Mission: Mud Kitchen

It took longer than I would have liked to get the mud kitchen up and running, but it's done and I'm so happy with the end result. It's beautiful, sleek, minimalist and MUDDY. But it started as a rusty, industrial metal cart, two stained enamel bowls, and a metal sieve. All of the components were bought at my new favorite thrift/salvage shop, Givits, for a mere $30.

The cart needed a bit of TLC. I sanded it, washed it, sanded it again, and washed it again. Luckily it was still structurally sound, just rusty. Then I painted it a beautiful blue to match the teeter totter. My handy husband cut me a piece of plywood for the top, and cut holes in it to sink the bowls down in to. I sanded the wood and painted it light gray. The bowls just needed a bit of elbow grease to come clean. Some baking soda and water scrubbed the rust stains and dirt away and they looked beautiful again...for now!

The kids were ready to dig in, so they transferred some nice soft dirt from their digging bed into their new mud kitchen, added some water and "blueberry" pebbles from the patio, and made blueberry soup and blueberry pie. I'd say this project is a hit!

Recycling our playscape

Back to reality. My handy husband has been on vacation for a week so a lot of projects got finished! But now he's back to work and I can enjoy the fruits of our labor. This week was all about recycling and rehabbing. We love vintage and recycled items, so fixing up and reusing old, discarded pieces fits perfectly in our plans for a greener, more playful yard. We visited Givits, a local antique/salvage/recycle center/thrift store and found quite a few gems there! First up we picked up this rusty old teeter totter from the '40s.

This old guy needed a lot of work. It is made of tubular steel and the bottom was completely rusted through. We had to patch it with steel patching, and take apart and sand the whole thing. Then we needed to replace the cross-braces, hardware, and make new seats for it. Then we repainted it and put it all back together.

Then came the chairs. More for the adults than the kids I suppose, but places to sit are important around any playscape. We assume they are from the '70s. They were in great shape for their age, but the paint was peeling, and the painter didn't do a very good job taping them off before spraying them fire-engine red. So after some much-needed attention from a paint scraper and a wire brush we repainted them bright green to match the trim and accents around our house. 

The last great find was a length of telephone pole. All that needed was some blocks screwed to the underside to make an awesome balance beam for the kiddos!

The dry creek bed is done!

It was a lot of work. A lot of sweat and dirt and rocks, but thankfully no blood or tears. Finally the dry creek bed project is done. 

What started out as a boring, weedy, puddly section of the hill down to the creek has become a beautiful rock garden. But before it became beautiful, it was a mud slide.

Then came the landscape fabric and the rocks. Lots of rocks. Truckload after truckload of hand-picked (by us) locally dredged rocks. Add to that a ton or two of pea gravel and small river rocks to fill in the bed and it's done! Easy peasy!

We now have a gently meandering stream of rocks to carry our downspout drainage directly to the creek. But it's not solely utilitarian. That would be boring. It is also a great place to sit on the bigger boulders, watch the spiders that have taken up residence there, jump over the narrower sections, balance on the rocks, run up and down the hill as they shift under your feet, sort through the pebbles, look at the lovely colors, stack them, toss them, and keep them as treasures. Because that's the point of a nature playscape- it has to be fun! 

 Since the rocks are the focal point of this project, the kiddos took some pictures of their favorites.

Mud-wonderful

While every day is the perfect day for playing in the mud, some are more perfect than others. Like International Mud Day, which was yesterday. The kiddos kicked off the celebration by choosing their own appropriate (or not) footwear for a hot, humid summer weekend, then stirred up a brew that alternately turned people into plants and made them happy depending on if they were playing "good guys" or "bad guys". 

Later on they put on their swimsuits and made mud stew, mud cupcakes and a mud pie. The pie and cupcakes were put in the "freezer" in the shade under a large shrub to chill. I had the privilege of taste-testing these, then washing my pans. I am planning a trip to the thrift store for some kitchen equipment that they can keep outside instead of using mine. 

 Then they both got in the mucky, sticky mud by the creek to try to catch tadpoles. Fortunately for the tadpoles they moved quicker than the kids. 

           How did you celebrate?

The time the neighbors realized who was really living next door

Or what the neighbors were likely whispering: More mud and more rocks?

Work on the dry creek bed, which is currently a sloppy, slippery mud slide, great for riding Big Wheels and trikes down, is progressing. We cut up the sod and, instead of filling the local landfill with it, were able to use it to create "banks" along the meanders of the creek bed and fill in low spots around the yard. The creek bed is really, really long. It is going to take a LOT more rocks than we originally anticipated to fill it in. Luckily Waterbug helped us dig two good-sized boulders out of the excavation areas. Two down, a million to go. 

We made good use of the sod cutter that we rented for a 4-hour block by cutting up everything at once. The cutting was the easy part. Pulling up heavy, wet sod wasn't much fun at all, and the many grubs, mealworms, earthworms, red worms, beetles and ants whose roof we tore off were not too pleased either. We removed all the sod from the area behind the house where the new patio will go in, and the 4 tons of pebbles for that project were delivered to my driveway this morning! We also re-vamped the old oft-flooded rectangular garden into a perfectly round rain garden. Now I just need to hope that the seeds didn't wash away before they could take root and sprout. 

Things are busy here, but they are always fun. We always have extra rocks to toss in the creek, mud to splash in, and some sort of mound of something in the driveway to climb lately. And that is what a nature playscape is all about. 

...then we got distracted

It happens to the best of us. The sun rises earlier and stays up later, and so do the kids. It is warm and beautiful. Things happen, stuff comes up, and before you know it you get distracted. We are at a bit of a standstill in our playscaping progress. We decided to re-do the front yard while we were at it, so a couple weeks later we now have a wildflower garden that has doubled in size, and native shrubs replacing the awful old yews and barberries that formed an impenetrable hedge in front of the house. The kids helped, but it wasn't as "fun" as the backyard. 

