Twigs

Our twigs have leafed out! They are beautiful now... all with budding green leaves that are growing in all directions from every branch we cut. A strange thing happened though... most of the flowers died. I think it is too warm in our house for early spring flowering trees. It makes sense afterall, because the flowers are ready to burst into their color now (at 45* outside), and it is 68* in our house... much more of a "leaf" temperature than a cherry blossom temperature.

The only flower survivors were the apple blossoms. And how pretty and delicate they are! I love them... a little bit of lace in all that greenery.

The kids and I all wrote down when we thought the branches would leaf out... specifically the Apple and the Cherry branches. Here is how it broke down:

Cherry:

Alex: 1 wk (bedtime)

Cyan: 2 days (in the middle of the night)

Me: 1 day

Don: 2 days (day time)

Apple:

Alex: 8 days

Cyan: 10 days

Me: 4 days

Don: 2 days

Alex ended up being right on the Cherry, and Cyan on the Apple. They took a LOT longer than I thought they would! They were so heavy with buds when we brought them in, I was sure they would only take a day or two to burst open. But I was dead wrong... it took 6 days at least for both to even start to leaf.

It was a real fun nature experiment though... I plan on doing it again later with hardwoods like Oak. We are going to make a leaf baby book. :) Document (via leaf rubbings) how big the leaves are every two days in a little book for each tree we find that is leafing. We won't be able to start that until may... so between now and then, our tree ring discovery kit came. Wow is it neat!