Well, Spring has begun here in the Southern Hemisphere. 

Lately during our Circle Time I have been reading aloud to the girls from this lovely book:  

Portrait of a Garden is New Zealand's answer to The Country Diary of and Edwardian Lady, albeit a more modern version.  Kerry Carman has produced some beautiful watercolour paintings & sketches of our native plants and flowers along with many of the common species.

Kerry suffered a spinal injury and spent months in hospital rehabilitating.  Consequently, she spent a lot of time watching the seasonal changes of the tree outside the hospital window.  This began her life-long appreciation for the natural world and inpsired Kerry's nature journalling.  The book Portrait of a Garden is a combination of the nature journals she kept between 1970 & 1974

Here is an excerpt from Kerry's entry for 13th September:

"The name 'Daffodil' comes from the French.  In early Greek it was "Asphodelos', in Latin 'Aspholdelus', and, to the French, it was 'Asphodile'; the first English name for it was 'Affodil'.  Pliny wrote that they grew on the banks of Acheron, where the blossoms delighted the spirits of the dead, who called them 'Asphodels'. " 

She goes on to tell the story of Narcissus, which I had never read, but apparently one of my daughters had read it somewhere before.  But is was nice to read, along with Kerry's lovely sketches of several Narcissus species. Here is another excerpt from the same entry:

"There are three flowers on the group of N. 'Dove Wings" - a very pretty cyclamineus type of palest cream.  I love these reflexed petal types - all the cyclamineus varieties have the endearing habit of turning back the petal surrounding the trumpet in the manner of a graceful dancer posing her arms;  or, in some cases, as in N. triandrus 'Angels Tears', like Piglet's ears streaming in the wind, from that much-loved book House at Pooh Corner by A.A.Milne."

Imagine our giggles when Piglet's ears were mentioned.  Off the girls were, down the street to see if they could find a narcissus whose petals resembled Piglet's ears!  They came back with some pictures of daffodils, we think most of them are the basic variety Ebony.  We're not positively sure of the variety, but we learned that the central part of the daffodil is called a "trumpet" (or corona) and that "cyclamineus" means that the petals are folded back like a cyclamen and we learned the story of Narcissus. 

Kerry has several sketches of the Magnolia or "Tulip tree" and it's flowers, which happen to be dropping all over our lawn from the neighbour's tree at the moment.

and just for a bit of fun, this is taken from the top of one our little Mexican Orange Blossoms - I would never have noticed the symmetry in those leaves, had one of the girls not taken the photo from directly above the plant.

One of the girls managed to take a beautiful close-up of this daisy (I can't find a name for this one)

For a child's view of our daffodil study, Emily would love for you to  visit her & Bethany's blog, Notebook for Girls for Emily's entry on the daffodil.

And for an Australian Country Diary, check out Jeanne's post at A Peaceful Day.

~~~~~

Monarch butterfly on the lemon tree a few days ago.

 We had a beautiful Spring day on Wednesday, so the girls were outside blowing bubbles.  They were catching their biggest bubbles and piling them up on the cup, but they kept popping every time I went to take a photo, this was the best shot I could get!  I think they went through nearly a whole bottle of dishwashing liquid!

While were we outside I thought I'd practice my "macro photography' with our new strawberry plants on the deck. 

Can you see what I saw on the strawberry leaf in the picture below?  If you look closely you can see two little praying mantis nymphs.  I looked them up in our Lifesize Guide to New Zealand Insects by Andrew Crowe and found a photo of the praying mantis egg case.  The girls immmediately showed me where it was - on the wall right above the deck where the strawberry plants are.  Sure enough it was open!  Appparently these little guys are completely carnivorous, so they are no threat to the strawberries as they eat other insect pests.

Eeuwe was making coffee in the kitchen when he spotted these goldfinches out the window.  They were feeding on alyssum seeds in my pots (which happen to be in much need of re-planting!)  As you can see, it's another rainy Saturday in Feilding!

...and, no, these haven't escaped from our aviary, they are wild goldfinches!

I just received an email through the CMandFriends-ANZ@yahoogroups.com list to say that Nature Talks to New Zealanders by Philip Crosbie Morrison is now available as an e-book.  You can find it at Down Under Literature.  Thanks Michelle for making this great book available again!

Barb, from the Handbook of Study and Outdoor Hour Challenges, has recently spotted some hummingbirds in her garden.  What a pity we don't get them in NZ!  Check out Barb's two entries on Hummingbirds here:

Hummingbird & Bleeding Hearts

Cala Lily & More Hummingbirds

Grandmother Wren has a lovely post on Gardening for Hummingbirds.

Ainsley had been "scooting" on her scooter yesterday when she spotted a praying mantis in the grass.  Sure enough, he was up for the ride!

I am on a Charlotte Mason email list for Aussie & NZ homeschoolers.  Today someone was asking for books for New Zealand nature study.  Here are some of my favourites.

The Life-Size Guide to Insects and Other Land Invertebrates of New Zealand and others in the series by Andrew Crowe have life size photos of many common species.  This makes it easy for you and your children to identify the nature you find in your own backyard!

Philip Crosbie Morrison's books are lovely too.  He was a naturalist and hosted a radio programme back in the 1950s or 60s.  The titles we have are called The Junior Naturalist - Nature Talks to Australian & New Zealand Children, published 1966 and Nature Talks to New Zealanders, published 1962.  The books have chapters on different nature topics, from "The 'humble' bumble-bee" to "The Immaculate seagull."  The books also have lovely illustrations.

We also have some little books by Murdoch Riley, Shrubs & Small Trees, New Zealand Wildlife, and Know your New Zealand Birds.  These have lovely illustrations by artist Peter Scaife, who was a customer of ours when we had a picture framing business in the Wairarapa.  Great little books for learning and identifying common NZ species.

We have also enjoyed The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady.  Although it is English, it still has beautiful illustrations of many of our common plants & birds.  We also refer to our copy of Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock often.

My husband Eeuwe reads aloud to the girls every night that he can.  Recently they have read the book called "Daggy Dogfoot" by Dick King Smith, who also wrote "The Sheep-pig" which was made into the movie "Babe."   In "Daggy Dogfoot" one of the characters is Felicity, the muscovy duck.  It so happened that while we were still reading the book, a muscovy duck wandered into our front yard from the farmland across the road.  Of course, we had to name her "Felicity!"  She comes over to our yard several times a week, and the girls have taken to feeding her the bread scraps!  One day we noticed the cars on the road (a main road into our town) were slowing down, only to see Felicity and her mallard friends crossing the road!  We are hoping not to have a fatality anytime soon!!

Well, Spring is here in our neck of the woods.  My daughter came running inside on this beautiful sunny day, to announce that the first quail chick of the season has hatched in our aviary.  My husband loves birds, we have a small aviary with quail, zebra finches, bengalese finches and canaries.  The quail have decided that it is time for breeding again.  Here is the chick with its dad.  They are enjoying the egg food I made for them.