Why Knot Plant a Knot Garden?

 With my new book MUMMIES EXPOSED! arriving on May 7, it's been a busy time . It's spring, after all, and I need to get outside to clean up after Old Man Winter and get ready to plant flowers.

 I'll get you a mummy activity come fall. In the meantime, how about planting a flower-and-herb version of an Elizabethan knot garden?

Like Elizabeth Tudor, England's Queen Elizabeth I?  Of course you can. Why Knot?

There's an excellent example of a knot garden here in the U.S. at the Elizabethan Gardens on Roanoke Island near the Outer Banks of North Carolina. There, head gardener Jeff Lewis cares for the twining shrubs that look like knots, and he plants the spaces in between them with herbs in spring.

Jeff shared a wonderful photo of this garden in early spring, when it’s easy to see “the bones” of the garden before lush green herbs take over in summer. Go on over to their website at http://elizabethangardens.org/

It takes years to establish a knot garden like this one, but you can create an updated version to grow in just one summer. All it takes is a bit of space, bedding plants, a digging tool, fertilizer, and regular watering.  
Here's a waterwise example from the Cooperative Extension website: https://articles.extension.org/pages/61669/water-wise-knot-gardens

 From Elizabeth I: the People's Queen comes this activity. It's knot a problem, I promise!

Photo credit: Double Down Flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Astronaut or Aquanaut—Which would you be?

by guest-blogger Jennifer Swanson

It’s so much fun to imagine what our future careers will be one day. You might find yourself wishing to blast off into space OR to dive deep under the ocean. But would you like either of these careers? Are they hard to do? What kind of training is needed? And WHAT does the suit you have to wear look and feel like?

   These are all amazing questions. A lot of them are answered in my book, Astronaut-Aquanaut: How Space Science and Sea Science Interact. But because this is a science/STEM/STEAM book we have some fun activities for you to do right in your own home to see which one of these careers you might choose.

Astronaut Training:

Do you have what it takes to dock at the Space Station? Grab a tennis ball, a big plastic cup, some rope or strong string and give it a try. It’s not as easy as you think!

Aquanaut Training:

Underwater is all about how things float. If you were going to dive deep under water, how do you make sure that you stay down there? And how do you make sure that you come back up? That force is called Buoyancy. It’s a force that pushes up on us as gravity pushes down. Try this experiment to see how things float… or sink

Did you succeed? Did both of your experiments work? Which one did you like more?

Challenge: If you’re looking for more ways to decide, I challenge you to design your own space suit OR underwater suit. What would it look like? What tools would it have? Draw it and compare with your friend.

So what did you decide? Will you be an Astronaut OR Aquanaut?

My choice? Aquanaut. All the way. I’d rather see this out my window: 

Than this:

Although to be quite honest, they are both amazing views! Thanks so much for joining me on the Hands-On Books!  Jennifer Swanson, www.JenniferSwansonBooks.com

It’s Halloween…Time to Carve Your Turnips!

I love Halloween -- not so much the candy and costumes (though I’m grateful for those tiny Snickers bars) as for the folklore and centuries-old practices from the British Isles that took place this time of year. When my daughter took up Irish dancing and got us involved in all things Celtic, I started digging deeper into the celebration of Samhain (pronounced “sow-ren), when the Celtic year ended and a new one began.