees. You can hike all the way down to the bottom of the canyon and be at the American River if you have a couple hours to spare. We have done it before and it is a great hike....just about straight up all the way back though.

We stayed a little later than normal on this particular hike and once again we saw the moon on the horizon as we hiked back up to the car. The cold brisk air in the canyon reminded us that it really is December even though everything is very dry. The mushrooms that we had seen last week on this part of the trail had been rooted out by some animal. Now I want to know who eats that particular mushroom....research to do.

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Fungus and Fern Hikes: Our Outdoor Hour Challenge #41

We have been on the lookout for mushrooms and ferns for the last few weeks in anticipation of this challenge. I am overwhelmed with how much I don't know about mushrooms at this point but I am determined to document the mushrooms and other fungus that we see so that when I have a cold winter day and I want to spend some time with a field guide, I will be able to flip through the photos and hopefully come up with names for them.

I decided that there are so many photos that I would make a slideshow on Flickr.com to share with you. The fungi are from three different places but the majority are from my own yard or from a hike within three miles of my house. The others are from the Calaveras Big Trees State Park.

Mushroom Slideshow

As we hiked yesterday, I noticed that the boys were catching sight of more and more varieties of mushrooms than ever before. They even spotted some that I didn't see and directed me to go back to the spot and take a photo. :)

This particular hike they were having a good time in the cool fresh air together.

If you look carefully up over the trail where the boys are hiking, you will notice a tree that broke off and is just barely hanging in place. The boys thought they should try to throw rocks at it to see if they could get it to come down but my dh explained that he didn't think that was a really great idea. :)

I noticed that I was getting into quite a few sticker type seeds as we walked along.


We hiked back to the top and noticed that the moon was up over the oaks. What a great blue sky, don't you think?


So I am still getting used to my new little camera but I think I will like it in the long run. It has a better zoom and the viewing screen is much bigger. (Costco coupon sale!)

Here are the last of the photos for today.

Backside of a fern

Big ferns along the path.

Ferns along the side of a gully that will have a creek running in it once it rains again around here. :)

Here is my son's mushroom diagram for his nature journal. We copied this out of the Handbook of Nature Study, page 719.


This was a great challenge for our family and we never dreamed we would find so many different kinds of mushrooms and other fungi to study.

I encourage you all to give the challenge a try either now or when your weather is cooperating.

Barb-Harmony Art Mom