...From Little Acorns Grow

Our front flower bed sits behind a big oak tree, so in winter it's leaves cover the whole flower bed.  Usually I spend lots of time clearing them out to keep it looking nice...but this year it occurred to me that the thick layer of leaves was really just a free winter mulch, so I left it.  I even put my hanging baskets and a few potted plants in there and covered them up too.  The leaves did their job and kept everything warm and frost free all winter.

This weekend I started to pull all the leaves out, as we're done with frosty weather now.  And under a pot, under all those leaves, I found this little acorn sprouting.  It's root had already found it's way into the soft damp soil but it couldn't grow there, (too close to the house) so I gently pulled it up and have planted it in a pot for now.  Let's hope one day this little sprout will be a mighty oak tree too :0)

Bonus - it was really cool to show the kids how the acorn starts to grow - couldn't have planned a better science experiment :0)