Nature Week!

 

This past week or so has been unofficially a "week of nature".  Mommy comes up with this stuff...I just go along with it because her stuff is usually fun (like letting me set up my tent in the front yard)!

We discovered a huge (that's my hand in the photo above) green caterpillar called a Tomato Hornworm on our eggplant plant in the garden. It spent two days eating leaves and then disappeared.  Mommy thinks it is somewhere on one of the tomato plants now, but we can't find it.

When it is done eating and eating our plants, it will make a cocoon around itself, and when it comes out it will look like this! Then it won't be a Tomato Hornworm any more, it will be a Five Spotted Hawk Moth - I wonder, will it stay in our backyard?

Today, after preschool, lunch and a nap, Mommy and I took the dog on a walk at the Benton Spillway (just down the road from our house).  We walked ALL the way back to a cool waterfall with a tiny shell-strewn beach, and we were the only ones there! Mommy and I stuck our toes in the water and Graham sniffed everything! We brought back a few "souveniers" we picked up along the way: walnuts, acorns, shells, rocks and sticks. Mommy made me wash my hands and feet off when we got home, because I got really dirty having fun!

Later, we collected different leaves from our yard and peninsula, and while Mommy made supper, I made some "leaf rubbings" with my crayons. Cool, huh? I like nature, especially because it's OUTSIDE!