Green Hour #5 - Making a list

I have really been enjoying flipping through the Handbook of Nature Study. I love reading about all the different flowers and plants. I haven't even started looking at the animals (except the salamanders, because of last weeks fun with Salamanders). Last night I thought about our assignment for the Green Hour Challenge, which is to create a list of subjects to look at within our chosen focus. Since we are, or I am, focusing in on plants, I looked through those lists. I picked a few plants that I had either seen recently while out and about or that I knew would be coming out soon. It is a short list at the moment but I may add to it.

Daffodils
Buttercups
Dandelions
California Poppies
Clovers
Moss
Mushrooms

This morning I took the kids for a trip around the block. I brought along a water jug so that we could pick a few wild flowers. Sophie was excited about this and said "Then when we come back, I can draw them". I planned to go out in search of clovers or buttercups. We did find some clover in a few lawns and the kids counted the leaves hoping to find a four leaf clover. No luck today on that one.
Since I had read the passage on buttercups the night before I had it fresh in my head as we went out our walk. We looked at these flowers that are growing like weeds all around the neighborhood. After a closer look at the leaves of these yellow flowers, they don't quite resemble the buttercups pictured in the book. So even though many people call these buttercups I don't know if they really are. The leaves of these more resemble clover leaves.
We did pull one up from the root and Sophie got a winner. Look at how long that root was.
Even if they aren't buttercups we still enjoyed them. Here is Henry in someones front yard enjoying a whole bunch of them.
The house just down the street from us has a bunch of Birds of Paradise and usually when we walk by the kids notice how old and shrived the flowers looked but they were glad to see some new ones have finally grown and they really do look like the plumage of birds.

As we continued our walk I spotted a flower I hadn't seen yet this year and all of a sudden there is a bunch of them.

Sophie knows this flower well. She loved looking at them last year when we saw them.

They are such a cheerful, colorful flower. They look so nice mixed in with a bunch of other flowers. That orange just pops out.


It was hard to keep the kids from picking these. I remember once when I was little my Mom or Dad told me that it was illegal to pick California Poppies because they were the state flower. I don't know if it is illegal to pick them but I still don't pick them to this day. So we smelled them and petted them and Henry did pull a few petals off of one but we didn't pick any to add to our water jug of wildflowers.
We were out for only a hour and had a great time listening to birds and noticing the trees starting the grow their leaves. My kids sure love looking at flowers and Henry loves trying to climb every tree he can find.
Sophie did come back and draw the flowers in the jug.