Nature School

We had an incredible moon a few days back and I did my best to get a photo of it…if any of you photo experts out there would like to give me a simple instruction on how to get a better moon shot please….deposit in comment box- thank you!!! This photo doesn’t do the view I had justice. First of all it was even lighter outside then the photo suggests and the moon hung in this medium blue sky over green trees and it was so lovely….and I grab my camera enthusiastically and voila…I get this…a “night time” photo with a white blob we might assume is the moon…so please…tips tips tips..

I want to thank everyone for their supportive comments after my Blue Thursday post. We all have days like that and I just guess my cup has runneth over…I felt like if anything else happened before Stig gets home I was going to pack it in…but of course you can’t do that….but it is always a thought that crawls in the back of my head when things get tough…So Friday I was scheduled to accompany a few women from work to a nature course given by the Nature school in Hedmark community. Nature School is a school without students…at least not students who are with them year round. It’s a school of professional outdoors men and women who teach children and older kids how to interact in nature. There are many fascinating things they do and if you have a google translate program or some other translation program you can click on the link above and check out some of what they offer. Well the course we were at yesterday was to give us a taste of things we could do with our children at the daycare level and I have to tell you, I had a great time despite threatening rainstorms and heavy winds all day long. We managed to get to our cars at the end of the day all dry but just barely, the heavens opened up just as the leader of the course said, Thanks for today!!! Talk about luck!!! However, I only had my camera with me on the first three posts so I apologize for not having more photos from the day to show you. Everything was divided into six posts and we were divided into six groups of 12 each and we were given a map of the area we were in with the different post numbers and where we were to go. Part of the lesson was learning to read a map- which my group proved not very good at in the start. We got lost on our way to our first post and when we finally found it we had 15 minutes out of 25 we were suppose to have! This charming young lady played her flute to help us find our way to her…so thoughtful!!!

This woman’s post was about different ways to tell a story or a song in the woods. She broke us into two groups and gave us a fairytale we had five minutes to prepare some sort of skit we would give in front of the others. We could use anything in the woods we wanted. I have to admit, it’s must easier being an actor for the kiddos then for other adults..and I think the majority of the woman on the group agreed.

Our next post was found much easier then the first but because we were delayed a bit at the first we had a little less time at post two. This post was about the various types of rocks in the area and how to teach the kids about them. I LOVED this post and found it extremely interesting. I also learned that this island I am living on is a treasure chest of various special rocks containing fossils and precious metals and such. Apparently people from around the world come here in the early spring to walk the beaches and look at the rocks and see what they can find…and I was just on the beach when Dibbes was here breeding Isabella and I just thought….ROCKS….nothing but rocks here…didn’t really look at them or anything just thought about the poor dogs struggling to get over them!!! Well, you can bet next spring will be a whole other bag of cookies!! I’d imagine the beach isn’t the only X spot on this island for finding treasures so I’m going to be much more observant from now on. I was told on the nature school’s webpage you can find information on the various rocks and minerals in this area and there are also other websites with information.

We broke up after post three and had a lunch break. A local fish store came in and grilled fish burgers for us. They were SO GOOD!!! We were also given a little box of fruit which also hit the spot. After we warmed ourselves in our cars, we began round two of posts. The posts were scattered throughout a woodland area which is used for hiking outside of Hamar. I had never been there before so it was really neat to see more hiking possibilities. I was told moose roam freely in these woods so I was constantly looking around. The wind was blowing so hard so the trees were swaying and making sounds as they swayed but thankfully no moose appeared!! One of the last posts was learning about crafts that we could make with things found in the woods. We were given sticks and some knives and told to make ourselves a mixing stick we could use to mix powdered warm drinks or soups when we are out hiking…I have to tell you, I don’t ever remember wittling with a knife before and I had SO much fun doing that!! So now I have put a knife on my wish list…so I can go in the woods and wittle…hahahaha… pretty nice huh??

Overall a great day and I felt I learned a lot. I plan to use the woods around me to learn even more. I think the weirdest thing I learned was about ants. The leader at one of the posts was talking about ants and how fascinating they were. If you took one of those blue flowers I have posted a photo of earlier (another post) and put it on an ant hill they will pee on the flower and turn it pink! Something I will definitely test out and let you know about. The leader asked how many had tasted ant pee…..yeah…I stopped up on this one too and thought what the hey???? I looked at the leader and said why would you want to taste ant pee? He and the rest of the gang started laughing and I said is it some sort of survival thing??? And he said, nope, just something we did as kids!! That was the one thing I thought I could have done without learning yesterday but ok…now I know that…do not think I will be testing that one out for you. A little Thailand woman who works in another daycare said that in her home country they fry up big bowls of ants the size of pearls and salt them and eat them…ugh…again, do not think I’d try that one but ok…I’ll respect that some people find that normal.

Got home and after about an hour needed to run to the store to get something for dinner. Took Sarah and Isabella with me and Sarah and I smelled something horrible. Couldn’t figure out what it could be. I thought perhaps Isabella needed a bath or something. Took her out and saw she was wet all over her back end. Immediately sat at the computer and asked the woman who owned the male we used with Isabella what that could be. She said if it smelled it couldn’t be good, the discharge pregnant females have should be kinda thick- clear and odorless. So I bathed Isabella to see if the smell was still there and it was…I also noticed a HUGE raw area under her tail with puss coming out of it…so I called my vet and we took her over. It was a hot spot or a type of wet eksem which was badly infected. So we got Isabella some medicine which according to my vet is not dangerous to the possible pups and took her home with instructions to cut as much hair as possible away from the area and keep it dry. So that is what we did…the smell is suppose to go away after the weekend and I hope Isabella will perk back up then too…she’s just lying around looking miserable. Poor thing..

This is a side view of the affected area- I’m going easy on you, the real horror is under the tail..you can see a little of the pink shining through on the bottom part of the tail. Such a mess!

Today the sun is out, I’m planning on baking some whole grain rolls and picking up my house. Then outside to clean dog pens and the yard..hopefully the sun will last all day.

Have a super day folks!!!