CRAFTS AND DIY
Make your own insect hotel using a tin can and help insects survive the winter months
Let's make our own insect hotel craft! Our gardens, river banks, prairies and forests are busy with a new set of activities. Bugs are looking for a new home... The leaves are slowly starting to change colours. Then they begin to fall and the air becomes crisper in autumn. Soon we will see less insects ...
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The Mildred E. Mathias Botanical Garden at the UCLA campus
The Mildred E. Mathias Botanical Garden is a 7.5 acre outdoor classroom and research facility on the UCLA campus (University of California, Los Angeles), which is open to the public daily. The garden was started in 1929 along a little creek bed. The first garden manager obtained plant materials by donations from other botanical gardens ...
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Active Tar Pits in the middle of the city
The La Brea Tar Pits are located in the heart of the Miracle Mile district in Los Angeles, right next to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Pavilion for Japanese Art. Long before this time, 11,000 years ago precisely, Los Angeles was bustling with wildlife instead of cars and people. Many of ...
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Wave Hill -- a public garden and cultural center
We're lucky in New York to have a number of lovely botanical gardens to visit. We often stop by one of our favorites, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, as it's closest to our home, but this past weekend we decided to do something a bit different and traveled to the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx to visit ...
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Hua Mei Bird Garden
Our weekend mornings often start earlier than we, as the parents of the household, would like, but we try to make the most of them by getting outside. We frequently head on foot or by subway to nearby Chinatown and the Lower East Side, where we can watch the quieted city wake and start its day. Typically, we stop by a ...
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NEW YORK CITY GUIDE
Fort Tryon Park and The Met Cloisters
By the time you travel to the far reaches of Upper Manhattan you've left the frenetic pace of most of the city behind. Here the topography changes, and you find yourself high above the Hudson River, with room to spread out and views for miles. It's here that you'll find beautiful Fort Tryon Park, and tucked inside ...
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Jardin des Plantes
Paris can get pretty wet and cold in the winter and sometimes it is nice to be able to seek refuge inside. One of our favourite city adventures in the winter time is a visit to the Jardin des Plantes. It is one of Paris' largest parks (which does not mean a lot ;)) and also ...
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Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Spring in New York always feels like a small miracle, and watching the city shrug off the monotone grays of winter as it assumes the riotous colors of spring never gets old. Most any park or tree-lined street will do for soaking up the beauty of the budding season, but for a full immersion a ...
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BROOKLYN
Community Gardens
Tucked into vacant lots and unused corners of the city, New York's Community Gardens can feel like a real discovery when you happen upon them. Two months ago we exited the subway at 2nd Avenue on our way to brunch and came face-to-face with the Liz Christy Community Garden. How I've missed it all these ...
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CRAFTS AND DIY
Gardening time!
This weekend we had such a treat: one day without rain and even (yes!) a few rays of sunshine!! Hurray for May! Seriously, the weather has been so lousy here in Amsterdam, we're in much need of sun. Anyway, we decided it was time to spend a day in our little garden to plant all ...
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FOOD
Nasturtiums -- a gardeners dream!
In Dutch we call them 'East Indian Cress' -- my favourite plant in our garden! I love the pretty round leaves of the nasturtiums, I love how wild and crazy (and easy!) they grow, and I love the beautiful, tissue-paper-like flowers, with their bright, happy colours. Both the leaves and the flowers of the nasturtium ...
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CRAFTS AND DIY
Craft garden
Do you remember those cool rock animals Courtney made with her boys a while ago? I've been meaning to make them with my daughter ever since, and we've been building up quite a collection of stones. Yesterday we finally decorated them, and it was easy and such fun! My creative daughter insisted on adding a ...
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