STL Free For All

This summer, prompted by S.’s near-constant mantra “I love duckies, I love water, I love park,” we’ve been spending a lot of time on the rebuilt River Des Peres through Forest Park. The little nature-lover knows his parks and is not fooled when I try to take him to any section other than his favorite, the area around Deer Lake. Still, we have been recently starting out there and ranging further up- and down-stream, and perhaps soon he’ll allow us to meander over to the Steinberg Prairie (just north and west of the wetlands that used to be the Steinberg Rink parking lot) for one of the special summertime naturalist-led tours on the prairie’s unique ecosystem.

The park offers many free walking tours (see a listing here), but I particularly like that these change with the season: Springtime was for the Kennedy Forest, summer is for the prairie. Hopefully they’ll continue this theme throughout the year! I’ve seen on local birding sites that this prairie is popular for that hobby, and the naturalists promise to point out animals and plants that are not common in urban parks. This is the third week for the tours, which run through July 25 (skipping July 4). Meeting point is the Steinberg Rink parking lot at 10 a.m.

Through a weird coincidence, the two most recent books I’ve read are Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life by Martin Seligman and The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch.  Both are by scientists (a psychologist and a computer scientist, respectively) and both are about achieving happiness.  The first is a specific how-to guide complete with highly structured quizzes and empirical evidence; the second is a what-worked-for-me series of essays packed with anecdotes.  One is relatively old, recently reprinted; the other is brand new, flashing from every library and bookstore display shelf.

Different as they were, I liked them both.  I was inspired to think hard about the premises behind positive psychology (which sounded initially like a crock), and I was prodded to think about whether I could summon the courage to face M. and S. with happiness when I knew I only had a few months to live.  Finally, I realized that all the ridiculous things I do from day to day, like trying all day to fry a stinkin’ egg on a sidewalk using a pan and a sheet of Plexiglas, are worth it.

Tomorrow we have to repeat an experiment:  M. and I are counting the number of cars of various colors that pass our house during 15-minute periods, one in the morning, the other in the afternoon during “rush hour” on our street.  Our first attempt was dashed when we accidentally left the morning’s results out during a rainstorm.  Lesson learned:  Don’t write valuable data in washable marker.  As we cleaned up the mess and I found myself consciously using techniques from Learned Optimism to help M. overcome his disappointment, I remembered something Pausch wrote about his family’s many experiments and random wagers, and I felt like maybe this random coincidence in books was no accident.

The idle parent is a thrifty parent. We don’t work too hard and therefore we can’t expect to be rolling in cash. With thrift comes creativity. — Tom Hodgkinson

That quote is from an interesting essay in The Telegraph, a U.K. newspaper that’s beginning a column on what the essayist calls “idle parenting.”  For details, read the article here.

And now, on to today’s events.  Whether you go, or choose to stay home and read a magazine while your kids play in the yard, is up to you!

The James S. McDonnell Planetarium, part of the St. Louis Science Center, has several noteworthy events coming up this month and next.  The first is on Saturday (May 10), which happens to be National Astronomy Day.  From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. the planetarium, in conjunction with the St. Louis Astronomical Society, opens its doors for free for telescope demos, presentations and sun viewing.  I’ve never had the opportunity to view the sun, which sounds very cool.  My husband, an amateur radio operator, is somewhat obsessive about keeping up on news of sunspots and sun cycles, so I have heard about many things I’d like to see.

Later this month, on May 25 at 6 p.m., the planetarium will offer a live feed from NASA of the Mars Phoenix Lander touching down.  Those in attendance will be seeing the first footage from the lander along with the scientists, which is a neat opportunity — and free, which of course makes it better for idle, thrifty, creative parents!  (Go on up and read the article, if you haven’t already!)

There are big trees, and then there are champions — trees whose height, circumference and spread, tallied together, earn them a spot on a state’s top tree register. Never heard of champion trees? Check out the lists for Missouri and Illinois online. Each state has a few national champions too; unfortunately, the only one in the St. Louis area, an eastern wahoo, is on private property at the Norwood Hills Country Club. Perhaps not surprisingly, there are a couple more national champs in Big Oak Tree State Park in Mississippi County, including a pumpkin ash and a swamp chestnut oak.

