Green Hour Roundup, 2/10-2/16/08

Green Hour Roundup, 2/10-2/16/08.

I mentioned Green Hour in my last post, and maybe you've seen the attractive little button over there to your right in the side bar. In a nutshell, this generation of children is the first in history that's at risk of a so-called "nature deficit disorder," and hopefully regardless of where you fall on the political, environmental, social and parenting spectrums, you can get behind that. To take it to a total extreme, some children's experience of the "outdoors" involves only parking lots.

Richard Louv wrote a quite well-received book, "Last Child in the Woods" about this nature-deficit disorder, if you want more information.

Anyway, I'm going to try to make a habit of briefly journaling our activities for Green Hour, even if it's just Green Few Minutes. It seems like it's going to be really easy to make experiencing nature part of our daily routine (even after 1 week I'm ultra-conscious of it), so the hard part for me is probably going to be blogging about it. So don't think I've failed if I'm not writing about it!

Week 1: February 10th- 16th, 2008

Sunday 2/10
We put Ollie in the carrier and hiked around the Florida Canyon Nature Preserve, which is less than a mile from our house. It's part of Balboa Park/Morely Field. This was so wonderful and lovely, and Ollie loved it. We did too. It was nice to get outside. However (and I keep trying to remind myself that everyone needs their green hours), Erik totally saw someone getting a BJ down a canyon. Note to self: stay closer to the roads from now on.

Monday 2/11
Nelwyn, a fellow green hour crusader, and I took the boys to the beach. We did a decent walk along the Coronado beach and then let the boys have at the sand and the waves. This was a lot longer than an hour! They loved it. The new textures of the sand and water, the new smells and sounds, the abundance of seagulls and other birds, delicious sea minerals (for lucca) and the amazing weather.

Tuesday 2/12
I was watching my friend's kid (just a few months older than Ollie) that day, so we naturally spent a lot of time walking around trying to manage naps. Then we met Nelwyn and Lucca at the Morley Field playground where the boys played in the grass and the woodchip playground. I have a picture on my camera of Lucca pushing Ollie in his little walker wagon on the grass. Oh, the cuteness.

Wednesday 2/13
A direct quote from an email to Nelwyn that night: "today we did a green "hour" (10 minutes) in our front yard and with the potted bamboo behind krakatoa. it was freaking cold out."

Our front yard is all (newly) native plants, and many of them are flowering right now. It's beautiful! (In a native coastal desert sort of way) They're also starting to attract some wildlife (mostly bees and caterpillars at this point - some birds). I can't wait to watch the garden come along! But yes, it was freaking cold out. Like, 60! We also let him touch the potted bamboo behind Krakatoa coffee house in Golden Hill. Meh, it counts as nature.

Thursday 2/14
It rained today, so we spent some time on the porch watching and pointing at birds. Maybe 5 minutes total.

Friday 2/15
Nelwyn and I took the boys to Ocean Beach to a little park by People's Co-op. We bought some lunch at the co-op deli and fed the boys steamed broccoli and let them crawl around and play in the playground.

Saturday 2/16
Erik and I took Ollie for a hike in Mission Trails Regional Park, the largest urban park in the country! I have an unhealthy love for Mission Trails. I spent a lot of time discovering the whole expanse of the park during my work as a coach and as staff for Hike For Discovery at LLS, and also, Erik proposed there! Anyway, it is absolutely STUNNING there right now. Go now! It's super green and smells delicious. We hiked from the visitor center down to the river at the bottom of the valley and bac up. Ollie loved pointing at things.

That is all.