Cup Plants, Coneflowers, Butterfly Weed and Finals begin ...

We started finals today.  We tried a new version of the photosynthesis lab as our final in AP Biology since our AP Exam was a couple of weeks ago.  We have always used a chloroplast solution and the spectrophotometers with DPIP for our photosynthesis lab.  We are going to switch over to a leaf disk method next year.  Our guided practice went well and some groups had good inquiry followups.  Students are to present their miniposters as their final next week.

In Computer Programming, students are presenting their final projects ... mostly Visual BASIC projects but a few in Scratch and one in JAVA.  These will continue through next week.

Still planting our pollinator garden at school and I am still planting wildflowers at our farm for seed harvest later in the year ... several types of milkweed, several coneflowers, rattlesnake master and more.  Some of the flowers we planted last year are starting to bloom ... pictures from today below ...

The Cup Plants are crowding out our coneflowers in our garden ... butterfly weed starting to bloom.

Last year, we planted mostly purple coneflower ... this year we added pale purple coneflower and Tennessee conflower.

We a had a small shower early this afternoon and the cup plant refilled their cup structures where their leaves attach to the large square stems.  I am looking forward to seeing what animals are drawn to these small reserviors later in the summer.