Crickets and Honeysuckle Sipping

Okay, not really, but I have not posted anything in a while and I am fairly certain if you were checking in, you might have thought you simply heard crickets...if it were warm enough.

It was a long, cold winter with lots of stuff going on that had absolutely nothing to do with homeschooling and yet, at the same time, everything to do with life events that are more important than any math lesson.

When I started writing this in mid-March, we were just finally starting to see the brown grass in our yard. I refused to take a picture of that. It was a false start to spring. Spring and GREEN, pretty grass finally showed up with a lot of very cold days to get us here...even cold into May.  So, to stave off spring fever, I read quite a few books. Some were simply me pre-reading for content for my oldest, others were for my own edification, then some were simply brain candy. :)  However, I did find some gems while I was reading and this was one of them.

This lovely book that I is called "Honeysuckle Sipping" by Jeanne R. Chesanow - a most delightful book!


Once upon a time, children did not have computer games, shelves & bins full of toys, playrooms, or other such dedicated places for their entertainment. During good weather, they were sent outside to play and had to amuse themselves. In the great outdoors they played with the plants that they found in their environment. They made whistles out of grass, dolls, had snacks (truly, sucking honeysuckle is a wonderful delight - yummy!), made crowns -- all kinds of wonderful things that were only limited by their imaginations.

There are some lovely poems, legends, and folklore that go along with so many of the plants in our flowerbeds.  One of the plants they talked about in the book, we already knew about and had played with:

A few years ago, when I was expecting my youngest son, we moved to a house that had LOTS of hollyhocks. I just love hollyhocks and this house had lots of wonderful colors! At the time, we also got a magazine called The Girlhood Home Companion (I highly recommend the magazine. Even though no longer in publication, you can still get back issues. They are lovely). One of the issues talked about hollyhock dolls. So, we went looking for more instructions. We found them and this is what we made:

I look forward to introducing my children to some of the other fun found in the book. It is also a great way to continue our nature studies as we look for the various plants found in the book. I hope this inspires you to take a different look at the plants in your yard and the world around you!