Welcome to my blog. This blog pretty much reflects me, and I am one eclectic person. I have restaurant reviews, shop reviews, posts about human trafficking, poems (written by me or just appreciated by me), reflections from sermons, events, old mission trip newsletters – and much more. There’s a whole category of posts on the wedding planning and I am now homeschooling our two kiddos, so there’s a smattering of info about that as well.
If you are lost, don’t feel bad. I’m still glad you’re here.
You can easily navigate the blog by scrolling down and checking out the topics on the right hand side. I also have links to some fab other blogs and sites which I love. I hope you’ll share the love and go see them as well. You can subscribe here (also on the right-hand side) or just push through.
One of the best parts of Autumn is all the beautiful colors that spread out across the trees. It is fascinating how each tree has its own coloration and how it closely matches the colors of the leaves when they first emerge in the spring.
You may find a free printable of my list of 25 books on – again for FREE. 🙂
If you want to skip the download, you can find the list on both or
I do have a love/hate relationship with trees. I love seeing the new leaves in the Spring, but my allergies go crazy at the same time. And then when the leaves are falling, my ragweed allergy is off the chart (along with other end-of-season pollen). But, I still enjoy looking at and learning about all the trees and my latest fascination has been the mutualism between the trees and the plethora of creatures depending on them. Birds, insects, mammals, and even the fungi and worms and other plants are so interconnected that it makes me want to plant my whole yard with native tree species (actually, I grew pawpaw trees this year from seed and am just about ready to put three into the ground. Zebra swallowtails, here we come!)
Some great activities we’ve done with the kids is to go on a scavenger hunt to identify trees, categorizing them into native, non-native, and invasive. You can collect leaves, where allowed, press them and seal them in a journal with wax paper, or make rubbings or illustrations of the trees and leaves with notes about the types – probably for older elementary and up.
I hope you get out and enjoy the changing leaves and learn more about the trees around you! And go read some great books!
Disclaimer:This site uses some affiliate links. This costs you nothing, but helps supplement our homeschooling costs. Thank you for your support!
I do love how being out of doors with the kids makes us notice things more – we notice small things and surprising things and peculiar things. Fungi definitely fits that bill – popping up in a nook of a tree trunk or peeking through the tall grass after a couple rainy days and in such a range of colors and shapes!
You may find a free printable of my list of 9 books on – again for FREE. 🙂
If you want to skip the download, you can find the list on both or
We are not a foraging type family – although I will partake in some mulberries and wild blackberries if we find them. But mushrooms and other fungi are much too risky in my mind. I enjoy watching the videos from the Black Forager on the socials and I take very seriously the “Don’t Die” part of her catch phrase. I also know that I am wrong about 50% of the time when she issues challenges of “Poison or Snack” and I don’t like those odds at all!
However, I really enjoy learning about them and finding them and then using Seek to try and identify them. Learning how certain types will grow in certain conditions is fascinating! And to know all that they can do – like the decomp is amazing, but that they can act as a fiber optic system for trees and other plants to communicate with each other! Phenomenal! To know just how interdependent our world is brings me to a state of awe and wonder, and humility as I think of how much I depend on others in our communities.
Fungi are AMAZING!
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Disclaimer:This site uses some affiliate links. This costs you nothing, but helps supplement our homeschooling costs. Thank you for your support!
Spiders are not my favorite. Not by a long shot. But I am trying my best to learn about how all parts of nature have their value.
You may find a free printable of my list of 10 books on – again for FREE. 🙂
If you want to skip the download, you can find the list on both or
Can you spot the little spider leg?
Actually, I do enjoy those little jumping spiders. We apparently had one in the family home before I was born and to keep my sisters from being scared of it, Mom named it Herman. And then, amazingly, they saw Herman everywhere, even when the family moved 5 states away!
I ended up continuing the same tradition and we have a Herman at our house. The jumping spiders are the only ones that I will allow to stay alive or not attempt to relocate out of the house. They do look more pet-like than other types of spiders and that one social media account where she raises them in little homelike-enclosures is so much fun to watch.
I do try, for the sake of not freaking out the kids, to keep calm when we encounter a spider out in the wild. So long as they stay about their business and not get into my hair or somewhere else on my body, I’m happy to watch them move about on their webs. It also helps that we recently read Charlotte’s Web and we do sometimes have one of those big garden spiders in the front flower bed making her massive web with the zipper strands down the middle.
I will do my best to bravely read some more books so I can build up this book list. Enjoy!
Disclaimer:This site uses some affiliate links. This costs you nothing, but helps supplement our homeschooling costs. Thank you for your support!
