Day Three of Plant Week

Lovely day! It rained all day—I loved it! No thunder, so we could wander wherever we pleased.
First, we spent some time discussing the weather and what we liked and disliked about rain. We went down and had a sit for about twenty minutes with the rain falling. It was very dreamy. We saw a chipmunk for the first time in the vale.

We picked some catnip; I refused to identify it, saying it might be from the mint family.



“Which mint is it?” I asked. We came back to the dry house and drew the catnip, but unfortunately, there was no cat around to test it on.


I think that the spot we sat in had chiggers, so I hope you all took showers and baths. One of the children spotted a chigger crawling on my bag


Then we went on a rain walk through the vale and spent time building a dam in the stream, although our dam building wasn’t as successful as you might think. We walked for over an hour, wandering here and there, playing games with spider webs and other things. Didn’t find any newts, though—I think there aren’t very many here because of pollution.
In the afternoon, we studied trees and practiced identifying hackberry and box elder.


Walking in a larger circle though the woods of the vale, we found a lot of flowers and brought back samples to look up in books or just because we liked them (including snapdragons, skullcaps, wild carrot, white avens, and of course, field thistle). It turns out that the skullcap is threatened in Ohio, so donÂ’t take any if you see it!
Other plants mentioned today:
Burdock
Raspberry
Dandelion
Grapes
Poison hemlock
Pokeweed


Peace
Eric Wolf


P.S.: We made a magical map of camp. To get a copy of the map in PDF format, click here.
P.P.S.: Ask your camper these questions:
Easy – What did you see in your secret spot/sit spot this morning?
Easy – In the story about Grandfather Sun, why does the sun go away?
Hard – What family of herbs all have square stems and are tasty and delicious?