Green Hour Challenge #8 : Up Close

We had a lot of fun outdoors today as we did challenge #8. One of the main activities of this challenge was to take a magnifying glass out in your own backyard and look at things. Well, we did that. But, we actually quickly got distracted, so we need to do this again someday!

We enjoyed looking at this weed that grows in our yard - we used to call them baby strawberries, but they're really nothing like strawberries. They start as this little yellow flower...


...then the turn into this white "fruit" covered with little red "beads." Does anyone know what this is? We'd love to know!

Then, we went and looked at the garden we planted yesterday. We planted our gourds that we'd started indoors. They are looking OK. I hope they make it! We also planted some marigolds, verbena, and something else... I've forgotten its name. And, we planted more milkweed. When I looked at the photo I'd taken of it today, I noticed at least two little insects (ants?). I'm amazed at how often I take a photo of something and find something that I'd never noticed before! So, this was kind of like using a magnifying glass. :-)

We also found this neat egg sac of some kind on our sago palm.

Then, I decided to go and get some loquats. For the past few weeks, we'd been noticing trees in our neighborhood covered in yellow fruit. We even thought we saw some kids picking them and eating them. I had no idea what they were. Then, a few days ago, a friend wrote an email to a group we belong to saying that people should go eat some loquats and he briefly desribed them. So, I looked it up on the internet, and that's what we'd been seeing - loquats!

We went to our local park to pick some loquats. They have a thin peel and a texture kind of like an apple. But, they are sour!!! Alexandra really enjoyed them and ate several. Then, I started worrying that maybe I had the wrong fruit! Maybe they were poisonous! It didn't help that the first webpage I found when I got home told about a 5-year-old girl had eaten some that were not ripe and they had trouble waking her up. Yikes!!!

But, then I found this site that had a lot more information. First of all, it sounds like loquats don't produce fruit very often, so that might be why this is the first time I have noticed it. (It says they only fruit once a decade, but I'm not sure they were being literal.) And, the site said they were good to eat, but that the seed contains toxins. They also had a recipe for jam that Alexandra really wanted to make, but we didn't.

I'm also wondering if ours wasn't quite ripe. It was SO sour and another website says the fruit's "flavor is a blend of apricot, plum and cherry." (Doesn't that sound yummy?) It also says the loquat is native to Southeastern China, where loquat means "reed orange."

So, that was our adventure for the day. I feel like our moto should be "Never stop learning!"