Category: Nature
Winter in the Forest
January 15, 2014By Melissa Nase, Manager of Land Stewardship
Winter provides a simplified, yet inspiring version of the forest we know so well in other seasons. I welcome its cool, calm colors after many weeks of the unrelenting holiday glitz and chaotic pace. In many ways, it is so much easier to proverbially, “see the forest for the trees” in this season. Uncovering the beauty and details of this place during winter is magical. Especially after a snow, the silence paired with the subdued greys and whites removes the sensory overload that can distract in other seasons. Texture, pattern, and form come…
Of Sassafras & Spirits
January 6, 2014By Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director
Beer, wine, scotch, tequila, even sake all have at least this in common: they come from plants. In her wonderful book The Drunken Botanist, Amy Stewart explores the dizzying array of flowers, trees, and fungi that we have transformed into alcohol over the centuries.
Join us at the Schuylkill Center on Thursday, January 16 at 7:30 p.m. for a special chat-and-sip event. We’ll talk about and read from the book, and Olivia Carb from Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, that extraordinary Philadelphia distiller, shares their drinks like Root, Snap, and Rhubarb Tea, all…
Wild Turkeys: The Truth Behind the Bird
November 26, 2013By Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director
On Thursday, Americans of all shapes, sizes and colors gather around tables overflowing with colorful cornucopias of food. And whether that table includes cranberry sauce or couscous, tortellini or tortillas, the centerpiece of the meal is likely that quintessential American bird, the turkey.
Consider that turkey, one of our biggest natural neighbors. Likely one of your holiday plates includes an image of the tom turkey, chest all puffed out, strutting its stuff. That's not how turkeys appear in November. Sleeker, thinner, turkeys are now forming winter single-sex flocks, a tom and its brothers joining a…
Goldenrod and Asters in the Last Chance Cafe
October 15, 2013By Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director
Autumn is notable for so many things: crisp weather, colorful trees, birds and butterflies migrating south, and my favorite sign of the season, fields overflowing with goldenrod and aster.
Yes, goldenrod, scourge of those hay fever commercials, the ones with some poor sneezing schmuck standing shoulder-deep in a field of stunning yellow goldenrod, waving the white flag of surrender. Trouble is, goldenrod doesn't give you hay fever. Its pollen is too heavy, dense, sticky—we don't breathe it.
But goldenrod unfortunately blooms at the same time as ragweed, a wind-pollinated nightmare that pumps trillions of pollen spores into the sky, praying one…
A Silent Fall: Vanishing Monarchs
October 3, 2013[caption id="attachment_364" align="alignleft" width="329"] A Monarch dries its wings after emerging from its chrysalis in our front garden. (Schuylkill Center, 2013)[/caption]
By Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director
The new fall season brings a chain of wonderful events: trees turning color, birds migrating south, goldenrod fields bursting in bloom. But one of my favorite fall phenomena is sadly and strangely absent this year.
There are almost no Monarch butterflies afoot these days. All summer, I’ve seen only three at the Schuylkill Center. And my compatriots at other centers like Bowman’s Hill in New Hope and Peace Valley in Doylestown report the same…
On Valentine’s Day, a Dive into the Weird World of Animal Sex
February 13, 2013By Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director
It's Valentine's Day, and while we're canceling our scheduled evening program, I thought I'd share the strange tales of amorous animals. Nature is incredibly wonderful, but also incredibly weird.
Take the clownfish, for example, so famously depicted in Finding Nemo, that sweet name abducted by last week’s horrific storm. All clownfish are born male—not a girl in the bunch. They live in and around anemones, stinging relatives of corals and jellyfish; plantlike but actually animals, anemones are unable to move anywhere. So clownfish don’t go very far either. (And sadly, rarely go on any adventures of any kind.) …
Making Room for Rain – Stacy Levy
January 22, 2013
The Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education is working to investigate the intersection of nature and the city. The role of rain in the landscape is being actively explored in programs and planning around its buildings. As a nature center, SCEE is at the forefront of solving site issues through art based intervention. On May 31, 2013 a conference on New Environmental Art will be held at SCEE to look at ways that art and science can collaborate to solve ecological problems in urban nature, and enlighten citizens to find new solutions in their own lives.
Rain is usually given a…
Restoring childhood play… and Philly’s first nature preschool
December 6, 2012Gail Farmer, Director of Education
I was born in 1975, part of Generation X, probably the last generation whose parents felt comfortable sending their kids out into the neighborhood after school. “Go outside and be back by dinner,” was a common directive from my mother. My street ran along the bottom of an undeveloped hill, and “The Hill” was where my sisters and I went when my mom sent us outdoors. My childhood was also filled with Girl Scouts, dance classes and community soccer, but my best memories and my most formative experiences come from the times my mother wanted…
Wellness Walks Even In The Winter
November 24, 2012By Gail Farmer, Director of Education
The temperature might be dropping, and the trees might be losing their leaves, but that doesn’t mean keeping up your exercise routine isn’t just as important.
Winter wellness walks have obvious benefits, but we found some more with a little research. In fact, it has been proven that winter walks may have surprising health benefits.
Benefit #1: Reduces Stress
Walking in the winter offers you a refreshing change of pace, says Alan Mikesky, PhD on Prevention.com, director of the human performance and biomechanics laboratory at Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis. The invigorating cold air…
Wild Turkeys: Of Wingmen and Bands of Brothers
November 21, 2012By Mike Weilbacher
[caption id="attachment_248" align="alignleft" width="300"] A strutting tom and his band of brothers courting a hen.[/caption]
On Thanksgiving Day, we’ll gather around tables overflowing with food and stuff ourselves silly. And while every family has its own unique take on the traditional meal, in most homes a big turkey anchors the feast, the centerpiece of the table.
While a lot of us might remember that Ben Franklin favored the turkey as the national symbol, what else do we know about turkeys? Not much, right? So here are some turkey facts to gobble up alongside your meal.
In…
