Outdoor Hour Challenge#30: Weeds and Seeds

This has been the most interesting challenge (at least for me) yet! I guess you could say we are in our element LOL. We did not have to go far to find weeds and seeds in our neighborhood. We have a nice large backyard with a bad weed problem. :( All along the edges of our fence it is wild and overgrown. We cut it down all the time, it grows back. We even applied a heavy duty weed killer to no avail. And now, our backyard weed haven actually came in handy! ;)

I began the challenge by asking the kiddos what they thought weeds were. Then I had them look up the definition in the dictionary. Ds2 compared weeds to art, in that some people's idea of art is not what other people think art is...same goes with weeds. I thought that was pretty observant.

We decided to do the sock seeds experiment. It was tons of fun and I suggest everyone give it a try.

Here is ds3 with socks over his shoes. He looks thrilled, no?

Ds2 and ds3 stomping through our weeds. Ds4 opted out of this part.

Whoa, I think we have a winner! I dug three shoeboxes out of my closet and placed them on my bed.

They promptly grew a cat.

Here are ds2 and ds4 preparing the boxes for sock planting.

Digging in the dirt, their favorite part. You know something, I just realized, we will never be a featured family on Barb's website if my kiddos keep parading around in their skivvies LOL ;)

Now we wait to see if our socks grow anything. *WANNA SEE WHAT HAPPENED? CHECK OUT THIS UPDATE* Meanwhile, we have been checking out all the different weeds in our yard. We've had lots of fun looking up and finding out their names and such.

I am constantly pulling this sucker out of my hibiscus patch. It's called a Rosary Pea and it's poisonous to cattle and humans. At least the berries are. Here's a closeup of the little berries.

This is actually one of my favorite little weeds in our yard, because it attracts butterflies. It's called Common Beggar's Tick and the flowers look like little daisies.

Wild radish. While these weeds are usually killed off by the cold, they can live all year round in Florida. I can attest to that.

This is the most unusual weed in the bunch. It has purple stalks, grows quite tall, and produces purple berries. The bad thing about these is the birds eat the berries and poop purple everywhere.

See?

Anyway, the weed is called the Common Pokeweed or Pokeberry and it is poisonous to cattle, swine and humans (mostly the roots.)

It was such a beautiful day here, sunny, breezy and ever so slightly cooler, that we did our natural journal entries outside.

I think this challenge will go down as one of my favorites. :)