Some notable big trees nearby in Illinois include a 114-foot American elm at 900 St. Louis St. in Edwardsville and a 132-foot red hickory in St. Clair County at NW 1/4 Sec. 20, T3S-R7W. If you think you’d need a GPS system to decipher that destination, you’re right — the advent of new mapping technology means these trees can be pinpointed. For amateurs, this is great. If you find a big tree you can take some preliminary measurements and send them in to the state, which will evaluate your recommendation.

But, as you might guess, it’s not such a simple matter to measure a 132-foot tree! On Saturday (May 3) there’s a free class at The Nature Institute’s Talahi Lodge in Godfrey, Ill. After volunteers learn how to measure trees and record their GPS coordinates, there will be an hour’s worth of practice time on five or 10 trees. Registration is required for this free event; call 618.466.9930 to sign up.

Yesterday we started a new experiment that M. “read” about in a magazine: colored daisies. We filled six glasses with water and added food coloring to each of them to make all the colors of the rainbow, then we put white daisies into each one. In theory, the daisies are supposed to drink up and turn the same color as their water — and on one we split the stem so it’s drinking two colors, blue and yellow.

The catch is that it isn’t working yet, 24 hours later. We’re seeing a few veins on the underside of the petals turn red or orange or blue, but the rest of the petals are still stark white. So I think I’ll dump in a bunch more food coloring and see if that does the trick. (To do your own Crazy Daisy experiment, click here for directions.)

I wasn’t surprised M. leaped on this idea, because for the past few weeks we’ve been experimenting with colors in other ways too. The longest running of these experiments is the Smoothie Project, which entails making smoothies of every color of the rainbow and then some. We drink smoothies a couple of times a week, and it was easy to get pink and blue and yellow and orange and purple … but then we started going for colors like true red, brown, black and white. Those are challenging us in some very creative ways.

Our basic three-serving smoothie recipe is guaranteed not to fail: Take 8 ounces of yogurt (either with fruit or plain) and pour it into the blender. Add two ripe bananas (either peeled and frozen ahead of time or fresh). Let the kids run the blender a few times to get a nice thick goo — this step can go on and on in you’re working with a 22-month-old! — then add your choice of frozen fruit (about 2 cups), ice (about the same amount) and any other fresh fruit, should you so desire. Once all that’s in the blender, pour in your choice of 100% fruit juice to cover and let ‘er rip.

This basic ratio of fresh-frozen-liquid makes a satisfying smoothie. Note that there’s no added sugar — even using plain yogurt, the fruits more than compensate with sweetness — and that there are an infinite number of combinations. Green has been one of our favorites; I’d never have guessed that M. would be OK with my tossing in a couple big fresh spinach leaves in addition to kiwis, but I’d read that they get blended up completely, and guess what? It’s true! You’d never have guessed there was spinach in that smoothie.

It’s hard to go completely wrong, although we’ve made a couple false steps: Mandarin oranges, for example, just aren’t meant for smoothies, although plain old orange juice tastes fine. And we can’t find a way to get a black smoothie, even using blackberries, black currant juice, blueberries and blue food coloring. It’s that yogurt lightening it up. We’ve recently moved on to a quest for white, using white grape juice, apples, bananas, plain yogurt and ice.  Very yummy, if I do say so myself!

I have never been afraid of bees. Even when I was about 8 years old and stepped a bee that responded by stinging the bottom of my foot, I was more upset that I stepped on the bee in the first place than by its reaction. It’s a little hard for me to relate to M., who’s terrified of bees — and as far as I know, he’s never been stung by one or chased by a swarm or anything. Once I realized the direction things were heading, I made a point to explain to him what bees do and how important they are for our garden. We also read books and sang songs about bees, to the point that 22-month-old S. expects me to hum Laurie Berkner’s Bumblebee (Buzz, Buzz) whenever he sees a bee picture. This PR campaign hasn’t really been working with M., however.

