July 2009 – Preparation Education

Mt. Rainier Nature Drive

July 28, 2009prayingmother

We made a very short trip to Mt. Rainier just because we were sure that we would get to see some wildflowers.

The one picture of the mountain that we managed to take. This picture is thanks to my daughter. I forgot to take pictures of Mt. Rainier, because I was so busy studying flowers. We identified several; here are a few pictures.

Giant Red or Orange Paintbrush (or several other names) Castilleja miniata

Subalpine Lupine Lupinus articus subsp. subalpinus

More wildflowers.

The main meadow at Paradise that I thought would be covered with flowers was not. All of these shots were taken roadside. I’m kind of hoping that I can sneak back there again and see if the meadow blossoms one of these days. We’ll see, I do have to get ready to start back to school one of these days too!

One of the interesting things that we learned when working on identifying the flowers in our pictures is that Paintbrushes are mostly parasites. Because of this, it is very difficult to transplant them or to plant them from their seeds. They latch onto roots of other plants and live off of them. I’ve always loved Paintbrushes, but I think being a parasite is rude; so now I don’t know what to think.

Snow Lake Trail Nature Walk

July 21, 2009prayingmother

Maybe you get the idea that I’m just not feeling very verbose lately. It’s not that we don’t have things going on. It’s that we have lots going on. We have been taking pictures though and I’d love to share some of the pictures that my husband took on one of our recent nature walks. We hiked on the Snow Lake trail. Unfortunately we got started a bit late, and took quite a few pauses to take pictures, so we never made it to the lake. Next time. We did really enjoy the waterfalls and the many wildflowers on the trail though.

Here are my favorite pictures of the day.

Field full of wildflowers.

Red Columbine Aquilegia formosa

Coumbine covering the rocks.

Columbia Tiger Lily Lilium columbianum

McCurdy Park Nature Walk

July 16, 2009prayingmother

We recently took a very enjoyable nature walk and just enjoyed what we saw. We saw a few things that we are studying a little further, so will post about that later, but we saw several things that were just fun to see. We walked through McCurdy Park on Lake Washington.

We went in hopes of seeing Buffleheads, but we missed them. We did get to watch and observe several Mallard families and their antics. They were quite entertaining. When they were swimming around in the duckweed, it looked like they were swimming in grass, because it was so thick.

The little duckings just followed their mother, wherever she went, like playing follow the leader. So moms, if you ever feel like you can’t get a second to yourself, know that your not the only mother that deals with that.

Caption for that picture is "I finally, got all my ducks in a row."

As you already know, flowers is our quest right now and we saw a few beauties.

Wild Iris

Marsh Forget-Me-Nots (This picture is larger than life size.)

Water Lily

We also got to observe a little insect study, quite a little actually. This goes with learning about flowers though. The bees were very busy pollinating all the flowers.

This one is pollinating a blackberry.

We also enjoyed the watching the sail boats, canoes and kayaks that were on the water. I know that’s not really nature study, but it was beautiful.

"Dad, we want to go on that…"

Photography at Our Home

July 5, 2009February 27, 2012prayingmother

I have had a few comments asking what kind of a camera I have, so I just decided to make a post about it. Photography has definitely become a hobby at our house. We have four photographers in our family. Let me introduce you to them.

First, let me introduce you to G’tums, the not-yet-a-photographer, but our favorite model. He’s three and does love to smile for cameras and would love to take pictures, but he’s just going to have to wait a bit on that.

We have JD Boy, the soon-to-be-photographer. He’s six. He doesn’t have a camera. He usually uses an old camera of mine that dropped and broke so it doesn’t focus anymore (an important feature.) He doesn’t mind. He takes pictures of things like fingerprints and his own shadow and things like that. He’s quite thrilled though when he can borrow my camera, but it makes me nervous since he’s the one who dropped my last camera. Mind you, he was only two then. He hasn’t contributed many pictures to my blog, although, he did take some nice flower pictures a few weeks ago at the park and I posted those in the post about visiting Discovery Park and he’s actually beginning to get a good eye for nice shots.

My 9 year-old daughter, Zippy, is the budding photographer. She saved all her birthday and Christmas money and purchased her own point-and-shoot camera, a Canon Powershot A1000IS. She has contributed a few of the pictures on my blog. She’s working hard at learning composition and just loves taking pictures of everything, especially nature. She’s got a really good eye. She can fill up a half a gig card in one afternoon, so now she has a bigger card. She recently posted on her blog all of her favorite pictures from a trip that we took to New Mexico.

Then there’s me. I’m the wanna-be photographer. My husband purchased me a point-and-shoot camera several years ago, that I can stick in my pocket. It’s a Canon PowerShot SD1000. I love my little camera. Since I was carrying a diaper bag for years, it was so easy to just drop my little camera in there and take it with me wherever. I’m trying to learn how to use a big boy’s camera (my husband’s) now though, although I usually set it on all the automatic settings, because I just don’t really know what I’m doing. I’m the photographer that takes pictures of what happens around our home.

Last but not least is my husband. He’s the real photographer. He’s the one that takes all the pictures on my blog that are just amazing. Last year for his birthday, he got his beloved camera, a Canon EOS 40D. This picture shows his very special lens that he uses for his bird photography. I don’t know its specs though. (Did I mention that I’m the wanna-be photographer?) He also has a few other lenses. He loves to take pictures of birds and flowers and of his family.

So now you know, we don’t have a camera, we have three and sometimes all three are going.

Just Pictures

July 1, 2009May 3, 2012prayingmother