Nature walk

There have been a couple of squirrely boys around here since all the summer trips have wrapped up.  Yesterday I attempted cleaning day.  After dousing the windows and storm door in enough windex to dissolve the vinyl, the boys dropped their towels and recommenced sibling rivalry.  Several similar experiments in attempting to bring the boys into useful occupation followed that one.  Today, I put Eden down for her morning nap and recruited the boys to pack their own lunches.  Let it be known:  3 year olds do not make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, they wear them.  Oh well!  I told them to get their scissors because they would need to do some cutting jobs on our outing.  Enthusiastic scissor-finding ensued, and as happens multiple times per day, one of the well-known phrases of childrearing was uttered:  DON'T RUN WITH THOSE SCISSORS!  We also found a box of envelopes and various other accoutrements needed to head to Great Brook Farm.  Great Brook is an absolutely wonderful spot, just 15 minutes drive from us, but it feels like a distant rural haven.  It is both a working farm with animals to feed, a state park full of hiking trails (and x-country skiing in winter), a pond for fishing and feeding fish and turtles, and a more-flavors-than-you-can-count homemade ice cream stand.  It's awesome.  With the promise of a picnic to motivate us, we headed out on a nature walk.  The boys thought my notion of collecting samples of wildflowers, placing them in envelopes, and taking them home to ID was inspired.  In actuality, it was a desperate spur-of-the-moment idea of something I could do with little preparation, less gear, and nearby.  I lucked out that it was brilliant!  We collected all sorts of flowers (2 of each!) including dandelions, which the boys would of course not pass up in favor of more interesting options.  There may have been a brush with some poison ivy despite my best efforts, but hopefully it was a light enough brush that we'll avoid that side-effect of our field trip.  We headed back for our picnic, a visit to the animals and...an ice cream.  2 of the 3 of us could afford to eat that ice cream...hmm.  I should have had a wildflower salad for dessert, but I caved.

Upon returning home, I learned that young boys do actually want to sit with their mother while she attempts to identify flowers.  And, Owen actually snagged a couple of the ID's while we scanned through a photo library.  I had to somewhat forcibly send them off to play when they got so fidgety they were driving me and each other nuts, but refused to leave before we had found each flower's name.  Some of them turned out to be tricky (for me, a complete reject in the flora department...seriously, I never thought we would be doing something like this...evidence of the lengths a mother will go to in order to keep the restless ones occupied!) and I just finished finding them after bedtime.  Reuel could not imagine that I was completing the task, but it was sort of like a puzzle and I became mildly obsessed with finishing!!  In case my Aunt Sue (shout-out!) is reading this, here is what we brought home:

Dandelion
Clover
Pokeweed
Queen Anne's Lace
Impatiens/Touch-me-not/Spotted Jewelweed
Polygonum
Orange Coneflower
Eastern Daisy/Fleabane
Celandine/wood poppy
Douglas Catchfly
Winged Lythrum

I'm sure nothing very exotic, but it was a fun outing.  I was, however, just wondering why my face was itching, and realized it was probably something from the flowers on my hands that is incompatible with skin...hope a face wash will take care of that!  Unfortunately, the camera had autofocus turned off and I couldn't figure out what was going on.  So a fuzzy pic.