My new strategy is to get more scientific with him, especially in light of the current worries about colony collapse disorder and the potential loss of bees as a pollinator of important ag crops. I was very gratified to see an upcoming class from the Powder Valley Conservation Nature Center, Busy Buzzy Bees, on Monday (Apr. 28 ) at 10 a.m. Targeted to kids age 3 to 6, it’s an info session about what bees do and how they “talk” by dancing, and it includes a visit to the center’s own hive. (The thought of this doesn’t freak me out at all — when I was growing up we always had hives on our ranch, out by the alfalfa fields, and I don’t remember any of us being in jeopardy of a swarm attack out there.) There’s no need to register in advance for this free session; for more info and directions, visit the Powder Valley site.

The project I think will really help M., though, is something the University of Illinois came up with to help track wild bee populations (both honey bees and bumble bees). It’s called BeeSpotter, and it’s an online identification tool that helps the scientists find out which of the species it monitors are being sighted where. Because it’s primarily set up for Illinois bees, I contacted the project director, May Berenbaum, to find out if we St. Louisans could participate. She sent a nice reply: “The only limitation is that the color-guided keys for identifying bumble bees were developed for the 11 species that are found in Illinois–some parts of Missouri have some bee species we don’t have so we might not be able to identify your bee conclusively. If you live near Illinois, though, the keys should work, and we can certainly record your beespotting.”

We’re so close to Illinois — about half a mile from the Mississippi — that I bet some of our bees commute to the city. We’ve registered at the BeeSpotter site, and M. has his little automatic digital camera ready to capture pictures of the Missouri state insect at work.

We don’t have “real” pets at our house. Allergies preclude cats and dogs; fish are out because I’m not a water person; gerbils and hamsters are too likely to die (and M. got so upset about the Christmas tree that I know exactly what would happen, and I REFUSE to go through similar mourning for rodents).

Instead, we have worms. Thousands of ‘em. In the backyard compost bin. Well, in the ground too, and the boys love to dig them up (especially at this time of year when the huge ones are still right near the surface). But for five or six years now we’ve been vermicomposting our fruit and veggie scraps in a plastic tub in the back yard, and I have to say it’s been phenomenally easy. And the compost has gone a long way to making the salt-and-asphalt-doused flower beds along the street habitable for live plants again.

There are plenty of sites with directions on how to get started, so I’ll leave the explanations to them. I do have a couple pieces of advice:

1. Don’t bother mail-ordering worms. Get red wigglers from your local bait and tackle shop (ours is the 42-year-old family business Paul’s Bait and Tackle on Chippewa).
2. Use plenty of shredded newspaper, especially if your waste tends to be soggy (lots of coffee grounds, etc.) because worms don’t like sogginess.
3. If the worms die, and the kids happen to check on their “pets” and freak out, it’s easy to replace them with no one the wiser.

If you’re not sure how your kids will do with worms, check out the class at the Columbia Bottom Conservation Area in St. Louis this Saturday (Apr. 12) at 10 a.m. Participants will learn about vermicomposting and create a suitable habitat where the magic can happen (you can bring an old cooler if you have one). Registration ends Friday, so call 314.877.6014 to sign up.  Parents can sign up for the simultaneous session on native plants (also free) at the same number.  For details, visit the Web site.

And don’t be surprised if soon your kids, like mine, are pointing out worm poop in the garden!

My father’s second career is in watershed management, a field that I’d never really thought much about.  But it stands to reason that rivers and streams, like other ecosystems, have been so influenced by man that they need man’s help to return to their natural state.  In his case, that has involved working with ranchers and farmers in western Nebraska to restore a trout-fishing stream by removing invasive species (which suck up an amazing amount of water every day) and returning the habitat along the banks to a healthy state.  Now that his first stream, Nine Mile Creek, is well on its way, he is moving on to larger waterways (and bigger grants to accomplish the work).

When he comes to visit us, every drive is a little nature lesson — for example, he often points out which wetlands are healthy and which are full of invasive species, whether we’re in eastern Illinois or Forest Park — and I find myself intrigued, especially because around here there are so many major waterways and so many wetlands surrounding them.

