1st Day of Spring

Today's the first day of spring in Australia and in true spring form we had a beautiful warm day yesterday and then this afternoon it poured with rain forcing my mothers' group to huddle under a rotunda and make an 'exciting' sprint through the rain back to our cars. We all felt like we'd had quite an adventure.

Here's our winter nature table. I'm really pleased with how our first nature table turned out. It has a nice balance about it and has been a really interesting family activity. We head out into the bush nearly every Sunday from mid autumn through to spring and it really has had us focus on what is winter in Australia. I also like Rainbow Girl's ownership over the table. She will often say "Let's take this home for our nature table." and pieces are always missing as she takes them off to play with."
The flowers in the vase have changed to reflect what's in our garden. Pictured is the white wisteria that hangs around the letter box. Previously we had a branch from one of the flame trees that line our street (with red flowers and no leaves). After that we had a branch of wattle from the garden during it's brief but intense flowering period.
On the easel is Russell's visual diary with illustrations of Hairy stemmed and Short Sepalled Snail Orchids which flower in early winter. The mushroom (with it's fairy inhabitants) was a papier mache project that Rainbow Girl and I worked on. The collected treasures are a small rock with moss growing on it, a heart shape piece of kangaroo vertebrae, a bird skull (magpie or crow), a snail shell, 4 ringneck parrot feathers and a small stick with a seed pod on it.

So my mind now turns to spring. I'm thinking birds nesting, cabbage moth caterpillars invading our vegie patch and wildflowers. I'm also thinking we'll slowly change the display from winter to spring as we see change in the bush. Already last weekend we didn't see any mushrooms so we'll put the mushroom away.