Nature Study

When my sister and I were little girls we had the privilege of living on two acres of land in upstate New York. In the summer there was a huge garden to help care for and heirloom pears to be plucked off a tree and eaten at will.( I loved them when they were a bit underripe and crispy) There were tiny wild strawberries hiding in the woods and brambles of black raspberries growing in the hedge rows.The bees would buzz in the heat and weeds would grow fast in my mother's vegetable garden. My mother taught us the names of wild flowers and pretty little birds. We didn't have a lot of money but we were very creative and we worked hard. In the winter, my sister and I would feel sorry for the bunny rabbits and deer and wild creatures who had a hard time finding food (or so we thought) because the snow was so deep. We would talk my mother into letting us make "food" for the wild creatures. We would mix oatmeal, chopped apples, whatever vegetables were sprouting that my mom didn't want, and stale cereal and combine it all in a big bowl with hot water. We then would take it out to the back yard and make little piles of food for the animals. Then we would wait and check daily to see what footprints might show up in the snow and who came to nibble the delicacies we offered. More often than not, we would find our "animal food" covered with new snow and turned into a block of ice. These little tags that I made remind me of those days. Snipped from one of my favorite Victorian nature books (reproduction), I have added silky fiber strings to attach to your special pkgs or to use as bookmarks.