Is it just me or did the weather go from summer to fall overnight?! This chill in the air has got me thinking about all things fall...pumpkins, scarecrows, leaves, hot chocolate, sweaters, and PINECONES! A few weeks ago I had the idea to make pinecone birdfeeders for our craft project at the upcoming Cantigny Green Fair which meant that I needed to find a few hundred pinecones. No problem, I work at Cantigny! There are beautiful trees everywhere, plenty of conifers, I would be sure to find that many pinecones! Much to my surprise, the beautiful trees here at Cantigny were not ready to drop their cones. I spoke to our forester about my predicament and he let me know that it can depend on the weather and the type of tree, but we typically see the majority on the ground in October.
I was not willing to accept defeat and decided it would be my personal mission to somehow find enough pinecones for this craft project! I took a walk around my neighborhood later that evening...no pinecones. Jill thought there was a tree with lots of pinecones near her mother's house. Turns out, that tree doesn't exist anymore! Yikes! At this point, I was pretty sure that I was in trouble.
Then, while out at Target shopping for supplies for our Sprouts and Doodlebugs classes, I decided to take a different route out of the lot and stumbled upon lots of pine trees with TONS of pinecones!!!! So, I went back with a large box, parked my car a little down the street and started collecting. I am sure that I looked a bit crazy to others driving by the busy street as I crawled around on the ground under these trees throwing pinecones into a large box. But, that's ok, I knew my effort would pay off.
At one point during my collection I did fear that I was about to be attacked by a group of geese. They were hanging out at a park across the street from me, and once I was spotted they all came to the side of the road and proceeded to honk ferociously at me until I decided to leave!
So, now I proudly have over 200 pinecones sitting in my office just waiting to be turned into beautiful bird feeders at the Green Fair. Why don't you come out and make one?
Our Green Fair is on Saturday September 24th from 10am-4pm and if free with the $5.00 parking fee. Besides these fabulous birdfeeder crafts there will be plenty more exciting and earth friendly activities! Check out our event page for all the details!
 |
| My collection! |
No comments:
Post a Comment