Hug the Earth Festival, 2012, Songs and Activities, Part 2

 
Here is Marine Mark leading children in dance to the tune of "I'm a Tree". "I'm a tree, I'm a tree, and I'm growing very tall".




Doug the Drop leads the Water Cycle Boogie Dancers. "The watercycle boogie goes round and round. The watercycle boogie goes up and down".




The Everything Needs a Home singers..."Everything needs a home, a habitat, a place to roam".






Airy Larry, The Plant Man, leading the Roots, Stems, Leaves, Flowers, Fruits, and Seeds singers. "Roots, Stems, Leaves, Flowers, Fruits, and Seeds, Six plant parts that every plant and animal needs".

There were lots of other activities besides the big concert.





Mike Manning, The Rock Man, showed these children fascinating rocks and talked about how people used them.


 

The children panned for treasure and found some of the rocks Mike talked about. Here is what one child found.





On the other side of the park, workers from Ohio mining put on a skit which emphasized that everything is mined or grown.





One child was dressed up as a miner.




These children mined for Ohio ores in especially prepared sand hills.





Then they took their pail of rocks to a table where they could compare what they found with named samples.




All of the children played with , a huge inflated "Earth" ball, and all ate a picnic lunch with their classmates.


  On Friday, the younger students were treated to a visit from the Kentucky Reptile Zoo. They saw a variety of reptiles.

 


The older students had a special treat, a Ropes Campus where they could climb a "Cliff", walk high above the ground on ropes and zip down a Zip Line. Tom pulled this photo from a video.





Here are students climbing the rock wall.
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A Walk at Charleston Falls, Ocotober 29...Part 2

I have so many beautiful photos of this fall walk to share that I decided to put them into three blogs. If you are like me, you don't always have time to read a long blog. If you want to, you can look at all three. If your time is short, enjoy what you have time for.

I followed the boardwalk trail down into the ravine and passed the falls. Then I climbed the stairs beyond the falls and continued down Redbud Valley Trail. I found asters still blooming.

By the time I reached the bottom of the steep hill that leads to the valley, I heard drips and down at the bottom on the boardwalk that goes through the wet low area, I found wet spots from the melting frost.

There were still frost trimmed leaves in the valley and frosted seed heads.

Even the alien honeysuckle that crowds out native plants was beautiful.

A Walk at Charleston Falls, October 29...Part 3

And now to continue.

Beyond Redbud Valley, I saw more and more spots of sunlight on the forest floor as the sun rose higher in the sky.

First I saw just tiny spots of sunlight.

The rising sun was more noticeable on the tree trunks.

And soon it was high enough to light the trail ahead of me.

After I crossed the creek and started back toward the parking lot, I spotted this beauty. It is the start of a new tree, but hardly big enough to call a sapling.

I climbed higher. The day was growing warmer. Everywhere the leaves were covered with water droplets.

I looked ahead to a small patch of prairie beyond the woods.

Back in the parking lot, I took a second photo of the Tulip Poplar that was in shadow when I began my walk. The grass covered then with frost was now sparkling with dew.

Water Cycle Boogie

This is a flannelboard story presented by the educational staff of the Miami County Parks District. It shows the complete water cycle featuring Drip the Drop. To the left is the CD player playing the Water Cyle Boogie.

The Banana Slug Stringband from Santa Cruz, California celebrating the watercycle with students dressed in costume.  Notice some students are Precipitation(Rainbow and raindrops headbands), some are Evaporation(Big sun headbands)and some are Condensation(gray cloud headbands). Doug, the Drop, is leading them in a rousing boogie. "The watercyle goes round and round/ The water cycle goes up and down."  Every spring the band comes to Garbry Big Woods Reserve as part of the park district's Hug the Earth Celebration.

I'll be boogying with students again in a couple weeks. Right now I am having a hard time appreciating water. We have had more rain this spring than in any year since 1932.

The Great Miami River

                                                    
The Great Miami River Floodplain

As long as the water is outside my basement, I appreciate it a lot more.

I found my basement looking like this on April 15. Since our washer was 23 years old, and there was water under it I thought the washer was leaking so Tom and I went out and bought a new one.

That was not the problem. I looked a little further. A pipe above the washer had water leaks below a joint. I wiped my thumb across the pipe below the joint. I am very strong. I pushed my thumb through the pipe and water from the rinse cycle of the new washer rinsed my hair. But I have Duct Tape.

The laundry piled up.  The pressure on the Duct Tape when the rinse water was being pumped out might have been too much to ask the plucky tape to withstand.

A plumber took a look on April 19.  He said the copper pipe was rotten and needed to be replaced.  He also looked at our two sump pumps which send water coming into the sump hole to the front ditch. One was broken. He said he would replace the pipes and sump pumps on Friday.

On Wednesday morning, April 20, I went to the basement. There was an inch of water over nearly the whole basement. The basement would have been dry if we had had the second sump pump working. Oh, well.

The single  sump pump had the water pumped out by Thursday morning. On Friday morning, the plumber replaced the pipes above the washer and the broken sump pump.

                                   

But the next morning there was still water around the washer. The seam between the floor and the wall behind the washer was leaking; the water was flowing from the back wall to the sump pumps beside the front wall.   There was a river of water at the bottom of the stairs.

The plumber has been out again. He thinks he has a solution. He is in the process of getting the necessary parts to cure the back wall problem. Until he returns or the groundwater table lowers, I will walk through water at the bottom of the basement stairs. BUT, I have only a little river to cross, not an ocean.