Hey Scouts! I hope your summer is going well.

The district is planning on doing a huge recruitment in the Fall, so when you go back to school, keep your eyes open for fliers and you can do your part to get your friends to join Scouts. Also keep checking the blog so you know when our next pack meeting will be.

Okay, here the second installment of my summer project for you guys. For you first year Webelos, if you remember these plants, you'll get a head start on your Naturalist activity badge.

This week's plant is Currant Berry. These plants grow wild in our mountains, especially in the foothill areas. You can identify it easily by the leaf - it kind of looks like a fan. The berries are usually ripe late in the spring, but if the animals get to them first, you might not see them. If you do, they are green when they first form, then they turn pink, then purple. Early in the spring, the plant has pretty pink flowers on it. You can eat the berries, and they taste really good. But until you can identify it with absolute certainty, don't just start eating every purple berry you find. Remember, "when in doubt, do without."

All right, troops. We'll have more next week.

It's Friday, June 5th, and I'm getting ready to go rafting with the Boy Scouts. I'm really looking forward to this weekend.

So I promised something cool for the summer, and I decided to start it today. A couple of weeks ago, my family went for a short hike at the top of Hermosa. We found a lot of cool thing along the trail, including a waterfall, a paintball range, a rattle snake that we almost stepped on, and a lot of different plants. I thought it was cool to have such neat things so close to our homes.

For the summer, I will be posting things from this hike for you guys to learn about. The Webelos have to learn different plants for their achievements, and the other dens can benefit from knowing these things, too.

The first thing I wanted to show you was a plant called Stinging Nettle. It's called that because it really does sting if you get it on your skin. Look at the picture below. Do you see those little hairs? Each one of those is like a little needle with a stinging oil on it. When it gets on your skin, it stings, then make a little blister, then burns, and eventually goes away. . . after 4 hours. Here's the catcher - you can eat them! If you find young shoots and boil them a few times, you can eat them like spinach. The stems also have a very strong fiber that can be used to make rope. So it's a cool plant, if you respect it.

That's it for this week. Check back later to see what's next.