All in the Golden Afternoon

You can learn a lot of things from the flowers

For especially in the month of June

There's a wealth of happiness and romance

All in the golden afternoon

I've always loved the flower scene from Alice in Wonderland! It's so colorful and the flowers are all so pretty. I would be very pleased indeed if my garden could one day be as pretty and colorful. Maybe filled with bread-and-butterflies, a rocking horsefly or two, perhaps dog and caterpillars as well? Well not so much the dog and caterpillars but the rocking horseflies and bread-and-butterflies would sure be welcome. They could float around and kiss the tulips in the golden afternoon. Or any time really.

Slowly but surely that little garden is coming along. And It might not be June yet, but we can still learn a lot of things from the flowers. At least my kids can with help from the little garden we've been working on. The kids are loving being outside and helping plant the flowers. Its more like digging huge holes and making even bigger piles of dirt while I'm trying to plant everything. The point is they're having fun, even while ending up with more dirt on them than in the garden itself. And they're learning, bonus. Yesterday they helped plant several Marigolds that gave our little patch lots of beautiful yellow, gold, red and orange coloring. They learned that Marigolds are great in gardens because they repel animals and insects, as well as nematodes (microscopic worms). Oh yeah, Marigolds were definitely going in the garden. We also put in a lavender and a ton of seeds. I'm really hoping the seeds take because it's a really nice variety of perennials and wildflowers. It'll be a bit before we know whether or not they will, but the kids are already asking if they'll get to see them sprout tomorrow. Sorry kiddos, they're wildflowers not miracle flowers. While you wait for the seeds to sprout you can make time pass by looking for bread-and-butterflies, rocking horseflies, and learning a lot of things from the flowers... all in the golden afternoon.

Chino Creek Wetlands and Educational Park

Annual Earth Day Celebration

 

My kids love nature. Like absolutely really, really love anything and everything that has to do with animals, plants, dirt.. and everything else you can think of. My girls could do without the bugs, but my son on the other hand thinks it's the best thing ever to see his sisters squeal at the sight of a spider or cricket. Kids (insert eye roll here). We try to get out and do outdoorsy stuff as much as possible since they like it so much. Like how we're currently in the middle of trying to turn small section of dirt into a garden. However, apparently sometimes "playing in the dirt" at home isn't enough for them since a chorus of "We're boooored" pops up every once in a while. Solution: adventure time.

 

I decided to take them to the Annual Earth Day Celebration at Chino Creek Wetlands and Educational Park, located in Chino off of Kimball Avenue. The event promotes environmental awareness to the community and provides ways for the community to take action and support environmental stewardship. It included environmental exhibits and show performances, free giveaways, hands-on earth-friendly activities, and much more. All of this spread out amongst the park's 1.7 miles of trails. Wait, what? 1.7 miles of walking with three kids in tow?? Okay then, for the kids. Walk on. 

 

We started off by getting our Earth Day Passport, which promised a special giveaway if they collected all of the required signatures from the event vendors. They participated in all sorts of things at the different stations and I really liked that they were learning about our environment, the drought we're currently in and what they could do to help out, all while they were having fun. They also learned about recycling, composting, re-using, water's cycle, pollution and how it can be prevented, and so much more. In addition to the Earth Day friendly educational booths there was also a station were they could see and pet, much to my son's delight, a desert tortoise and gopher snake. They collected lots of goodies along the way such as the special giveaway which turned out to be a t-shirt of the event, a build your own truck courtesy of Home Depot, plants and soil, an outdoor water saving kit, and several other very useful items. The walk was really not bad at all, we did about an hour and a half of walking but it went by quickly. My four year old breezed right through it without a single complaint, which really says a lot because the kid can complain for days about stuff. All three of them loved every bit of it and as soon as we got into the car they were already asking if we could go back next year. Huge success in my book  :)