Garden Pictures

At long last, here are some pictures of my gardens.

This is the planting bed in front of my house. We have a circular drive and this is tucked into the landscaped half circle that's in front of it. All of the plants are supposed to attract butterflies. And they're P's! Purple pansies and purple petunias. (And a few other plants, but the pansies are the stars.)



Tomatoes!! We planted a few other vegetables that didn't do well but the tomatoes took off. I've never been able to grow them in the past but that all changed, thanks to the seedlings from two of my very good friends.



Milkweed plants. We have a few caterpillars on them now and three chrysalids in the area. (That we've been able to find; there may be more tucked around in little secret butterfly hidey-holes.)



The three chrysalids. The picture of the one on my watering can isn't great but you can make it out if you look in the shadowy part.



Martha Jr. and I are worried about this one clinging to a post. It looks a little malformed.




I love my butterflies! What started out as an educational, limited term project for the kids has turned into one of my favorite hobbies. I started with just planting milkweed but that has expanded into planting flowers for nectar for the butterflies in areas of my yard that I previously neglected. It's good for the butterflies and looks lovely to boot- how many hobbies can you say that about!

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Our various gardening projects are coming along nicely. After watching 4 Monarch butterflies emerge from their chrysalids successfully, we have 5 more caterpillars on our milkweed. My flowers in our front planting bed are looking lovely- it's the best grouping of flowers I've managed to put together in that bed so far. Our veggie garden has produced a ton of cherry tomatoes. Not much else, but lots and lots of tomatoes. We have watermelon and pumpkin seedlings; so far, so good on those, but who knows if we'll actually get fruit out of them?

The kids and I are experimental gardeners- we just throw seeds in the ground and see what comes up! Our latest experiments are seedlings we bought at Home Depot. The kids spotted some fruit producing plants and begged me to buy them, so I did. We got a fig tree (it's about a foot tall so we won't get any figs from it for a while, if it survives) and DH put it in the ground for me over the weekend. We also have pomegranate, blueberry, blackberry, and raspberry. Oh, and of course strawberry, but it's too late in the season for anything to come of that. I don't think we'll get anything much out of the other berry plants either since we're pretty far south, but we'll see.

Our worm bin is up and running, sort of. We bought worms; I haven't poked around too much to check on them since they apparently don't like to be disturbed. I know we're doing something wrong, though since we have a ton of fruit flies. (We keep the worm bin outside on our covered back patio so the flies won't get in the house but some of them have anyway, drat it all.) I checked on the problem solving guide where we found the instructions for the bin to see if I can do anything about the flies and it is fixable. I'm going to add more soil, covering the food scraps that are currently in there, and change out the newspaper bedding to see if that helps.

The worm bin led to a 4-H speech for The Wild Child. We attended our 4-H County Events last weekend where each of the kids had to present a short speech. The Wild Child demonstrated "How to Build a Worm Bin", Martha, Jr. also gave a demonstration on how to make a chevron pattern out of yarn, and The Eldest spoke about how to use a grid for art. They all did really well, if I do say so myself, and Martha Jr. walked away with a blue ribbon AND a fancy purple ribbon! She's also advancing to regional competition; she is tickled pink. I'm tickled pink that regionals are NOT on the same day as her piano recital a week later!

This is our first year in 4-H. I tried to sign the kids up previously but for whatever reason I just couldn't swing it. This year we went to their open house and found an old friend running a club; we signed up immediately. There is a big emphasis on parliamentary procedure and public speaking which I really like, so 4-H offers different benefits from Girl Scouts. It's not all agriculture and sewing, which is a common image people have of 4-H. They also offer a heavy dose of science; the first project we participated in with our club was science related. I hate that I didn't find this group earlier so that The Eldest could have participated longer, but oh, well. We'll be involved from here on out with the younger ones, for sure, and I think they'll get a lot out of it. Martha Jr. even found a friend in the club- she took ballet classes very briefly a few years ago and one of the girls that she especially liked from her class is in 4-H. They have a lot in common so I'm happy that they have rediscovered each other.

That's all for now- my gardens are calling me!

We're Over-Run!!

We have caterpillars everywhere! After what seems like a few months of no Monarchs our milkweed plants are now covered with them; we lost count somewhere over a dozen. We also have the Gulf Fritillaries which are now cocooning everywhere, including two under the iron garden chair by our front door.

I am so glad we started butterfly gardening; it is amazing to see nature in action.

More Butterflies!!!

We about gave up on our butterfly garden since our milkweed attracted aphids. We thought the monarchs would pass us right on by, and they did for a while, so we stopped checking for them. Nature keeps right on going, however, even when we aren't paying attention, and today we found a Monarch caterpillar crawling across our driveway! A quick glance over at our milkweed and we knew an emergency run to Home Depot was in order. When we got back with the milkweed plants and started messing around in our garden areas The Middle Child found Monarchs all over the place! We rounded them up and put as many as we could find on the plants. Now, we're not supposed to do that under normal circumstances, because when a Monarch caterpillar leaves its milkweed plant it is looking for a place to make a chrysalis. We figured that since the plants were totally stripped of leaves they were probably looking for FOOD more than a place to cocoon, and indeed a couple of them started munching away.

THEN The Middle Child took a look at our passion vine and found caterpillars there, too, only a NEW kind of caterpillar, definitely not a Monarch. She started counting them and easily found 10. Good thing the passion vine has gone bananas where we planted it, even with my neglectful not-very-green thumb. I googled "passion vine caterpillar" and I think our caterpillars are Variegated Fritillaries but I wouldn't swear to it. They look all scary and stingy but one article I read says the "stingers" are soft and you can pick them up. I'll pass, thanks.

We're Certified!

Our little butterfly garden is going to be certified as an official Monarch Waystation! I found a website tonight called "Monarch Watch" and poked around, only to find out that they have a certification program. They need as many people as possible to plant milkweed and other nectar plants for the Monarchs since they are losing so much of their natural habitat. Butterflies are yet another casualty of modern farming practices; sigh. The evil corporations that brought us genetically engineered crops made it possible for farmers to use Round Up as much as they want; it won't kill the corn or whatever the farm is growing. What it does kill is milkweed. Get the connection? No milkweed, no Monarch butterflies. Well, all in the name of profits, right?

Anyway, the website explains it better than I can given I'm coming down with a cold and my brain is foggy anyway, so go check it out for yourself. Remember anything underlined is CLICKABLE and will lead you to something interesting!

Caterpillars!

We have caterpillars on our milkweed, and LOTS of them! The Middle Child counted 15 of them yesterday all in various sizes. We can't wait to see our first chrysalis. You can see two of them in the first picture and one in the second hanging from the back of a leaf, where we find them most often. They are just like The Very Hungry Caterpillar (except they only eat milkweed).

Of Butterflies and Milkweed

We have caterpillars on our milkweed! Well, on the new milkweed we purchased at the garden center today, anyway. We bought 5 new plants and the check out guy found two little teeny caterpillars already on one of the plants. The kids were tickled pink! We were so motivated we got the plants in the ground within a few hours of getting them home, and that's a first. (They usually have to languish for several days, umm, weeks until we get around to planting them, if they survive. Those plants have to go through plant boot camp to go in the ground around our house!) We also saw a monarch fluttering around the milkweed we already had a few days ago so maybe we'll get caterpillars on those plants, too. Keep your fingers crossed for us!