One of the benefits in living close to a large wetland is the extraordinary wildlife that visits our front yard. This beautiful egret was a recent early morning visitor.
“Mom, what is that?”
“An egret.”
“Oh, he belongs in water.” (We drove past a group of SEVEN egrets last week standing in shallow water on the way home from the grocery store. The girl remembers EVERYTHING.)
Well, it’s pretty darn wet out there.
In most parts of North America “April showers bring May flowers.” Here in Sonoma County it rains consistently from November through April and then we (typically) have a dry summer. Only a few weeks more of this rain and then our spring will really begin…
by Lois Ehlert (vibrant illustrations and a simple story depicting the process of planning, planting, and picking flowers in a garden that children can easily relate to)
by Kevin Henkes (an imaginative tale about what a little girl would have in her very own garden, such as morning glories that stayed open all night, jellybean trees, flowers that grew back as soon as you picked them (above), and all carrots would be invisible because “I don’t like carrots.”)
by Brooklyn Botanic Garden (a must-read book for family gardeners, full of gardening activities introducing nature’s cycles and earth’s ecology)
(not directly about gardening per se but a beautifully illustrated alphabet book about fruits and vegetables; great inspiration for deciding what to plant in the garden!)
that’s she’s eaten and loved before, just because she knows I want her to eat them.
