Nature Girl, Part 2

Here, Luna is exploring the grass at Morley Field. I love this series that Cindy took (he says, as if the rest of the pictures on this blog were taken by his robot assistant). You might want to click & expand them for best effect.

Did you read that New York Times article about how a little dirt is healthy for kids? Good.

I think this could be a book cover. Meditation for Children, perhaps?

Here we are at the Chula Vista Nature Center. It's a great place, but it's in danger of being shut down (as early as July) due to the the lousy economy. This is the time to visit, or perhaps get involved in the effort to save the center.

Some of the sardines seemed just as interested in Luna as she was in them.

She loved being able to stand up against the glass and say hi to the fish.

She was very excited about all the birds, but the burrowing owl was definitely her favorite. (Owls are the one species of bird she knows by name.) We passed by the lady holding it several times, and Luna just couldn't get enough.

The owl lady let us get close if I turned around.

Luna judges a dog not by the composition of its skin, but by the content of its character.

See? An owl is a sure smile-getter. (From Luna, anyway. I need to work on my childlike sense of wonder, I guess.)

The next generation has accepted that concrete has become part of the natural landscape . . .

Nature Girl, Part 1

Luna loves to be outside! Sometimes I wonder if we just stayed in the backyard, would she eventually want to go in or would she just hang out all day? She can spend quite a while just poking at the soil, or moving a decomposing leaf around in her hand, or helping me pick parsley. Of course, if she hears a crow calling, everything stops so she can check out the action.



She also loves nature trips. Here's a retrospective of some of our "field trips" from the past few months.


First stop, the Birch Aquarium, where she contemplates the rays and admires the tidepools. Now this is October, so she's still sticking with a passive role.

Marian Bear Park

Walking at the Zoo

Sea World. Now here she able to get much more active, plunging her arms into the icy water, and touching everything she could get her hands on. Eventually, she got so soaked we had to change her shirt!

She waved at the dolphin every time it went by.



She really liked examining the little bits of algae she got on her fingers.







Here Luna is waving at a seagull. She is a serious bird fanatic!

Communing with the bat rays. I think she'd be happy to plop right in!