Sap Savers
Our new naturalist, Jenny Rupp was part of the crew that tapped our first maple trees of the season this past Saturday. She is anxious for her first syruping season! What a marvelous winter it…
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What Happens When We Don’t Have Winter?
We’ve been getting lots of calls from people wondering how this unusually warm winter is going to affect their trees and plants. Will we have sap for maple syrup? What if my trees bud and…
Read MoreA Burning Experience
Our Education Facilitator and Naturalist, Jan Aiels, helped with a prairie burn last week. Here are some of her thoughts: It was a perfect fall day. Prairie grasses were bowing to a gentle west breeze…
Read MoreSharing Seeds
photo by Sheri Albrecht It gets pretty busy around the Nature Center in the fall as our lush prairie flowers and grasses turn to seed. It wasn’t always that way. When we began our prairie…
Read MoreHawk(eye) Season
A Cedar Rapids resident brought us these spectacular photos taken in her yard of a young red-tailed hawk. She brought them to us for identification, thinking the hawk was too large to be a red-tail…
Read MoreA Good Pothole
If you’re visiting the Nature Center or driving along Otis Road in the next couple of days, don’t be alarmed to see bulldozers working in Bena Field. With funding from a Green Communities grant through…
Read MoreWelcome, Erica!
The Nature Center welcomes Erica Zito as our new Registrar! Erica starts today but she’s no stranger to us. Her husband, Joe, is known around here as “the bug guy” and leads many of our “Bug…
Read MoreRain, rain…go away (slowly)
The City brought in the heavy equipment to change the Nature Center’s parking lot from a slant into a bowl shape If you’ve visited the Nature Center anytime since last fall, you know we’ve been…
Read MoreSummer fun
Summer camps started this week and we’ve got kids all OVER the place here all having a BLAST! Our Young Explorers are planting an American Indian “Three Sisters” garden of corn, squash and beans that…
Read MoreCalling All Kids!
If you’re wondering what to do with the kids this summer, take a look at the variety of summer camp options offered at the Nature Center! We have programs that run from just an hour…
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