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.