Don't worry, though, we still made time for the good stuff. We went on hikes, ran through fields, threw rocks in 2 rivers and a couple creeks; 

we dipped buckets in our creek for tadpoles since we have hundreds of them swimming around in there now;

 we watered our garden every day...see? It's actually growing!

And we got MORE rocks! More cobbles that we hand-picked from the dredge pile at the landscape supply yard, and three 2-gallon buckets plus 2 large bags full of pretty gravel that my parents hand-picked from their parking pad. All of those gorgeous rocks will be lining the dry creek bed which we are planning to start on this weekend.

So we kept busy, and we all got plenty of nature playtime and fresh air. But now it's time to get back to work.

A sandy spot in wonderland

We are officially on a roll with our playscaping! With the garden beds built, planted, and protected by a tall, tall fence it was time to move on to the sand pit. We went to our local landscaping center and bought 1200 pounds of local river rock for the bargain price of $18!  Spending a drizzly morning picking through a huge pile of rocks may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it is a geologist's dream!

With a growing mess on the driveway from the mountain of dirt, and then the pile of rocks, we needed to get to work. We marked out the area where we wanted to build the pit, and handy husband excavated the ground with his sturdy shovel and steel shank boots. Waterbug helped, too, with his own shovel.

Ladybug and Waterbug helped to haul the rocks and place them around the pit. 

Then we added a few bags of river pebbles to fill in around and behind the big rocks for stability, and it was ready for sand! 750 pounds of sand later and the sand pit is complete! Not bad for one afternoon's work, and the kiddos agree...and so does a chipmunk who has taken to hiding underneath the tarp cover.

Let the building begin!

Nearly two weeks ago a huge pile of dirt was dumped in my driveway. 

After three full weeks of illnesses being passed around the house, we have finally started work on our garden. The garden will eventually house lots of veggie plants that I will undoubtedly kill, and hopefully some assorted berries that will survive my not-so-green thumb. My handy husband, with some help from the kiddos, is building two raised beds this season, with a third one planned for next year. We have a herd of deer that live in our woods and are always on the lookout for a new buffet, so we will do our best to keep them from eating everything. 

We also planted tons of sunflower seeds in the plot where the vegetable garden used to be. I am seeing sprouts, but I'm not too hopeful because we are seeing some severe flooding this week and the bed was under water, and is still completely saturated. A positive side of the flooding is lots of puddles to splash in, plus the water that washed over the bridge left behind some sand perfect for drawing in!

The weather (aside from the torrential rain) has been on our side and we hope to start work on the dry (or not-so-dry with this weather) stream bed and sand pit later this week!

Nothing needed

A nasty illness kept us cooped up in the house for nearly a week as it struck down 3/4 of the family. That was followed by a spell of windy, chilly rain. When the skies cleared we were absolutely itching to get outside and breathe in the fresh spring air. We may have big plans for the backyard with so many natural play spaces, but it's important to remember that the only things you really need to have fun outside are already there: mud, flowers, wind, sticks, water. You know...NATURE! The only missing ingredient is imagination. 

So many of the spring wildflowers appreciated the rain followed by the sun. The dandelions are painting the yard a cheerful yellow, and the spring beauties and trout lilies have bloomed! We also found some green leafy lichens and what the kids called "saltine mushrooms"- some sort of fungus (maybe?) growing on the log that looked like little bits of crackers. 

The rain replenished the vernal pool which has nearly doubled in size. The sticky beast of mud underlying it threatened to claim both of Ladybug's boots as she tromped through it. She found a tiny, but thrilling, waterfall in the stream of water overflowing from the pool. 

Taking a break from running and splashing and jumping doesn't have to mean an end to the fun. Sometimes it's the quiet moments that kicks the imagination into overdrive. Here they were riding on the piggy-train to find some faraway land with all kinds of exotic creatures.

Little things for a big, big earth

Earth Day is upon us and it's a cool, rainy day. Great for the earth and the plants, but not so great for playing outside without rain jackets and mud boots. That's ok because we've been celebrating all week!

I believe in, and adhere to, the place-based pedagogy that focuses on the here-and-now before the long-ago-and-far-away.  As David Sobel said in Beyond Ecophobia:  "What's important is that children have an opportunity to bond with the natural world, to learn to love it and feel comfortable in it, before being asked to heal its wounds." The best way to bond with that world is to connect with the small patch of it outside their own door, in their schoolyard, and in the local parks. So we do just that, not only to celebrate Earth Day, but as a part of our daily life.

Yesterday we went to one of our favorite local parks with our preschool nature club. We brought a bag and filled it (along with a couple more bags that others brought) with garbage along the trail. The fallen trees and huge boulders along the trail are an outdoor jungle gym. The long, shallow "cave" with its mud floor and dripping ceiling is mysterious. The crevasse with the inexplicable brick wall is cold and spider-ific. The steep drop-off into the gorge is dizzyingly beautiful.

At home we built a birdfeeder out of popsicle sticks, filled all of the birdfeeders, scrubbed out the bird bath, and put scraps of sisal rope in the suet feeder for birds to use in their nests. Then we took a walk through our own woods and picked up all the trash we found. 

While we were out there the kids decided to play the food web game (that they learned on Wild Kratts).  They found a patch of soft green moss and decided to start the game there. Now we needed to find something that would eat them as moss. After a bit of a search we found a slug under the rocks of our fire pit. So slugs they became! They decided to hunt for a robin to eat them next, which we found on the hill of the back yard. Higher order predators are difficult to come by, so they decided to call it a day and go in the house to let our cats eat them. 

I'd call that a successful Earth Day.