Worms (again)

Every morning I've been watching a large squawky baby robin being fed by its parents - nice long juicy worms.  I was spending time communing with the worms in the compost at work this morning, making potting soil, and I thought I'd write a short post with some kid book recommendations for folks who are into worms!

Mary Applehof's Worms Are Eating Our Garbage is a good resource for kids a bit older than mine, and perhaps for a coop or classroom setting.  Measure worms, look at their anatomy, look at their life cycle, and more!

Herman & Marguerite by Jay O'Callahan - I have raved about this guy before - he is a superb storyteller, so if you can find his recording, Earth Stories, this story is among those told there. Herman is a worm and Marguerite is a caterpillar and then, of course, a butterfly...and there is much happy worm singing.   As a bonus, the recording also has two or three stories about frogs, and many of the lines from the stories have become a regular part of the way we talk around here.  I would put this CD in to listen to all by myself. I'm that big of a dork, and he is that great of a storyteller.

Diary of a Worm by Doreen Cronin - such a funny, silly book.  We all loved reading this journal of a little worm - it gives good insight to his family life and his close friendship with a spider. 

The Owly books by Andy Renton.  Oh, we love Owly, and he has a little worm friend who comes to live with him. These graphic novels are so lovely - if your kid is drawn to graphic novels and you cringe at what they usually find at the library, these are really worth seeking out.  Sweet story lines, with lots of natural history information thrown in there.

On our list of things to do this summer is worm calling, or "grunting".  Stay tuned...

A Fine Day

Our hike at Fox Lake today (see previous three posts!) was magical.  Eliza has an eye for details and is happy to share her observations with me - she spotted so many small wonders along the path, while looking intently for signs of fairies.  Every plant we passed that I commented on (wild ginger, trillium), she had a use for in the fairy world (trampoline, ferris wheel).  At one point we stopped for a moment and she looked at the tree she was next to and said, hey, I think this is a willow - Dad told me they grow near water, like this lake, and the leaves are silvery on the underside.  She was right, and I can't tell you how that tickles me, nature geek that I am.   In spite of her eagle eyes, we didn't find any zebra swallowtail caterpillars on the many young pawpaws we passed...But we hiked for about 2 and a half hours, happily, enjoying the many greens and the smell of a sassafrass root I'd pulled, and when we got into the car to leave they asked if we could just sit there for a few minutes, enjoying looking at the lake and writing a couple of poems about the day...

The rest of the day found us around our home...making these cookies (try them, they are really really amazingly good), hanging out in the stick house making onion grass stew,

and for me, I had a nice communion with my worms, on the front porch!  I was situated across from The Worm Man at market, so I hit him up for ideas for faster ways to harvest the castings. He apparently uses a machine of some kind - sounds like a barrel with a screen, which you spin, and the castings drop to the bottom while the worms work out a chute in the end...I don't know, I can't quite picture it, but he did give me this idea, and it worked so much better than what I had been doing.  You pile your castings and worms like so:

After letting it sit in the sun for a bit, you can scrape off the outer layer (checking for the wee little baby worms) and keep in a bag for compost - the worms have burrowed into the center and bottom of the pile to keep moist and cozy.  Repeat until you have a nice baggie full of poop! It was a good excuse anyway to sit on the porch, reading and drinking my afternoon coffee while hanging out with my worms.