Acorns, Spooky Trees, and Halloween
When we go for walks in our neighborhood, our steps are now decidedly crunchy. I love the feel of leaves and acorns crunching underfoot! I have less love for the child-curated collections of leaves and acorns disintegrating in all of my pockets and bags, but such is the price paid for many a wonderful nature walk.
It’s also that time of year when animals are madly gathering food for winter and parents of little kids are madly crafting Halloween costumes! Ours is finished, which does not make me the overachiever it might sound like. The Kid just happens to have a birthday not too far from Halloween, so I have learned the hard way to prep early or I will be seeing too many witching hours!
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Our garden is still more green than brown, but the brown is gaining ground. As I discussed last week, I have learned to embrace death in the garden. The messy jumble of dead plants will remain to make cozy winter homes for bees, caterpillars, lightning bug babies, chipmunks, skinks, and whoever else wants to overwinter with us. Here’s the offering this week!
Observe:
These two weeks have brought some Lepidoptera fun to the garden. We have been visited by a few of these beautiful painted ladies.
Although we have been moving our garden to more native plants when planting, I tend to let any flowers from previous years that pop up on their own do their thing. Less work is always my garden mantra! The painted ladies seem to love the dahlias.
The Kid found this little guy in, of all places, his sandbox.
Granted, he told me that the plants by his sandbox (mostly self-seeded borage) are HIS and no one else is allowed to cut them without permission, so his sandbox is greener than planned. We’re pretty sure this is a wooly bear, although it’s so young that it was harder to be certain than expected. We brought the caterpillar in for a ten-minute house visit because the mosquitos in the yard were horrible.
During the visit, the caterpillar perfectly demonstrated the caterpillar poop-flinging that I had recently read about in Wildscape by Nancy Lawson (see below for more info). Did you know that caterpillars often throw their poop to keep predators from locating them by scent? The poop flinging we witnessed was less extreme than some of Lawson’s descriptions, but enough to be a little startling. You didn’t know this would be a newsletter about throwing poop, did you?
We also met this Oak Dagger Moth (we think) caterpillar at the park. If you do meet this one, it’s a look-only caterpillar since it can cause skin irritation. We moved this one (using a leaf) from the strange place it had ended up in a pavilion to an area with food.
Read:
Acorn Was a Little Wild by Jen Arena is a book about acorns that will definitely get some giggles. If you are a parent who might once have been a teensy bit wilder than you are in this season, you will also enjoy this one.
On the adult front, I have absolutely loved Wildscape. It offers such a beautiful lens for viewing our local wild spaces. I learned an amazing amount of information, but I was also impressed with the way it altered my viewing habits in my garden. Lawson looks at her yard with the observation skills of a scientist. I find myself looking at my own yard more closely. It would be an appropriate and doable read for any older kids and teens who are interested in nature, and I’ve read a few passages aloud to The Kid (the poop-flinging one to be exact--what kindergartner doesn’t want to know about caterpillar poop throwing?).
Do:
Go on an acorn scavenger hunt! Gather some nibbled acorns and guess who has been munching. Find a place with at least one oak tree and hunt for signs of the animals eating. You can learn about how different animals in your area eat and store acorns, or just make some fun guesses. We like to look for acorns with little holes and acorns that have been smashed in half or have gnawing marks. Some of the squirrels seem to bury acorns in the playground mulch, which The Kid finds funny. If you’re lucky enough to have different types of oak trees near you, you might begin to notice which animals prefer which types of acorns. Bonus points for the best impression of an animal eating an acorn!
In the garden, I’m about to divide some of my perennials. I like keeping a rhythm to the garden through repeated groupings of plants. As we move to natives, I’m planning to spread our bee balm, cone flowers and tall phlox at regular intervals. I also want to fill in some back spaces in the garden with goldenrod, which I’m hoping to source from our patch. Here’s a pic of the flowers at their height this summer:
I’m also extremely proud of how this wild strawberry has spread as ground cover. I know wild strawberry is one of those plants many people are used to fighting, but it is such a valuable part of the ecosystem. I also think it’s beautiful! I’m going to try to plant some of the runners in other corners of the yard.
Once all the moving around of plants is finished, I’ll decide what we’re adding. Stay tuned for a raised monarch garden and a few other fun additions!
Contemplate:
In the park near our home, there are big, stately oak trees. They have provided shelter and food for far longer than our home has been here or than I have been alive. We made friends with one tree in particular, which The Kid named The Acorn Tree. It earned this name not because it produces acorns, although it does, but because a portion of the tree died long ago and made an interesting little nook in which animals often leave acorns. Sometimes dinosaurs visit the tree with us.
The Acorn Tree is often our destination on walks and I find myself contemplating the beautiful old tree. What has she seen? Did she see Civil War troupes ride through? Does she miss the trees that once stood here? Can a tree miss things? What did it look like in that spot when she sprouted from a tiny acorn? Was she buried by a squirrel? How was she damaged? Sometimes, while The Kid drops toys and acorns into the nook on her trunk, I turn this into something close to a prayer or a meditation. Touching a tree that old is powerful. I encourage you to find an elder tree near you and see if you, too, can be friends.
A Final Note This Week—VOTE time!
I voted! It was super easy! I highly recommend early voting—no line, everyone was cheery, so simple! None of our joy of nature exists in a vacuum. I voted early in the big election we’re all thinking about. But, I also voted in our HOA election, because our HOAs matter so much if we are going to change the way we treat our natural world.