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Leaf Out: Just Like Magic
Take
a look at the bare branches outside your window. Consider what's about
to occur. Read naturalist and author Annie Dillard's description of leaf-out
below, then see if you can capture the magic in your own words. (If you
like what you write, you're invited to send it to us at: jnorth@learner.org)
"There's a real power here. It's amazing that trees can turn gravel
and bitter salts into these soft-lipped lobes, as if I were to bite down
on a granite slab and start to swell, bud, and flower. Trees seem to do
their feats so effortlessly. A big elm in a single season might make as
many as six million leaves, wholly intricate, without budging an inch;
I couldn't make one."
From the book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard
Today's report wraps up winter and looks to spring with an artful activity
for a snapshot in time.
Capture Leaf-Out in "Fifteen Days of Spring!"
With this week's vernal equinox, spring arrived in the Northern Hemisphere. Want a beautiful keepsake of spring 2000? Journey North artist Mary Hosier has a terrific activity for you! She leads you through the process of creating a time line book to capture the leaf-out of schoolyard trees as it happens before your eyes. Working with paints and fresh leaves or pressed leaves gathered as your chosen tree leafs out, you'll make a fold-out time line book. Then personalize pages with notes from your JN field notebooks: temperature, weather conditions, sensory observations, other phenology tidbits, and facts you find in field guides. You'll end up with an artful time-line of your first spring of the new century! See Mary's illustrated instructions at:
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2004 Journey North. All Rights Reserved.
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