Science is fun!  This activity started out with a net and a bucket.  Caddis Fly larvae, dragonfly nypmhs and other water creatures were caught.  No crayfish though and that was the hope.  He didn't have the gumption to bring the bucket back to the brook after showing me all of his findings.  So I pulled on my boots and went out with him to return to the brook what had been pulled from it.  As I stepped down into the mud at the side of the ponding area in our brook, what should appear out of the mud between my boots but a little silver dollar of a thing.  A sleeping turtle.  Last year's baby, sinking into the mud for the cold nights we were having.  Inanimate it lay in my hand.  Curiosity to my son.  Into the bucket it went while we watched the brookie fingerlings ripple the water as they grabbed the tiny bugs from the surface.  Eventually our little friend was warmed up and moving.  So in we came and pulled out the nature study book I enjoy so much.  I read aloud while a pencil on paper began to record the observations.  Where does shell begin and end?  How many sections?  How long a neck, a tail.  Little sharp claws.  Watching those eyes and observing the movement of neck with breath.  Lots to learn from one young fellow to another.  Back to the mud he went but our pictures remain to remind us of the day.

This stunning view was shared with a wonderful friend of mine on a gorgeous day.  Up the mountain we went and what an adventure it was.  King is not a fan of flowing water.  He will cross it but he first must give his opinion of the exercise in a refusal and a look back to me to ask if I really mean it this time.  But show him a rock face to climb and he's quite a different horse!  Let's go!  Up and up and up.  We felt like we were on top of the world but this is just a tiny mountain compared to the presidential range...

Still, it's a mountain and that's something.  Coming down the other side was less steep, but the trail was tricky.  Too tricky for me to ride comfortably.  The trees were too tight and there were several rocky ledges which required thought.  I led him for some and tailed him for others.  He's such a good leader as I follow along behind him on foot.  He will let me rest my weight and get my balance by placing a hand on his hip.  When we need to stop I grab his tail and he stops right away.  Good horse.  He's enjoying all the riding we're doing lately.  We are wearing out horse shoes and getting our money's worth there.  Better that than wearing out his feet which I was doing before the shoes went on!

Remember the Ice Cream shop I mentioned in another post?  Well, horses loaded an we're on the way home...but the ice cream was calling.  We made a quick stop for some frozen milky sweetness.  Ahhhh.  Life doesn't get better than this.

On another day we were out in the local woods putting up "ribbons".  This is the way that most organized trail rides work.  The ribbons are hung on trees to indicate which way to go on a ride...which trail to take.  This horse has become an excellent horse for doing trail "work".  The ride was delayed a week due to rain storms last weekend.  I'm planning to ride the trail again tomorrow to fix the ribbons.  They are sure to be twisted up into the leaves after all of the wind we had.  I'm glad to have a steady horse who seems to enjoy this sort of work even.  He believes it is his job to prune back the leaves as we go...to keep the trail clear.  I do my work and he makes a smorgasbord of his.

~Rachel

Scouting Weekend

Got boys?

Here is home for 2 nights.

Awards won at the end of the weekend.

I'll have to get my husband and son to tell their stories because I wasn't there.  Lots of fun was had by all.  From my end it's a lot of packing, planning, and preparations.  A phone call for items left behind to be delivered. Lots of laughing, story telling and pride on return.  And lots of laundry too....

Another weekend was spent hiking in the woods to raise money for camping.  Our boy walked 10 miles.  John & I took a cribbage board out to one of the water stops and sat in the woods by a brook for 5 hours--counting the scouts as they went by.  I won all the games but one.  :)  It was a good day for me.

~Rachel

May

Okay, this is my usual view of the woods.  I attempt to see this view on a 3 times per week basis.  Sometimes it is only once a week.  This was the view from here Mother's Day.  I've been out riding in 3 states and with so many friends this year I hesitate to list them all.  What a great time it is!  But yesterday found us out enjoying the world from this view. Mountain biking.  :)  We've started geocaching again after taking a long break from it.  No reasons why.  Just what we've been doing with our time I guess!  

We went up the highway about 45 minutes to find  some caches in a town forest.  What a great day for playing outside.  The last 3 days have been rainy and wet so we really enjoyed the sunshine.  I loved the red shade of this lady slipper, or indian moccasin...whatever you call it.  

This boy had to take his shoes off and play in the water.  Nice to cool your feet off after a couple of hours on the bike.  We ate our cliff bar lunches here by a nice beaver pond at the edge of an abandoned airstrip.  Cool place.  Lunch was not as filling as we'd have wanted...of course the cliff bars were just meant for a snack...but when your one hour jaunt becomes fun...and you find you are in the woods for 3 or 4 hours...it becomes lunch.  So on the way home we found an ice cream stand and it really hit the spot!!  Coconut ice cream.  I'll be back again for sure!

