Outdoor Challenge #3

Today is St. Patrick's Day, so it is very appropriate that we spend time in nature seeing God's handiwork. The Irish/Celts were very aware of and "in tune" with God in nature. I read the boys the Lorica of St. Patrick, an awesome prayer, and we headed out to the Botanical Gardens early.

The first thing we saw was a patch of beautiful tulips and we took a few close ups.



Then, we went to the right of the fountain...


...and headed toward the hothouses, but they were closed for repairs, so we went a little past it and got sucked in at one small plot where we took tons of pictures of different stages of a flower (?) opening up. (the pictues somehow loaded backwards, the next to last one is first of the bloom, and then as it opens, and lastly how the petals fall off, and what is left was in order very last).







We spent a lot of time walking around and observing tons of flowers, trees, bugs, worms,and the first bees of the year. Then, after looking at the lenten roses, we stopped by some tulips to draw in our nature journals.(Again, the pics are kinda backwards). Josh drew all the different kind of leaves he had seen (because they are studying different vein patterns in leaves and he found all the different types, so he was very excited.) david drew the tulip, and Noah drew a tree that had split and then grown back together. We had a wonderful time.






The first picture is one Joshua took, he was noticing the hair-like things on the stem of this bush.

Last but not least was my favorite group of tulips- purple for Lent!