Summer Earth Scouts

Monday morning Z said, out of the blue, "Let's go EarthScouting."

Still feeling not-so-great from my respiratory infection (hanta virus? black lung? TB?) I would have much rather curled up on the couch, but how could I say no to the question I've been waiting for since spring?

Without much of an agenda, we went out to see what we could see. We inventoried flowers: lots of yellows (black-eyed Susans, hawkweed, dandelion, evening primrose, goldenrod), some purple (clover, sage, chive), a bit of white (Queen Anne's lace, oregano), one blue (a renegade morning glory that comes back year after year despite all my neglect), some orange calendula and red staghorn sumac (truthfully, I don't really know how to tell when they change from flower to fruit, but they are at the perfect tartness for sucking on/making "lemonade" right now).

We also saw some butterflies, grasshoppers, spider webs and two sets of moose tracks.

When we were camping in Colorado, E and Z liked crawling in the bushes around our campsite and pretending it was their jungle (also coming out with discarded beer and whiskey bottles)...it surprised me because they never venture into the woods or brush around our house alone, but Monday, Z strode off into the overgrown field along the road (looking like Laura in the opening titles to Little House on the Prairie)...getting more adventurous!