~Rachel

Boys

Here is the little guy with a selection of Cub Scouts projects that he made.  I am especially fond of the cribbage board.  He was very busy working on projects on his way to "scout graduation" which is the Crossover.  The Webelos crossover into Boy Scouting and are then wearing a new uniform which has none of their Cub Scout achievements on it except the Arrow of Light if they earned it as a Cub.  All of the boys in the den earned the Arrow of Light.  Some of them went on to earn an even higher award--Super Achiever.  It is finishing all 20 activity badges and this scout did it.  Quite a lot of work.  We're very proud of him.  As I type this he is still away camping (dad too).  I'm so glad the weather turned out to be good.  The last outdoor campout was in the snow...come to think of it last October's campout was too.  They also had an overnight at the Museum of Science this spring. The troop is very active and they boys do so much together.  Sometimes it is fun things too, such as laser tag for an evening.  Next Saturday there is a Hike-A-Thon and this scout intends to walk 10 miles with the boy scouts.  Isn't he cute at the end of Crossover with his face all painted from the Arrow of Light Ceremony?  

School's out--or should I say outside...for 80 degree days.  Here we were finishing our April read "The Long Winter" on a hot, hot spring day.  Irony.  The new tent seemed to be the best place to do school that day!  We have had a lot of fun reading this year.  History and Science have become big interests now.  Math is still his "easiest" subject.  He is a Towne after all.  :)

Here is our middle boy hamming it up with a gecko at the Boston Museum of Science.  John & I took the 2 boys down there for a vacation day in April. What fun we all had together.  They make me laugh so much when we are out and away from all the usual distractions.  This boy is often very busy with friends, gigs, and school and I don't often get a whole day with him anymore.  I really enjoyed this day.  ~Rachel

Cats

The cats are so much fun.  This is our old lady cat doing what she does best.  Finding a sunny spot and napping.  She's turning 14 this June and still quite healthy.  Especially for a cat with a bad heart...the vet originally gave her a life expectancy of about 5 years.  :)

Here are the young cats working on their stalking skills.  Jester is the calico and she is telling Charlie, the black and white cat to stay there...he's not so good with stalking yet and she's been doing her best to teach him a thing or two.  Moving the wild turkeys around gives Jest a huge ego boost and she comes back to the house a very proud girl.

Jest thinks, "I'm not scared of anything...even water."  

As proof she brings home frogs, snakes, mice, chipmunks, birds.....

We love the cats!

More fun from the camera

I'll get around to blogging something else soon...but we're still having fun with the wildlife camera at present.  Spring is sort of like this.  The world out there is waking up.  The swallows returned this week.  They come and entertain us each year with their beautiful swooping around in the sky.  The minute I saw them I felt both happy and sad.  What it means is that they are feasting on black flies.  The horse is quite aware of the arrival of the black flies too.

We made another "mad purchase" with our LL Bean coupons.  A screen house!  We've wanted to have one since we moved here in 2006 but it has always felt like such a temporary thing and a potential waste of money . The "right" thing to do would be to build a wooden screen house somewhere on the property to sit in for picnics or to just "get away" on our own property...during the months when the bugs will carry us away if we try to sit outside.  That's the downside to living on a brook/stream/beaver pond lot of land.  Lots of bugs.  But the upside of that--lots of wildlife coming to the water, bluebirds and swallows, incredible dragon and damsel flies too.  So I guess we'll take it all.

The turkeys are here so often now that we could practically name them.  As I type this the little group is working it's way back to the woods through the horse paddock.  He's quite unphased by the turkeys now which is a good thing when out trail riding.  Turkeys can be quite alarming to horses but King is very desensitized by them now.  

I was so excited this morning to see the gift on the camera for Easter.  Here is the first bunny we've captured on film.  During the winter we have followed their trails all through the woods but we had not yet seen one.  We know they are there and the coyote scat is filled with rabbit fur, but we had not yet actually seen one.  I've seen plenty of rabbits while out riding the trails but not on our property yet.  So cool to see this one!  Sometimes it's the little things in life.

Wildlife Camera

We have a new wildlife camera as our old one stopped working some time ago.  This one has a video option so we tried it out.  There were a lot of coyote photos from a few weeks ago and we were hoping to catch a video of them this time.  Last night, (or in the first minutes of today) we caught the pair coming through.  The first video is the pregnant female marking her scent on their territory marker.  Then the male follows along and adds his scent to the spot.  You can see her eyes up the trail as she's waiting for him to follow along.  I wonder if they will travel this way with pups later on.  

We also have images of squirrels, turkeys and this raccoon.  We smell a skunk from time to time but have not seen it yet.  Probably a good thing!  Oh, and our cat, Charlie who often follows us all over the property has been on the camera too.  He follows us there when we swap the SD cards and then hams it up for the camera while we attempt to get him to follow us back home.  Silly cat.

~Rachel