DailyBuzz Moms 9X9 :: Finding Fall

This post is a project I did with DailyBuzz Moms 9X9. I am so honored to be involved in the Fall into Autumn challenge!

I become wistful when the autumn season arrives and the rest of the country seems to be busy picking apples, wearing sweaters and taking hayrides. Fall in Florida is a very subtle season; sometimes it seems as if we go straight from summer to winter in the blink of an eye.

This year we started a tradition that I think we will carry with us into each season.

We took a "Finding Fall" observational walk. 

With a simple twig journal, a camera, some squares of contact paper, tape, pencil and very good eyes, we tried to track down and record clues that fall was approaching.

To make a twig journal, simply fold a small stack of paper in half, punch a few holes in the spine and run a rubber band down the inside. Poke the little rubber band ends out of the holes and loop them around a found twig, pencil or chopstick. 

We observed:

-a very few leaves that had changed colors

-acorns and other nuts dropping (to feed the small mammals)

-beauty berry plants with ripened fruit (to feed all the migrating birds)

-new birds at our neighborhood lake! it will be fun to see all the winter guests that arrive through out the rest of the year

We also observed that the wet, cool weather is great mushroom weather. We traced some mushrooms and brought some back home to make spore prints.




And it is starting to get dark earlier, so we are sometimes still outdoors at night and can see the bats emerge from chimneys and trees and we suspect that we might catch a glimpse of an owl swopping through the old live oaks in our neighborhood.

I was amazed at all we noticed about this brief and nuanced season we often rush through. When we stopped and really looked and thought and wondered, we were able to read a previously unseen page in our natural landscape.

This would be so great to do at the beginning of each season, and in any location.

(we loved looking for squirrel teeth marks on the fallen nuts)

What season might be overlooked in your corner of the world?