Mission #3
Gaia Breathes! I know this because I’m writing book 3! 
Watch the video and be sure to download the Mission Log for directions and your chart. There is an advanced version of this mission. It is much more complicated, but if you would like to try it, download the Advanced Mission Log. (They both print 2 blank pages. Sorry about that; but you could use the extra pages to draw the things you find!)
Congrats to “hawaiiangaiagirl!” She is the Gaia Girl of the week! Last week it was “Juliet!” If you are not receiving the emails, scroll down to the Introduction to Summer of Gaia and you will see a sign up box for the email.
This entry was posted on Sunday, July 20th, 2008 at 5:04 pm and is filed under Archeived Posts, Summer of Gaia 2008. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
hawaiiangaiagirl says:
Wow!
Yay! next mission!! there are… um, too many leaves here. im leaving tomorrow for Atlanta so i have to wake up veeery early and find as many leaves as i can. good luck!
hawaiiangaiagirl
xtatertot29x says:
That’s cool. I was actually thinking about that a few days before the mission was posted!! Trust me, I’ve got PLENTY leaves here at my house! I’m getting help with the missions from my little birdie, Millie, but she seems more keen on destroying the leaves than looking at them!
fairylovegaia says:
wow!!
It was so fun!! My best friend and I each found our own in my back yard!! I found :
A toothed wild strawberry leaf,
A smooth rhododendron leaf,
A lobed blue-star creeper leaf
and a leaf that is wavy although I don’t know what it’s called!!
Good luck to everyone!!!
doggielover1123 says:
Hey guys!
I did this mission and I had so much fun!
I found:
A lobe edged Blue-Star Creeper
A smooth edged Rhododendron
A tooth edged Wild Strawberry Leaf
and last but not least, a wavy edged leaf that I don’t know its name!
Good Luck Gaia Gang!
-doggielover
doggielover1123 says:
Oh! I forgot I had more! First of all, i’m the friend that fairylovegaia was talking about, well, I did the mission again at my house. Forget the list above. This is my new list:
2 Rhododendrons. They had smooth margins, which felt a little bumpy when I rubbed my finger on it. They felt sort of waxy, like someone came along put wax on each of the leaves. They smelled like a mixture of cinnamon and hot chocolate. Boy did they smell good!
1 Japanese Maple leaf. It was sort of in the middle of lobed and tooth edged. It didn’t feel spiky though. It felt very thin. I could feel its veins and see my finger through it! It smelled like the Rhododendrons, except it was a little more airy.
1 Rose leaf. This is the leaf we have most of. The border felt like touching a blade of a knife (ouch!) It felt heavy, like putting a weight on it. It smelled all leafy and old. Like it was an ancient leaf.
1 Geranium leaf. This leaf was lobe edged. It was sort of like a little bowl. It felt smooth, waxy, and fuzzy. It smelled all sour and healthy.
1 Moonflower leaf. The border was wavy. it felt like putting my finger on many mountains. It felt so smooth, that I thought I was still touching it, but I was really touching the air! It had all these pores in it. It smelled like a leaf, full of oxygen and carbon dioxide.
1 Cherry tree leaf. This is probably my favorite. The border was sort of in the middle of wavy and toothed. It felt almost like the rose leaf, waxy and heavy, but it was thinner. This is probably the biggest leaf. It smelled sweet, and made me feel good inside.
1 Blue-Star-Creeper. It was lobe edged. It felt sort of big. Almost like a big leaf in a small package. It smelled like ivy.
1 Wild Strawberry leaf. It was tooth edged. It felt smooth. It smelled like strawberries.
And a leaf that the name is not known to me. It was wavy edged. It felt and smelled like the moonflower leaf. In fact, I think it could have been a moonflower leaf!
I hope you like my post, and good luck!
-Doggielover
Lee Welles-author says:
Hey all!
I’m impressed that you are able to name the plants! However, you don’t have to know the name of the plants to count how many plants have that type of leaf. For example, if your mom drags you grocery shopping, what kind of leaf edge is do the trees in the parking lot have? Look everywhere you go and count. I’m very curious to see what kind of border is most prevalent!
I’m in Kentucky right now, so if you are a new Gaia-blogger, it may take me a while to approve your first post. And yes, there are a LOT of horse farms here!
GaiaGirl55 says:
Hi!!
I totally forgot to do Missions #1 and #2, but I finally remembered Mission #3 and I’m so excited to do this one. . .So here is what I found.
A Holly Leaf – A dark green leaf with sharp, tooth edges.
Unknown Name – I don’t know what the name of this leaf is, but it is about 2-3 inches long with teeny-tiny tooth edges.
Another Unknown Name – A small leaf about a half inch long with dark green coloring on the inside and a yellow-green ring around the edge.
A Rhododendron Leaf – A smooth leaf with a long length.
