Autumn Nature Table

I’ve been reading The Wonderful Weekend Book, by Elspeth Thompson. It’s full of great ideas on simple, feel-good type things that you might want to do at the weekend, like writing letters, having a real fire and baking bread. I think you’d go a bit mad if you did all of the things that Elspeth suggests – after all Homebase do do quite a nice line in chocolate croissants. But one thing she suggested did catch my eye – ‘create a nature table’.

Why not? So when the rain cleared we donned our wellies and off we went. Where I live is quite rural so, we didn’t have to go far before we started to find lots of natury type stuff. We found leaves of every Autumn colour, spiky horsechestnuts, acorns, feathers and even mushrooms. We had great fun.

What I realised is that all this stuff had been on the floor every time we’d been on a walk recently, I just hadn’t bothered to pick it up or even notice it really. And when you bring it indoors it takes on a whole different look.

We took it all back home and ‘played’ with it for a while. I even tried to identify some of the leaves but soon realised that I couldn’t and turned to Google to help me out – very smart that Google.

We arranged our stuff on a tray and put it on the window-ledge. The next day however, our nature table didn’t look so great. The leaves had shrivelled up and some little grub-like things had come out of the mushroom. Hmmm… Oh well, still a wholesome activity.

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5 Comments on “Autumn Nature Table”

  1. Your display looked lovely for your photos though and you enjoyed it, so that’s the important thing.

    I’ve done the same thing before now (not had time so far this year!) but it’s like when you take shells from the beach, once they dry out the colour disappears they’re quite bland and sad. I guess the point is to go out and see the leaves as nature intended!!!

    If nothing else it was educational for your little helper and maybe it’ll be a memory from his childhood that will stick with him throughout his life and he’ll do it with his own kids. There now, aren’t you glad you did it anyway?!?!?!

    Keep the photos and blogs coming. I love this site!!

  2. My children don’t need any encouragement to do this. They have made an autumn collection on my window sill which consists of leaves, twigs, conkers and sweet chesnuts. Usually we have a pile of sticks and stones outside the front door to greet visitors. Bless them.

  4. I live in the city and have always enjoyed going to Sefton Park and collecting conkers, etc something to do with the lovely colour and when I had children I took them to the nearby roads which have conker trees or (horsechestnuts) to collect them. I still have to pick a conker up when I am out walking. I think this is a lovely time of year with all the the yellows, reds, copper colours in the parks.

  5. It’s a great idea for my next Birthday. I hope to make a collection of leaves in my garden next September.