gardening

Homeschool Goal | Certified Pollinator Garden 🦋🐛🌼🐦🐝

home, Motherhood, Uncategorized

We’ve accomplished another one of our homeschool goals that I am SO happy to tell you about!!!

Our front flower garden has officially become a Certified Pollinator Habitat through the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden!!!!

We have put so much time, love, & money into this garden & I am SO proud of this accomplishment and honor! They sent us our yard sign, a packet on the best pollinators for Ohio, a packet of wildflower seeds, and a patch.

🌼 Welcome to Our *CERTIFIED* Pollinator Garden 🌼

Plant For Pollinators Garden Certified by the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden sign

Poppy

Zinnia

Blanket Flower

Purple Coneflower, Zinnia, Blanket Flower, Marigold, Phlox, Red Hot Pokers (in bloom)

Red Hot Pokers (no bloom)

Shasta Daisies

Zinnia

Blanket flower, coreopsis, Black Eyed Susan, Bellflower, Veronica Speedwell

Veronica Speedwell

Coreopsis

Crape Myrtel

Black Eyed Susans

Butterfly Bush, Black Eyed Susan

Lavender, Roses, Bellflower

Hyssop, Bellflower

Spiderwort, Milkweed, Shasta Daisy

Phlox, Bellflower

Poppy, Coneflower, Zinnia, Black Eyed Susan, Shasta Daisy

Bellflower

Blanket Flower

Black Eyed Susan, Shasta Daisy + Nectar Feeding Station

Zinnia

Marigold

Poppy

Golden Alexander

Hibiscus

Pollination in Action

The Golden Alexanders & Hibiscus are actually in our backyard, but they are still pollinators so I included them. The Hibiscus are especially fun to watch because the bees come out so fluffy when they are done. What a blessing from Mother Nature!!!

I have so many plans to expand our pollinator garden way further once we finish filling in these spaces completely first. We added a lot of these flowers this year and I’m really excited to see how much they grow next year as they become established. Some haven’t even begun flowering yet! I’m especially excited for those ones to come back next year, because the second year is always better.

This is only the beginning of our journey, & the first certification we have planned on our Homeschool Goal List. It’s so cool watching our goals come to life in front of our eyes though! I am teaching my children to not just talk about goals, but actually set out and accomplish them, no matter how long it takes. And how freaking amazing is it that we grew all of those beautiful flowers (and more)?!

Plus, it warms my heart that the kids enjoy creating beautiful bouquets for me & our home from our own garden. This one Sasha made is really, really cute. 💐

We are also currently propagating some more pollinators that we have picked up around town to add to our garden. It’s my secret way to add flowers for free 🤫. Always opt for picking a flower off the ground that has already fallen if possible, rather than picking directly from the plant.

My oldest son gifted me this amazing propagation station and it goes SO perfectly with our science wall.

Thanks to our pollinator garden, our kids have also developed a new hobby: trapping & releasing bees in their bug viewer (or hands, whatever). This is the most Sasha has collected at one time out of our garden:

We also found a mini hive they had started inside one of my watering cans. Unfortunately my children emptied it from the watering can so the bees abandoned it, but it made a super cool addition to our Nature Wall.

Because of this hobby, we will be adding bee hives along the side of our home for them so they can have a safe space to make their hives & honey without anyone interrupting their hard work.

I’m SO excited to add this to our mini homestead! That will be so cool! Hopefully we’ll soon be making our own honey! Luckily, we know some backyard bee keepers to turn to for guidance so that we can turn this new goal into a reality next 🐝.

Until next time ♡ Mama Morozov

Botany 🌱

homeschool, Motherhood, Uncategorized

The weather has been so beautiful lately, we have been trying to do as much of our Botany classes outside as we can! We have put a ton of work into our back yard as a family, so it has been a really peaceful atmosphere to do our classes in.

Sati & Rocco decided that they wanted to take the class with us today as well.

The first thing we did today was learn the parts of a plant, and what each part is meant to do. For example, the stem sucks up the water for the plant and keeps it upright so that it can grow big & strong to support the weight of the plant. Sometimes a little man-made help is needed by using cages or trellises.

Then each girl picked a live plant with roots to examine & draw in their Botany workbooks. Mia worked with a Blueberry Bush that was purchased. Ella worked with a tomato plant that was propagated when a piece fell off of my tomato plants while planting.

When we were finished examining, drawing, & labeling our plants, the girls planted them. Ella added her to our tomato patch (and thought it was funny how small it was compared to the rest of them, *pictured below*) & Mia added hers along the fence next to my root vegetable garden.

Speaking of root vegetables, we also discussed them in our lesson today!

