Science Friday

The daddy has had a few days off of work lately, so Caroline and I have been busy catching up on some of the science experiments we've had on the back burner for awhile. I figure I only have a couple years to pack in the science experiments before she's on to me...

It pretty much all started with the bird feeder we put up a few weeks ago outside our kitchen window. We initially filled it with mixed seed and waited for the one "smart bird" to visit our "bird restaurant" and spread the word to all her featherd friends. Caroline even made a sign to advertise our new establishment. Unfortunately, there weren't no smart birds. So, we decided to change our menu to the more expensive black-oiled sunflower seeds and, of course, our feeder was filled with all kinds of snooty birds within about 15 minutes. Picky, picky, picky...



One of the fun parts of the feeder, though, has been watching for all the different types of birds. We even made a bird chart to keep track and Caroline quickly figured out the Chickadees, Cardinals, Nuthatches, and Blue Jays. Unfortunately, we still haven't had any turkeys visit.



In addition to the birdfeeder we've also been busy with all our spring flowers. The warm weather we had last week finally gave the tulips and daffodils the incentive they needed to pop. We now (finally!) have a yard full of color (hmm... can you guess who picked all pink and purple tulips last fall?). I also think Caroline has checked every last tulip to see if there are any Twillerbabies inside.





Besides the tulips, we've also been trying to grow some Calla Lillies in our hydroponics incubator (okay, it's a 2-liter pop bottle) at our kitchen table. Supposedly, Amarylis bulbs and Paper White Lillies are ideal for these indoor planters because the bulbs don't need to be chilled to trigger their growth like tulips; but, since you can only apparently buy these from Home Depot around Christmas-time, we thought we'd experiement with a spring bulb--like the Calla Lilly--and see if it would work. So far they are definitely on their way. We'll have to see if they actually flower, though.

Outside, we also got our 2nd annual vegetable garden underway. We are going to wait until Mother's Day to plant the tomatoes, peppers, squash, and pickles but we thought we would get started with the early spring vegetables--lettuce, spinach, broccoli, and peas. Hopefully we will have another good year!



You might be wondering what the big gray barrel is in the picture. Well, last year I ran a drip hose from the house and watered the garden using the hose and an automatic timer set for 15 min every other day. This year we thought we'd get fancy (and a little more eco friendly) and use a rain barrel. I was going to make one, but after looking around for a suitable barrell, decided it was just easier to buy one ready made. Turns out there is a local company that imports olives from all over the world in big 50-gal, food-safe barrels. They then re-use the containers by making them into rain barrels. Fortunately we have a down-spout right in the garden area so I cut the spout off, put the rain barrel underneath, and hooked up the drip hose and timer to the spigot at the bottom of the barrel. I'm not quite sure how well the whole system is going to work or whether it is sized right, but I thought it would be worth a try.





In addition to the rain barrel, we also started a compost bin last fall and it has been cooking away ever since. We've been putting in leaves, grass, and vegetable/fruit scraps from the kitchen and I have to say it works pretty well. We even found a nice compost pail for the kitchen that makes it easy to keep scraps and keep any smell away. Hopefully between the rain barrel and composting we'll have great eats this summer!

To round out the Science Friday update with a little Chemistry, the kids and I also had a great time making pretzels during the recent "Mommy-day-Off." We were making play-doh pretzels in the morning and thought it would be fun to figure out how to make the real thing. So, we all got to learn a little bit about yeast that day and had fun watching the bread rise in the sun. The most fun part, though, (besides eating them warm out of the oven!) was rolling the super long "snakes"--this was Boo's specialty!