Rose Seeds

 Every year for the last 7 or more years I've gone around our apartment complex, cutting the rose hips this time of year. They don't regularly cut the roses during the year so this time of year the roses are all gone and the rose hips have turned orange. That means that they are full of seeds. I wasn't going to collect them this year because we are moving soon, but I thought the seeds might make great going away gifts for a few close friends who like to garden. 

These are some of the rose hips cut and some of the seeds I collected. It's a bit of work getting the seeds out. They need to "sleep" for the winter before they can sprout so I normally put them in a ziplock bag with a little wet dirt and put them in the fridge. Around January they start sprouting in the bag and then February or so I can transplant the seedlings to pots to grow. I love watching the seeds sprout. It's like magic! 

Something else we noticed in the wall in our backyard are some little cocoons from an unknown insect. One of them was covered over with more dirt and the other wasn't. You can see the spots where they came out of the cocoons. 

Nature Study in the Fall

 A few days ago we spent some time in the backyard drawing leaves and walnuts (some of which had fallen and started to sprout!). It was so nice! We haven't been able to be out in the yard like this for a while because it was hot (with lots of mosquitos) in the summer, and then we had about 3 weeks of off and on rain. It was really great to be drawing outside with the kids- one of my favorite things! 

Last week we also saw some corn that someone had hung out in their yard to dry. However, with all the rain, the kernels on the corn started to sprout!

Shanghai

 We went to Shanghai for a few days to renew the kids' passports and had a few other things to do. We did some sightseeing though: Saturday we went to Ignatius Catholic Church which was built in the early 1900s. They had some gorgeous stained glass windows! Today we went to a water village, but it was really hot and humid. We didn't think Shanghai would be so hot this time of year and can imagine how hot and humid it gets in the summer.

Silkworms

 We were given some silkworms from a friend that had a bunch of them. It's been fun seeing them grow and we hope to see a cocoon soon.