It seems we have a race! Ms. Leland's Texas students read about Hoover School's gardens in California in our February 2nd report. Now they're trying to beat the California students, hoping their tulips will be the first to bloom. Grow tulips!! We also heard from gardeners in two new places: Cass Lake, Minnesota and Nocadoces, Texas. You'll find their messages in this week's report.
While Journey North is officially collecting reports of BLOOMING tulips, it's fun to hear about your gardens as they grow. Just send a note to: jnorth@learner.org See the instructions at the end of this message to report BLOOMING tulips
We hope you'll join in these classroom activities:
Should Ms. Leland have covered her tulips? This is a good question! Read her report below and discuss these ideas as a class: How should Journey North's tulip experiment work? Should we let nature take its course or should Journey North gardeners help their plants to grow? What are we trying to test with this experiment? We'd like to hear your opinion, so please vote as a class and include your vote as part of the survey described below to: Gpetri@mail.rh.monroe.edu
If you planted an official Journey North tulip garden last fall, be sure to participate in Fyle Elementary School's Tulip Survey . The students have worked hard preparing good questions and they are eager to hear from you. The survey accompanies this report.
It's time to plan for the Spring Fever tulip study. The instructions accompany today's report. Note that you can do four Spring Fever studies using the same daily temperature readings: Spring Fever for tulips, leaf-out, ice-out and robin migration.
You can connect with another Journey North classroom to exchange temperature data for any of these studies by sending a message to: jn-talk@learner.org
From CALIFORNIA:
February 13, 1996
Dear Tulip Watchers,
Here in Palo Alto, California, we have had many rainstorms the last
few weeks, so our clay soil is very wet and sticky. But the weather
has been very "Springy" this week. On Monday 12th the high was 80
degrees Fahrenheit! Some brave students actually wore shorts. Today
(13th) we measured our tulips. The tallest one in Ms. Surber's class
was 13 cm. The tallest one in Ms. Forrest's class was 12 cm. The
leaves look very strong and healthy, so maybe all the nibbling
snails have moved to higher ground to avoid the floods!
Happy thoughts of spring,
The 4th grades
Hoover School
Palo Alto, California
Lsurber3@aol.com
AND MEFORREST@aol.com
From TEXAS:
February 13, 1996
Those Palo Alto tulips may beat us yet! Our tulips were definitely affected by the freeze. It won't be the blaze of red my class and I imagined, but we're within days of a bloom. We've had a long dry spell in addition to colder temperatures. Even though we're carrying plastic buckets of water outside every day, things are moving slower than we've hoped. However, we'll let you know within the hour we discover our first bloom! We made a countdown prediction chain and we'll send a photo for the WWW.
We found flower buds on Wednesday morning, January 31. We have kept our tulips well watered--one way to protect them from a "blue norther" one of the names for freezing wind from the upper US. We were hoping to be able to take a picture of our blooming tulips by Friday, February 2nd--the first day of Journey North. Some of the kids were wearing shorts that day.
On Friday, February 2, as the prediction of several days of hard freezes came I resolutely told my kids we wouldn't cover them--this was like an experiment. Several of them suggested covering them as we went outside to check them. We went home. All night, I deliberated:
1. The kids had suggested covering them.
2. We get enough frosts around here that letting the tulips die wouldn't be new learning.
3. We have been looking forward to those blooms for two months.
So my husband and I drove up to school and covered the plants for the remainder of the weekend. Sorry if I messed up--and to this point in time I'm not sure what I SHOULD have done--but I couldn't bear the thought of letting everything get this close to the end only to have a change in the weather destroy everything. Covering plants in January/February is a normal activity in the Houston area. Hope I made the right decision.
From TEXAS:
February 15, 1996
We planted our tulips on Dec. 12 & 13 in around 80 degree temperature. By January 29 our tulips were up! February 2 the schools were closed due to ice.
Today, the few tulips remaining are 10 cm tall, but the tops are brown and probably won't bloom. We had a hard time finding any "early bloomers" here because the nurseries told us they would begin coming up during mid-January and would freeze before blooming. Nursery owners must need to be good observers of climate! We also planted some mid- season bloomers and they are from 1cm -3.5cm tall. We hope you have better luck with your early bloomers than we did.:)
Mrs. Green's 5th
grade Nacogdoches Intermediate School
lagreen@tenet.edu
From MINNESOTA:
February 15, 1996
Hi! Greetings from cold Minnesota. Our tulips are under 3 to 6
feet of snow. We were experiencing extreme cold. We got three days
off of school, because it was 50 degrees below zero. We threw
boiling water in to the air and watched it freeze before it hit the
ground. We also blew bubbles to watch them freeze in the air.
We are 6th grade students from Cass Lake, MN. We are in the Chippewa National Forest which has the highest concentration of Bald Eagles in the lower 48 states. We are looking for Internet pals in a warm climate. Thank You,
Cass Lake Bena Elementary
Cass Lake, Minnesota
0115cbel@informns.k12.mn.us
How to Report BLOOMING Tulips
When your tulips bloom, send a Field Data Form by pressing the button below marked "Report Field Observations". For this study, blooming is defined as the first time the flower opens so that you can see the pistils and stamens inside.
The Next Tulip Update Will Be Posted on March 1, 1996
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