Midwest Renewable Energy & Sustainable Living Fair.

Are any fellow Wisconsinites planning to attend the Midwest Renewable Energy & Sustainable Living Fair? It is June 15, 16, & 17 at the ReNew the Earth Institute in Custer, WI (central WI). It looks like there will be a lot of great exhibitors, vendors, interesting workshops, live music and many activities for kids. Here is where you can find out more.

Beautiful sunny morning.

We are lucky to live close to a botanical garden. We go there all year 'round. In the summer to walk the paths outside and see the changing gardens. In the fall to see the leaves change and see the butterflies. In the winter for the train show and to visit the steamy indoor conservatory on those cold Wisconsin days.

This morning was perfect. Warm, sunny, breezy. The trees and bushes are all in bloom, the birds are busy and chirping, ducks are happily wading in the ponds, the herb and veggie garden is getting lush and the tadpoles were swimming in dark clouds in the wild pond area. The boys were even asking about plant names and types of birds. We had a great time.

Digging, planting, mulching, enjoying.

We spent most of our Saturday working on the yard. It was grueling and wonderful (I love hard labor). We started the day by going to our favorite place to buy mulch and seedlings (see my post about not starting seeds this year). I had dug up many new beds and edged others earlier in the week so that part was ready.

Both boys helped load and haul and pull the wagons. A helped dig, G helped plant. Both helped water and argued a bit over who got the hose (big surprise). They both meticulously planted seeds and patted down the soil. We tried to plan most of it during G's nap time as he is a walking allergy this week and his asthma has therefore been horrible. Poor little guy. He really enjoyed being out for part of it though and helped a lot for a 2 year old!

It took us over 6 hours of digging, raking, planting, and mulching. We have tomatoes, beans, peppers, eggplants, pumpkins, a wide variety of culinary herbs, tea herbs, bug repellent herbs, lots of flowers, and even blueberry and raspberry bushes. A also wanted some popcorn, so we planted 2 small rows of that. We added some wind chimes the boys bought and used the stepping stones they made for a mini path through the fruit bushes.

I love seeing results from the planting - it feels so good to dig and plant and mulch and crawl on my knees until my back aches. And everything looks so great - the new small neat plantings along side the beautiful blooming bushes. I cannot wait until August when everything is producing and lush and full. We still have a few more things to do in the next few weeks. I have some more pots that need veggies. A would like to have an area with a bench to read with climbers going up his chair...and we still need a more compact composter and mini worm bin (A is determined to have worms this year!), but we have plenty of time for that.

Today the boys did a walk through of the yard to look at everything again. They stopped at each place, checked the plants, tenderly picked stray bits of mulch out of the grass, tapped the chimes, and sniffed the flowers (before playing a game of high speed chase). I can see how much they enjoy the details and I cannot wait to see them enjoying the rewards of our work. It is going to be a fun summer.

Happy Mother's Day.

Hope you all get to have a nice day with your families.
Do you know about the history of Mother's Day? Check it out!
Or read the Mother's Day Proclamation by Julia Ward Howe, from 1870.

Nanites and the big picture.

Today A came up to me after I had put G down for his nap and said, "Mom, what are nano's"? Hmmm? You mean our Apple nano? "No, you know, nano's, nanotechnology." (he just turned 4!) Um, how do you know about nano's? "You mean nanites, mom." So how do you know about them?

I discovered that when he was playing on National Geographic Kids for the 10 minutes it took me to get G to sleep, he had found a game, learned how to play it, and was trying to figure out why the nanites were in the blood trying to fight viruses. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. So our naptime today was spent researching online together to find information about nanotechnology for kids. Not much out there for the preschool set. Ha. We did find a few articles and visual diagrams that were interesting and we could print out.

"Nano" comes from the Greek word for dwarf. In measurement, "the prefix "nano" means one-billionth. So, 1 nanosecond is one-billionth of a second, and 1 nanometer is one-billionth of a meter. A human hair is about 80,000 nanometers wide."

We found some fun info at Nanooze, a kids science magazine, and at Science News For Kids. A spent the rest of the afternoon, talking about everything and pretending he was a scientist with a microscope.

We were out chatting with a neighbor this afternoon, and he ran up and kept asking her about nanites and nanotechnology. She wasn't sure that she heard correctly, so I explained, yes, he is really talking about nanotechnology. It always seems funny to see how people react to very young children talking about things that they would never expect them to. I love that kids can get excited by ideas and concepts presented in science and technology and find a way to apply it to their reality. I know that he doesn't fully understand the big picture (well, with nanotechnology I probably don't either), but that he finds something interesting, wants to explore it further, and wants to talk about it and share it with other people is cool.

When his dad got home, they were chatting ... imagine if all of the little grains of sand in the whole sandbox were nanites but that they all fit into just ONE grain of sand ... So perhaps he does get it.