landcastle III

The school term has finished (YAY!!) and with our school work done we went for a wander at the park again.The kids built this while I foraged around looking for goodies. I was lucky enough to find a flat nest again, smaller than the last one I found but still a good find in my books! I added it to their landcastle as you can see. They weren't aiming to make anything specific but at the end of it we all agreed it looked a lot like an praying mantis!

We checked on landcastle II while we were there, I suspect people had something to do with the collapse of this one but that's ok. I let go of the landcastle as soon as I walk away.

Below: A pic of landcastle II as I left it about 6 weeks ago, above is what's left now!

The nest you can see in the middle of the top pic got a little digital make-over. I love the softness of this image and the way it shows the delicate weaving of the nest.

Now that it's the holidays I aim to finish as Deb's PULP REDUX book and develop my ideas for the International Signature Swap. I'm creating graffiti papers so if that's your kind of thing watch this space!

Landcastles

 Have I mentioned before how much I love Autumn? Mother Nature's teasing me with little bits of 'autumn-ness' every where as we sit on the cusp of my favorite season. I took my camera and 2 of my kids for a walk the other day, back to Yatton Park to build sandcastles  landcastles and to see what became of the one I built 3 months ago. To my surprise there was still a little bit of it standing!

The remains of my first landcastle at Yatton Park. You can see the fallen sticks at the base and I'm guessing it was nature that took this down, not people. I'm surprised to see any of the sticks still standing! Just like last time I found mushrooms nearby too..

I spotted this too...a seed pod of some sort. I only found the one seed and I couldn't determine which tree it came from so I've got no idea what plant it is. I left it where I found it.

My children also left a little 'something' behind...

In the place of my old one, they made this!

The pine cone actually fell from the tree and landed where they were building.

It was so cool listening to them talking to each other. "What sort of structure you going for mate?"

"Ahh, just something.. you know. See what I can find." "Mum...I bags the stick!" "Hey mate...I think Mum just beat you too it!"

This is what I left behind, landcastle II.

Anyone who knows me will know how ecstatically happy I was to find a nest! And not just any nest, but a flat one that was otherwise intact. It even had a hole in it right through the middle, just big enough for the stick!

Nest love!

For scale I took a photo to show how it looks as you walk past...it stands about 1 metre high yet it's totally dwarfed by the huge hundred year old tree.

Life is good!