Wildlife Trusts

There’s a little competition running near where we live to photograph the local community orchard. I thought this would be a lovely thing to do with my two so we got up nice and early to photograph nature there. My eldest son got a kids’ camera from Santa for Christmas so he had a go with that. I also let both of them use my iphone and proper DSLR (brave I know).

There is a nice woodland trail that leads to the orchard. The orchard itself isn’t huge. It’s got about 30 trees plus a large bug hotel and log seats to take a rest on. It’s a good spot to see ladybirds, butterflies and insects. We’ve unfortunately missed the blossom season of spring, and the apples and pears are only beginning to grow, but we had lots of fun exploring the orchard and seeing potential photos that could look good. It was also cloudy (at least no rain) so the light could have been better too, but it didn’t matter. We’ll come back to photograph the community orchard  every few months to see the changes.

Back at home I did a bit of reading around ladybirds, as although I see them quite a lot I don’t know a thing about them. There are over 5,000 species of ladybird. The UK has 43 of them residing here. Ladybirds are necessary in the food chain as they eat aphids and other plant eating insects. They are also pretty beautiful. The most famous ladybird is the 7-spot ladybird, but we are now plagued with the invasive Harlequin ladybird, which originates from Asia. The Harlequin tends to out eat the native species food sources, and even eats other ladybirds’ larvae and eggs.

My kids loved doing to photograph nature. Really loved it. I couldn’t drag them away and we were there for over an hour. They especially like finding lots of insects to photograph (much better than me) and finding out all about the different fruits growing on the trees. We saw two species of ladybird (I think one was a harlequin and one was a 7-spot) and F caught a butterfly (update: it’s a Cinnabar moth) on camera too. Plus all the usual under log stumps. A woodlouse spot never fails to excite them. It’s very sweet and I’ll miss this golden period that they are in now when they are loud (er), stompy teens. Or maybe they won’t be. Perhaps I’m installing an innate love of nature now in them that they won’t lose? Here’s hoping.

Butterfly caught on camera

Some fancy additions added to the kids pictures!

Ladybird hitching a ride on a foxglove

Searching for things to take pictures of

Outdoor meditation and kids don’t really go together but we tried this anyway to celebrate the longest day of summer.

All we did was find a peaceful outdoor spot, lie down, look at the clouds, listen to the sounds around us and take three deep breaths. I say we. I did this. My kids just wanted to run around, which was fine too.

There’s a new buzz around ‘forest bathing’, or Shinrin-yoku in Japanese, and I was interested to understand more about what it was. It’s more than just being in nature (though that alone is hugely beneficial for mental and physical wellbeing). It’s about really being present where you are, listening to the sounds, smelling the fresh forest air and concentrating on the textures and shapes that the trees make. Basically being more present in the environment you are in.

I’m sure you are supposed to do outdoor meditation for more than a few minutes, but a few minutes was all my kids allowed me to have, and it really was very nice to just lie still and look at the clouds and listen to the wind in the branches. Why am I not doing this daily?

The perfect meditative view

Today on our walk back from school we looked for weeds and leaves of all different colours to do some nature colour art at home.

Green was an easy colour to find. We collected many fern and oak leaves. As was brown with all the leaf debris. We also found lots of pinks and blues form weeds growing at the sides of verges. Yellow came from dandelions and buttercups and white from cow parsley and grasses. We also found some red leaves from a weed too. I’m not sure what the weed was but it grows a lot around here!

First we sorted out our colours into piles. F wrote his name on a large piece of cardboard before tracing the outline with glue. Then we stuck on the different colours as letters before sticking it all down with sellotape. Surprisingly satisfying and I was a very smug mum on show and tell day (usually I’m the one that forgets until two minutes before we have to leave the house).

I originally was going to do a nature colour wheel with the kids, where you go out and find all the colours of the rainbow and stick it onto a circle to make a colour wheel, but thought writing F’s name would be more fun (and tick the educational box too), but a colour wheel is another good option too.

I ordered some clay from the internet to do this at some point in June but the boys loved playing with it so much I’ve had to order two more bags of it. It’s easy to mould when you first open it but after a day or so it dries naturally and you are left with whatever shapes you’ve made.

Using nature to make clay art is such an easy activity to do. We hunted around the garden and our local patch of woodland for bits and pieces we found. It could be anything but harder objects like shells or seed pods work very well. Roll out the clay to about half a cm thick then press your bit of leaf, acorn, seed etc down firmly into the clay. Voila! You are left with a lovely imprint.

I actually think if you spent a bit more time making the initial shape neat and tidy, and then painted or varnished the bit of clay afterwards, it would make a nice present for grandparents.

Our nature finds – an oak leaf, fern and seeds from a flower

Rolling out our clay

Pretty fern print on clay