Explore Outdoors ~ Violets and their Kin

 What do you notice about the flowers below? 

  

They look like they might be related, right? And they are! The first one is a violet growing in my yard, and the others are pansies, growing in pots at a nursery. 

Sometimes I think pansies look like giant violets - and they do share the same genus: Viola. They also have five petals, just like violets. But look at the violet petals: it looks like three go in one direction and two in the other. The pansies have four petals going up, and one going down (like the smile on a face). 

I've seen violets in my yard ranging in color from nearly white to pink, magenta, and deep purple. And some of the violets even have little faces, like these pansies do.

Look for violets and pansies growing near you. 

What things do you notice about them?

 

Explore Outdoors ~ watching flowers bloom

 

A couple weeks ago I was in Boston, watching magnolias bloom. One day they'd be a bud, the next they'd begin to burst open, and when I walked by a couple hours later, they were in full bloom! It's amazing what a couple warm spring days will do...

 

 Sometimes I refer to these Wednesday posts as "nature breaks" - and there's a reason. Getting out in nature, even for just 10 minutes a day, does wonders for your health - at least according to a study out of UMD and Cornell University.

What flowers are you noticing this week?

Explore Outdoors ~ a point of view

 

 What do you notice

when you get eye-to-leaf

with a plant growing 

from the ground 

up?

 

 

Explore Outdoors ~ look up!

 

 

 

What do you see 

when you look up into the trees?

What trees and shrubs

are breaking into bloom?

 

Spring is a Season for Hatching!

themes: Animals, nature, growing up, eggs

Watching and Waiting: What Hatches from Nature's Nurseries

By Sara Levine

32 pages; ages 4-8

Millbrook Press, 2025  

When you find something interesting and beautiful 

… what should you do? Should you poke it and prod it? Open it up to see what’s inside? Granted, that is the way curious naturalists discover things. But if you open things up, then what’s inside won’t grow anymore, says Sara Levine. So maybe you could wait?

What I like about this book: Using gentle, lyrical language, Sara ponders how one might observe nature without harming it. In particular, she offers strategies for watching how eggs develop and waiting to see what hatches out. She draws examples from birds, insects, amphibians, and reptiles. Back matter discusses what eggs are, egg cases and galls, and how to be an “observational scientist” – something anyone can do. The photos are gorgeous and will have children looking closer to study the details.

Sara is a member of #STEAMTeam2025. You can find out more about her at her website, www.saralevinebooks.com She's also a guest author joining me at the 5th Annual Arthropod Roundtable over on the GROG Blog on April 16. 

Butterflies come from eggs. But what happens when they grow up?

When a Butterfly Goes to School (Board Book)

by Laura Purdie Salas; illus. by Chloe Niclas 

7 spreads

‎Creative Editions, 2025

What does a butterfly do at school all day? From art class to science, story time to lunchtime we follow swallowtail and her friends.

What I like about this book: I have to confess that I loved the lunch break the best – the butterflies zip and sip their way through the flowers. The luscious artwork supports lyrical prose as the words ask us to suspend reality and join a butterfly on a normal day at butterfly school.

Beyond the Books:

Go on a gall walk. You can find round galls on the stems of goldenrod, bumpy galls on leaves, and fluffy galls on leaves as well. Find out more about galls – and see some examples – here and here.

Birds aren’t the only animals to lay eggs. Find out what other animals lay eggs, and what kind of eggs they lay. 

If you were a butterfly, what sort of things would you learn at school? What might you do in art class? In science? At story time? At play time?

Today we’re joining Perfect Picture Book Friday. It’s a wonderful gathering where bloggers share great picture books at Susanna Leonard Hill's website. Review copies provided by the publishers.

Explore Outdoors ~ Spring Comes In

 Spring officially started last week, but depending on where you live, signs of spring may have been sprouting up since February. Maybe it's the sound of running water (the creek at the bottom of the road is burbling along - noisy compared to a couple weeks ago!) or the abundance of bird calls. Maybe bits of green are poking up through the snow...

This week look for signs of spring!

Explore Outdoors ~ a field trip to Sapsucker Woods

 A couple weeks ago we headed up to Sapsucker Woods (Cornell Lab of Ornithology) for a wildflower walk. I can hear you asking: what about the birds? Oh, they were there - noisy and generally high in the trees where we couldn't see them. Meanwhile, the wildflowers were hanging around, close to the trail, showing off their prettiest blossoms and smiling for the camera.

wild geranium 

These are native woodland plants, found in eastern forests in North America. I think the leaves look like hands with fingers spread out.

   

 

 

 White trillium, another woodland native.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jack-in-the-pulpit (above) and some fern fiddleheads (below)

 

Sweet woodruff - it looks like it's related to bedstraw, and it is.

 

a quiet spot to listen to frogs singing....

and then off to see the geese! Oh, look at those cute fluffy babies!

Explore Outdoors ~ apple blossom pollinators

 Last week I was walking by my friend's garden and the air was filled with the sweetness of apple blossoms. The tree was busy with pollinators: honey bees, flies, wild bees. Here are a couple of the pollinators that took enough time at the blossoms to get pollen on their legs and elsewhere.

 

 

What pollinators are you finding on the flowers growing in your neighborhood?

Explore Outdoors ~ before the blueberries...

 About 10 days ago I noticed the buds swelling on the blueberry bushes. You can almost feel the impatience of the white flowers inside waiting to burst forth! 

What small bits of beauty will you discover this week?