When we were finished we prepared our green bean seeds in a jar of water for next week’s lesson & checked back on our seeds from last week’s lesson in their ziploc bag “greenhouses.” The girls observed what has happened to the seeds over the last week, and what they think will happen over another week. Next week, we can check on our little pots from our Art, Play, Hike day & see how our wildflowers are doing also.

Botany has definitely been our favorite science unit so far!! It’s been so much fun to do as a whole family together & very hands on in every unit. I also love how many beautiful plants that we will get out of this unit! I’m excited to start incorporating some Botanical field trips into our classes also! We have a few fun ones picked out!

Until next time ♡ Mama Morozov

What’s Been Going on at Mama Morozov’s Home

home, Motherhood, Uncategorized

Happy Monday!! It started out a sort of overcast morning over here on this day so I’m catching up on housework. I have a sort of “unwritten rule” that dreary/overcast days are for housework and sunny days are for yardwork because I don’t want to miss any time with the sun.

We had a really great Sunday Family Day yesterday. The sun was shining, the kids were playing. We skipped church since the kids have some yucky cold symptoms going on and just hung out at home together.

My gardens have come along so much this week! There’s still tons to be done though! I’d like to get mulch down this week before the crazy amount of weeds return!

I filled my basket planter with these adorable trailing white flowers that will hang down under my Ukrainian flag. I’m really excited to see how far they grow!

I weeded & mulched this small garden bed this week. I used 2 bags and will still need to add at least one more bag here. This space was very low down compared to the grass around it and since it had probably never been mulched before I really want to get a good few layers on so the weeds don’t come back as heavy next year.

We brought our grill back out and bought a few needed grill tools for it.

Niko made hot dogs, vegetarian hot dogs, and the most delicious corn on the cob. I heated up the vegetarian baked beans & brought out watermelon, chips, and potato salad.

I planted this clematis in this planter. I’m so excited for the vines to take on a life of its own on this along the tower’s shapes. It’s going to be so beautiful especially when it has more purple flowers growing up it.

My ranunculus flowers are blooming and they are SO beautiful! One day I will have a much larger container filled with these beauties, but I’m SO happy with my start.

It has been so hot out lately & summer break is coming up so I decided it would be fun to get this inflatable pool for the kids to use this summer. It’s a lot of fun and the kids had a blast playing in it all day long.

Anyone have any tips on how to keep an inflatable pool clean all season? They always seem to get so gross after the first use.

I spoke with my neighbor last night and she gave me the compliment that my back yard is very pleasant to look at. That made me really happy. My hard work is making a difference for not only my own family but for my neighbors as well!!

It is my goal that while we are living in this home in Deer Park, someone nominates us for a Beautification Award. Her compliment made me really hopeful that could actually come true one day! I’ll just have to keep beautifying it for now.

Until next time ♡ Mama Morozov

A Mini Garden Project 🍓

home, Sustainable Living, Uncategorized

I went to the Oakley Kroger the other night with Moses. That place is HUGE! As we were walking (aka me walking & wearing all 23+ pounds of him) inside we decided to check out the outside floral section and I ended up buying a cherry tomato starter plant & a strawberry starter plant.

When we got home it was too late to start a gardening project, so I set them aside for the next morning.

When I went to plant them, I came to the conclusion that I really didn’t want to plant food that we plan to eat near our trash cans, even with a fence separating them. So I figured out a new solution!

I moved the raised bed into this space along the fence.

I thought that it looked a little out of place by itself, so I built a little rock pathway with rocks out of the stockpile I already had.

Once I had all the rock placement laid out, I began collecting these mosaic tiles around my back yard. I had originally had them in the gravel patio area, but I think that they will be much more appreciated over here.

I’ve got a pretty good start going, but I definitely need to continue picking more out to make sure the spaces in between are really full.

I also moved this little red bird bath from a different garden space in my yard. It makes more sense over here since the hose can reach here, but not where it was previously.

I planted the cherry tomatoes in the middle container and strawberries to the right. I am going to plant lettuce in the container to the left when it isn’t raining.

To be completed:

• Finish filling in mosaic pieces between rock spaces.

• Plant a creeping flower in the tower growing up the sides.

• Weed and prepare the right side near the fence to sculpt out a garden bed + plant some flowers.

• Trim bush to the left side and sculpt out garden bed + plant some flowers.

• Create fun garden stakes with the kids for each container.

• Find and/or make more garden decor to personalize it more!

Just a small, spur of the moment project I wanted to document on here. I hope you like it and it Inspires you to do some gardening yourself! Gardening can be really, really therapeutic as well as a great work out & way to connect with nature.

Are you big into gardening, or a beginner? Have you tried raised garden beds or container gardens? What kind of things do you like to grow?

Until next time ♡ Mama Morozov