Flying Dragon Citrus Nursery

Love this place.  This is the Citrus Nursery we went to last year.  We have gorgeous smelling blossoms right now!  They do field trips to schools, have classes, playgroups, womens groups and homeschool groups visit.  You can tour, talk and taste.

They also provide citrus to local historical parks: Alpine Grove Park, Walter Jones Historical Park.

A walk in the woods in early summer - Julington Durbin Creek Preserve

The Julington Durbin Creek Preserve

A better brochure for the preserve including the hiking map that is NEVER stocked at the Trail entrance.

And this almost became Batram Park's Golf Course. 

We like to hike straight to the water.  I heard that they were doing a lot of work on the pine population.  After reading through Ecology of a Cracker Childhood by Janisse Ray, I am even more excited to head back out and identify and excite the littles about the ecosystems there.

Kingsley Plantation

One of the interesting local historical parks is Kingsley Plantation .  It is a part of the Timucuan Ecological and Historic National Preserve.   If you visit for a learning experience, children may enjoy the Junior Range program pamphlets:

For ages 7 years and under

For ages 8 years and older 

Recently I took a friend from Illinois to the park.

The number and size of the slave quarters she found heartwrenching. 

 I didn't need to add that during other months, the insects are so terrible in number and aggression, that it is impossible to walk among the cabins as we did that day. 

 The cabins are all lacking roofs except for the supervisors cabin, redone to help visitors have a feel of the space.  The cabins' walls are all repainted and repaired  over the original tabby aside from a few saved spots. 

 As with other types of construction, they would be completely destroyed in time.

On the water, strong breezes blowing away most of the insects is the main plantation house and outbuildings.

Boats pass steadily by, an easy transportation route even today.

Although not exactly Scarlett's beloved Tara, Kingsley Plantation is the oldest plantation house still standing in Florida. 

Although not an entire day trip, a leisurely visit will occupy 4 hours.  The rangers here are a great resource and happy to stop and talk about stories, activities and even may recruit littles to try their hand at cotton picking!

Kingsley Plantation is open seven days a week, from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., except on Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Years Day. Admission is free.

You can explore the grounds at Kingsley Plantation, which include the slave quarters, barn, waterfront, plantation house, kitchen house, and interpretive garden. The visitor contact station/bookstore is located in a 1920s building adjacent to the plantation buildings.
A ranger program is offered weekdays at 2:00 p.m. Please inquire at the visitor contact station.
Touring the Plantation House - The plantation house is closed during the week for structural work. Weekend tours are available on a limited basis at 11:00 a.m. and 3 p.m., please call ahead for reservations.

The Bluffs at Big Talbot Island

Talk about a gorgeous park.  Talbot Islands are two islands, Big Talbot Island and Little Talbot Island that are both barrier islands in Northeast Florida.  We have been out there at low tide a few times, and it's a playground of driftwood trees on the beach.  I have heard it's a local photographer's favorite. On this day there were several photographers on the beach, braving some weather in the 40's.

The kids were thrilled to climb up on these huge trees.

Seed Packet png for JMG Class

With a freeze for two nights in a row, our first for the year, I am considering some inside projects for this week's Junior Master Gardener class.  We have been outside for our last several classes and I think our next section, Fruits and Nuts will be better handled inside.  Our first project is seed saving and we will be making our own envelopes to hold them.

I love The Graphics Fairy LLC's website for fanastic images.  She has had several that spoke to the dreaming gardener.  The idea of the seed packets I found with The Prudent Homemaker only I needed to rebuild it to work for our group.  I will be using the notes section to remind about the "Right Plant, Right Place" lesson.  Having scissors and a cutting project will help to occupy early students.

Planting Seeds with Precision

We were so happy to be able to "plant" seeds on a rainy day for a JMG Chapter One activity. Extending the math lesson was a wonderful bonus.

Junior Master Gardener Program Online Options

Wow, could a Title for a blog post be any more boring? The subject is not. We always have one or two children who miss a Gardening Club meeting due to illness, family having a new baby, and other things. While I try to help keep them up to speed by emailing projects, or mailing worksheets ... the JMG KidZone has another option for selected topics. Sometimes we don't have enough bugs, or can't find them in time for the lesson, so having a pictured set online is VERY helpful.

JMG Chapter One

The first chapter is on Plants, and several of the activities could be expanded into valuable lessons, but the requirment is to complete one Group activity and one Individual activity for each subsection. A complete list of these for the entire program is here at the JMG website under Helpful Tools.

My first brilliant idea that was very non-brilliant was for the Power Seeds, I was going to mail all of the kids an introduction letter, and a baggy with plaster of Paris and two bean seeds to see how much energy is stored in seeds. It was a very cool experiment.


Of course, as powerful as the experiment is, sending fine white powder through the post is a BAD IDEA! (Think Anthrax scare in South Florida, and so many other cases that weren't covered by media. So I simply handed out the bags at the meeting and let the kids feel how rock hard the plaster of Paris was with the Bean plant growing in it. This photo is just after they sprouted, they are now 4 inches tall. The kids were impressed!

History & Gardening

After telling everyone this was my year of saying "no", I picked up a few extra things to do. Like teaching a History class, and a gardening class.

We had great success with Classical Conversations history verse CD, so we are continuing with that series. Our group is all boys from age 5 to age 10. The second class had two of the boys doing pushups during the songs. (Oh my ....)

Gardening is no less active. We are using the Junior Master Gardener Program from 4-H, and the kids seem to love it. I think we could have stretched this into a two year program easily. Originally I had thought this was a no-brainer for me to help out my homeschooling community, and while I am teaching my kiddos, I will just add a few more. Unfortunately, the prep work for our group is done with my children, so attending the class is really unnecessary for them. So, really I am just doing this for our little community. If you can't have Win - Win, just a Win is good.

The Garden Growing

After hearing reports of less bees, I was snapping pictures of the one I saw on my Fennel flower heads.
Chickens need bigger nests because they are bigger birds, but the eggs look so cute in them.
Eggplant Flowering. Waiting for those eggplants!
Little buggers are all over my tomatoes!
My cannas are just blowing up all over the place! I have given away a few already.