A Maple Tree Leaf – A brown/caramel/maroon colored leaf with a thin stem and a few ‘upside- down V points’ that emerge from the center.
I found more leaves, just about anywhere I looked, like leaves from the zinnia flowers and from the forsythia plant, etc.
GaiaGirl55
adrie says:
Sorry, i forgot to do mission #2
veggiegal says:
I found a bunch and it was sooo much fun!
I went to Bob Evans and found some there and had a good breakfast too.:)
Okay, so around the house I found:
5 smooth margin
0 wavy margin
3 Toothed margin
1 lobed margin
Around my Yard I found:
12 smooth margin
5 wavy margin
7 toothed margin
and 2 lobed margin
Around my neighbors house I found:
5 smooth margin
0 wavy margin
1 toothed margin
1 lobed margin
At Bob Evans I found:
3 smooth margin
0 wavy margin
7 toothed margin
1 lobed margin
It was a lot of fun and it’s amazing how the cycle of air is so simple yet complicated. These leaves give us oxygen and I can’t think how someone would cut it down. The Amazon is one of our biggest oxygen producing forests and there cutting it down!=[ Why can't we all just use soybeans?????? =] Or …wait never mind.=]
I haven’t been able to do the other missions lately because of me being very busy, but i really wished I could have!
I can’t wait for the next mission!
=] Veggiegal
juliet says:
Hi!
Last night I went out and found 6 different kinds of leaves around my yard.
The first leaf I found was actually a twig with a few leaves on it. The leaves were a dark green, and had lobed edges. I’m pretty sure that they were oak leaves. The lobes were eaten away on some of the leaves by caterpillars or bugs. The oak leaves looked sickly, like the tree itself might have been diseased.
The second leaf I found also had lobed edges. I don’t know what its name was. It was slightly lighter green than the oak leaves, had a faint smell, and was long in length with fairly deep-cut lobes. It was very thin, like paper, and when I touched it, it felt as if it could tear apart easily.
The third leaf I found was a rhododendron leaf. It had smooth edges, and was a long,
stretched-out oval shape. It had a waxy texture, and was much thicker than the last leaf. It felt sturdy (as sturdy as a leaf can feel) when I touched it.
The fourth leaf (the name of which I do not know) I found was one of the smallest of the 6 leaves. It had tiny toothed edges, and had a clear, sharp point at the end. Its general shape was similar to that of the rhododendron leaf, except that it was about 5 times smaller. It was very thin, like the second leaf I found, and I could imagine it just floating away in the slightest breeze.
The fifth leaf that I found was a geranium leaf. It is probably debatable whether it has wavy or lobed edges, but I thought my geranium leaf had wavy edges. I could see how others could say lobed, though. The geranium leaf’s shape was like a pacman with its stem coming out of the pacman’s mouth. It felt fuzzy and oily, and had a very strong smell. (I personally don’t like the smell of geraniums.) It had two lones of green; the inner part had a lighter tinge, while the outer part was darker. It was just starting to get a little bit yellowish around the edges.
The sixth, and final, leaf I found was a leaf from a bleeding-hearts plant. It differed from all the other leaves because it was a very light green color. It had lobed edges, but they were more sharply cut out than the other leaves. On each leaf, there were three points, and two pointed indents on either side of the center point. These leaves were on a twig, like the oak leaves, and they were just as small as the fourth leaf I found.
So, in the end, I found:
3 lobed-edged leaves
1 toothed-edged leaf
1 smooth-edged leaf
1 wavy-edged leaf (although it could have been considered lobed, I guess)
I love going on Gaia missions! I can’t wait for next week’s mission…I will be in Maine by then, so there will be more open space and woods for me to do the mission! =]
fairylovegaia says:
Hi!!
I had so much fun that I did it again with the mission log (not to mention my little brother Ethan!).
We did it at: the park and in our backyard and front yard.
There were so many leaves at the park that we had to use a whole other line!! so at the park we found:
22 smooth edges,
22 wavy edges,
30 toothed edges
and 27 lobed edges. And that is only at the park!!
In our back yard we found:
11 smooth edges,
10 wavy edges,
15 toothed edges
and 10 lobed edges.
An in our front yard we found:
16 smooth,
6 wavy,
12 toothed
and 6 lobed.
And at the park Ethan and I found a tree that we used as a hide out. I got out the mission log and sat on one of the three comfortable branch like things and studied some leaves. Did you know that a leaf is really interesting when you look at it really closely?! I read (or started reading) the first Gaia Girls book!! then we had a snack and had to go home but we had a pretty fun adventure and hopefully we can go to our hideout with our babysitter Carly!! Okay i am finally done!!
Bye and good luck gang!!
- fairylovegaia
Lee Welles-author says:
Awesome reporting! It is going to be tough picking the Gaia Girl or Gaia Guy of the Week! I will not be doing that until Saturday afternoon; so you still have time to post YOUR Gaia Mission!