Explore Outdoors ~ tricolored bumble bee

 Last week - on the first sunny day since the rain (and maybe since the eclipse...) I headed outside to see who was up and about. Yes, there were flies in the forsythia, and a woodpecker drumming on a tree somewhere nearby. Then I heard buzzing... the sort of buzzing a bumble bee makes. Sure enough, down in the tiny purple deadnettle blossoms.

There were actually two of them - probably queens out for lunch and possibly house-hunting - Bombus ternarius, commonly known as the tricolored bumblebee (aka orange-belted bumblebee). It was a good day to be flitting about; I also saw a mourning cloak butterfly and a smaller orange butterfly that wouldn't stay still long enough for me to get a good look at it. 

What's buzzing, flitting, and flying about in your neighborhood?

Explore Outdoors ~ spring flowers

 Forsythia is blooming like fireworks! And when you look closely at the flowers, you can find tiny visitors. What's blooming in your neighborhood? 

Explore Outdoors ~ Lichens and Moss

 There's something about lichens that enchants me. I love the idea of cooperative housing (fungi and algae living together) and how they are such pioneers. Lichens grow on rocks and tombstones and old picnic tables and even trunks and limbs of trees. Here are some I saw over the past week. Granted, the moss is pretty cool, too!

What kinds of lichen have you found lately?

Explore Outdoors ~ Look Closely to Find Spring

 

 Spring has sprung, they say. And sure, a couple of daffodils have bloomed. But for the most part, my yard is boring...

It looks bare and brown with a bit of moss here and there and scraggly tufts of grass and lots of dead leaves.

But look closer...

... lots of teensy mustards blooming. You can tell they're mustard flowers because they have four petals. These are growing in thin soil over rocky ground and I think they are one of the rock cresses. 

What's growing in your lawn?

Explore Outdoors ~ appreciating the other side of a flower

  This shaggy yellow flower is not a dandelion! It's a coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara) and is the first flower to push up through the soil in mud season - at least in our area of upstate NY. One way you can tell it's a coltsfoot is that there are flowers, but no leaves. Dandelions shoot up leaves first, then bloom.

Another way you can tell is by the stem. Dandelions have smooth stems that leak sticky white sap when you break them These stems look rather scaly with all those bract-like leaves on the stem. And when their leaves do finally emerge, they are roundish - like a colt's foot, not spear-shaped like dandelion leaves.

 

What do you notice when you look at the back sides of flowers growing near you?

 

Explore Outdoors ~ Spring Trees

The Vernal Equinox occurred an hour before midnight. So (despite the snow) it's officially Spring! And for the last couple weeks, some of the trees in my yard have been getting ready to flower. Here are two of them: a red maple and a birch.

 

What are the trees doing in your neighborhood?

Explore Outdoors ~ Who's hanging out in the Crocuses?

 

Last week I noticed crocuses popping up in yards down in town. Lots of crocuses. So I wandered over to see whether any insects might be checking them out. I expected bees - maybe early bumble bees, though to tell the truth, March 10 is very early for anyone to be waking up and heading outside.

I didn't see any bees, but I did notice flies. Some were tiny and dainty; others were like this stout fellow.

What flowers are blooming in your neighborhood?

And what insects are visiting them?

Explore Outdoors ~ Dandelions (and the bugs that love them!)

 

 

We're going on a dandie hunt (sung along to the tune of Going on a Bear Hunt). You do have dandelions growing in your neighborhood, don't you? But we're not just looking for dandelions - we're looking for the insects that hang out on them. Dandelions may not be the best source of nectar and pollen for bees, but they are an early source of food for insects. Which is why I consider them "pretty yellow flowers" and not "weeds."

This week, take a close look at the dandelions growing in your yard, along the sidewalks, in gardens, and at the park. Then look closer. You might see:

• carpenter bees
• wasps
• flies of all kinds
  
• miner bees
• honey bees
• bumble bees
• spiders
• butterflies
  
• slugs

... or even something else! Spend some time watching them. Draw a picture and jot down some distinguishing characteristics of the critter you find. For example: that tachinid fly in the bottom left corner. See those short antennae? The white patch on its butt? The way it holds its (single pair of) wings out at an angle? 

If you'd like to grow some flowers for bees and other pollinators, check out the list I have in this post from a few years back.

Explore Outdoors ~ Yellow Flowers

 Every season has its colors. For our area, spring starts out yellow, with daffodils, dandelions, coltsfoot, and these - forsythia and willow. What color(s) does Spring wear in your area?

 

 

 

Explore outdoors ~ trilliums!

Today I'm celebrating trilliums on this blog. Over at The GROG blog it's Bugs - the Third Annual Arthropod Roundtable. Hop on over and join a delightful group of authors with bugs in their books.

The red trillium is native to the eastern and northeastern US, blooming in the spring. Some people call it "Robins Wake" because it blooms at the same time robins show up, and it has those red petals. The flowers grow in shady wooded spots, and when they are finished blooming they produce a bright red berry that birds and other animals eat. If you are lucky enough to find some, just take pictures. These flowers are on the NY state protected list.

What flowers do you find in shady places?

Explore Outdoors ~ emerging daffodil

Watching flowers is like watching birds ~

but slower.

Sure, they don't have wings

but they do have showy colors

and they make your heart sing! 

 

This week check out the flowers opening up in your neighborhood. 

• Do they hang out in groups?
• What colors do you notice? 
• Are your flowers on trees or shrubs?
• How many petals do your flowers have?