Nature
Using Herbs in Flower Arrangements
This is the time of year when herbs are growing like crazy in our garden. Yours, too? Here’s an idea for putting herbs to good use, aside from the obvious culinary uses… Include them in floral arrangements! We recently hosted a large cookout and I had a fantastic time putting together a zillion small…
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Free Printable Activity: Last Days of Summer
Last Days of Summer It’s hard to believe that fall is just around the corner. Summer is still with us for a few more weeks, though, and what better way to enjoy these final days of the season than with this fun (and free!) printable activity from Harmony Art Mom, over at Handbook of Nature…
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This Year’s Garden Experiments: Organic Bug Control
If you’ve been following along with our Garden Experiments, you may know that we’ve experienced a few mishaps along the way. Recently, I showed our abundant green bean harvest, so you may also know that we’ve experienced some success as well. The first major Garden Experiment was the implementation of a new method: Square Foot Gardening. You can…
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Learning to Can (Can)
Somehow, I spent an entire childhood in the beautiful farm country of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and emerged without any knowledge or skills in the culinary art of canning. A family friend pointed out that the this likely had to do with the fact that my mother was born and raised in east L.A. Canning was not…
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Nature Activity for Kids: Butterfly Identification
As you may know by now, we’re crazy about nature here at the Yankee Homestead. [By the way, if you’re a parent or teacher, or have any interaction or influence with children, I highly recommend this book: Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder. It’s fantastic–both inspirational and practical. Read my…
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Green Beans Galore
Holy green bean harvest! I might need to serve some with breakfast this morning, and at every meal thereafter, to ensure they’re all eaten up. And to think…we almost didn’t plan beans this year. They’ve turned out to be our most successful, low maintenance crop! Green beans do make for somewhat tedious harvesting,…
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Identifying Local Wildflowers: Chicory
The boys and I love to identify local wildflowers, trees, bushes, etc. Last year, we identified this beautiful blue wildflower–and now it’s back again, growing all over the place here in northern VA. Have you seen it? Chicory grows really well along roadsides and in fields. Blooming from about June through September, it often teams…
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This Year’s First Harvest
The other night, we enjoyed our first garden harvest with dinner: green beans! Funny story: In between bites of green beans, I said to Mr. Native Texan: These green beans taste much better than last year”s. (Pause for thinking) Probably because I cooked them in sausage drippings this time, huh?
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3 More Favorite Children’s Books for Summer
Since I compiled our list of 9 Favorite Children’s Books for Summer, we‘ve discovered a few new favorites. I highly recommend each of the following three titles. Enjoy!
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8 Favorite Children’s Books About the Beach
Our annual trip to the beach is a major highlight of the year for our boys. Having just returned home from this year’s trip, I’ve got beach on the brain! So here’s a list of our favorite children’s books about the beach. These are the books we read in the days leading up to the big…
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