That brings us to this weekend’s Missouri Department of Conservation and Ducks Unlimited program, Wetlands for Kids, Saturday (Apr. 5) from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the August A. Busch Memorial  Conservation Area off Highway D in St. Charles.  It’s less about the “big picture,” which admittedly is hard sometimes for even adults to grasp, than about the things kids find fascinating: beaver dams; live snakes and turtles and birds of prey; retriever dogs and air rifles; scavenger hunts and mazes.  There will be fish from the river (and hopefully an explanation of why it’s safe to eat!) along with other food and beverages.  In total, there are 15 educational stations.

Admission and parking are free and no reservations are required.  For info, call 636.441.4554.

M. and I couldn’t wait any longer — we planted our lettuce, spinach, radishes, peas and chard last week on the only nice day when it was warm enough and dry enough to sow something without getting too caked in cold, wet dirt. I felt a little guilty about letting S. sleep through the whole thing, but he’ll be more excited about planting the seedlings later on anyway.

If you’re planting a garden with your kids this year, good for you! This is definitely the right time to begin in St. Louis. (Tomorrow’s the first day of spring — yay!) And if you’re just starting out, there are a zillion online resources. Lots of them are aimed at schools or students, but here is one that’s for families, with honest information about what to do (and what to skip) and whether to make the garden a chore for the whole family, a chore for the mom, or something in between.

In our house, the garden is a chore for the mom. The dad hates yardwork (although, to his credit, he does mow the lawn … but I still maintain that he destroyed the edger on purpose so he could skip that chore all last summer). We have three and a half raised beds, which is about the right size for our family of four. We also have a huge herb garden that came with the house, stocked with a few beautiful perennial herbs and many, many more annuals that mysteriously make their way onto my flats each spring at the garden store. M. is a real sucker for that place!

No matter if you’re doing pots on the patio, installing raised beds or signing up for a community garden plot in your neighborhood, you’ll want to pay attention to a couple of factors when buying seeds or seedlings: when to plant (usually it’ll be either as soon as the ground is thawed in the spring, or after the danger of frost has passed); how much room the mature plant will need and whether it requires staking (for tomatoes, beans, peas and other plants that may not be able to support their own weight); the number of days until it bears produce; and its tolerance for heat (some plants simply die in the heat, others bolt, go to seed and get really bitter).

The Missouri Botanical Garden’s Kemper Center for Home Gardening is a great resource — their volunteers helped me identify all the unfamiliar herbs in my yard the summer we first moved in — but it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the huge amount of info they can provide. Online, I find the gardening tips calendar and the problem/pest calendar most helpful.

Garden centers tend to be overworked and not hugely helpful in terms of answering questions during the peak planting weeks, especially in late April and May, so it’s not a bad idea to visit now and ask some questions of the staff. Some of our favorites include Rolling Ridge Nursery in Webster Groves, Bayer Garden Shop on Hampton in St. Louis and also out in Imperial, and Garden Heights Nursery in Richmond Heights. Once the weather warms up, check out the selection of herbs and veggies at the Kirkwood Farmers’ Market stall run by Summit Farms — I’m always surprised by the unique varieties I find there.

On a completely unrelated note, tomorrow (Mar. 20) is Wear a Sweater Day in honor of what would have been Mr. Roger’s 80th birthday. Check out this promo video by the actor who played Mr. McFeely.

In a normal year, signs of spring would be everywhere by now. Yet our daffodils are just finally sending up a few inches of leaves, our tulips are still barely jutting up, and our hyacinths don’t seem to want to do more than break the surface of the mulch. I know all this because we are out there in the yard literally every day, rain or snow, checking on our flowers.

If you don’t have your own backyard science experiment going on, check out the nature hike at the Powder Valley Conservation Nature Center, 11715 Cragswold Road in Kirkwood on March 17. Ages 3 to 6 are invited to start out in the classroom at 10 a.m., then tackle the Hickory Ridge Trail through the 112-acre forest to look for mosses, wildflowers and other plants during the “It’s Easy Finding Green” hike. And hopefully by St. Patty’s Day it will be easy to find emerald-hued evidence of spring! To reserve a spot for the free hike, call 314.301.1500.

Older kids ages 7 to 12 have their chance to spot signs of spring at a similar hike later in the month: March 29 from 10:30 a.m. to noon or 2 to 3:30 p.m. The hike is likewise free; reservations can be made after March 13 at the same phone number.