It’s been a sort of slow week for us with the butterflies. We have caterpillars eating and growing, and a few in chrysalis going through their metamorphosis. I did have one male Black Swallowtail eclose last night, in the evening as the sun was setting so he had to spend the night. I released him first thing this morning and he was ready to go. I named him Kerouac.
It’s also been a sad week. I read some people keep their cats in enclosures outside, so I had some monarch caterpillars outside on the porch, not too hot or too cold, not too sunny or too shady. And something happened to them. I am not sure what although I suspect that someone in the neighborhood sprayed pesticides and it drifted over to our yard. Which is upsetting for many reasons, but it also shows just what these species have to survive through. I moved the survivors into a clean enclosure with all new food and keep checking on them, hoping they pull through. I will bleach and rinse the mesh enclosures today and get them all clean and sanitized for the next group. Update: All but one caterpillar survived!
I haven’t been bringing in any new eggs or caterpillars in the past week or so. We are going on vacation next week and I have to pass on the ones that I have to my friends to take care of for me while I am gone and they have their own as well, so I didn’t want to overwhelm them. When I get back however, I will pick up where I left off, in time for the big migration and super monarchs. The monarchs that eclose in late August and early September will be the monarchs that make the flight south, to Texas and Mexico. I am bummed that I did not get tags this year but I will for sure next year. So Texan friends, keep an eye out next year for my butterflies!
So right now we are in a holding pattern over here. Leslie from Once Upon a Time and Happily Ever After suggested little video updates on this project, maybe permanently embedded in the sidebar, and I am considering that, especially with the big migration and big monarchs coming soon.
And this is where we are this week! Slow going right now with some weeks of growth and a week off next week, then big things coming soon!
It’s official. I am in a reading slump. I don’t think it is the fault of the books – I think I am unable to concentrate right now on reading. I just can’t settle in. I am in a sort of busy frame of mind, and can’t keep still lately. And at night when I am still, I just fall asleep. Lol. Next week we will be on vacation, heading up to northern Michigan, and maybe then I can sit and relax and read – I have big plans for reading on the deck in the mornings. I’m just going to take all the books I have been trying to read with me, and see what works. If not, there is always Kindle and Amazon. And bookstores in vacation towns!
And we have air conditioning! Last week we were sweltering and then Billy spent a whole day working with his cousin, a heating and cooling guy, and they replaced our ancient A/C and furnace. Wyatt and I spent that day and night at my mom’s while Billy put in a long day. We are also getting my mom’s house to put on the market, and today Billy, my brother, my SIL, and I put in another long day working on her place, just shining it up and taking care of a few things. I feel like one more day spent there and it will be ready. She has been living at my late uncle’s condo while we do this work on her house, taking care of the kiddos along with my SIL’s mom.
I did have some success reading last week. I went back to one I picked up a few weeks ago, and this time I was able to read it a bit. Not as much as I usually read but it is a start! I barely remember it from the first time I read it, but I think I am already loving it more than the first time around.
I am just sticking with what is working and reading this one this week.
As for television, we are watching Sweet Tooth. I love it. Like, really love it. It is sad and hopeful and cute and quirky and I am just really enjoying it. Other than that, we are not watching much else. We pretty much are exhausted and conk out early. Our vacation will be so refreshing for us!
Last week my bloggie friend Lisa at Boondock Ramblings and I debuted a new feature we are working on together, Hometown Views. We both are posting about places and traditions and things we would want to show each other in our hometowns, and our first post went up last Wednesday. It’s all about our libraries! I also posted about my butterfly project, and about my garden – and the green tomato cake that I made.
And that is about it from my little corner of Michigan! I hope you all are doing well!
My small garden has been going a little wild lately, with the amount of rain and the high temps we are having. So wild in fact, that our tomato patch started to form its very own land mass that we had to deal with it. I chose to sacrifice a few plants in order to free up some breathing room for the ones I left behind, and then we properly caged the ones left standing. However, the ones we pulled out had so many green tomatoes growing already that I couldn’t just throw them in the compost pile. So, I gathered them up and brought them in. And then had to decide what to do with them.
Someone online suggested fried green tomatoes, so I added cornmeal to my grocery list. I always loved that movie by the way. But I knew there was no way I could eat a billion slices of fried green tomatoes. So I stuck some in a brown bag to ripen and that left about five or six that still needed a purpose. After some googling, I found a recipe for Green Tomato Cake. Which frankly, sounded weird but we had all the ingredients, and Wyatt was up to try it, so we went for it. And it was good! Like really good. It is more like zucchini bread than cake in my opinion, but Wyatt wanted frosting on his piece, so I guess his was more like cake. We did not add raisins (because I loathe them) or nuts (we didn’t have them) but it still was fantastic.
I felt pretty proud of it! I am not a baker, I can make bread but struggle with anything else, and this turned out so good. Plus, I made it from scratch and from using up tomatoes from our garden! Now I need a plan for all the kale… so much kale….
Freeing up space and getting the tomato plants sorted paid off immediately in the garden as well. I went out the next day to find two red ripe tomatoes! We are going to have tomatoes in abundance this year! I plan on making salsa and lots of BLTs. Lol.
And that is it for the vegetables that made it. I know where I went awry this year though in my planning, and have a plan for next year. We are also adding in two beds next year as well – I like to do things bit by little bit. So next year, two new beds of veggies, another flower bed, and maybe a small pond if we get ambitious. I would love to do that this year but other projects take precedence. I keep saying in the fall, in the fall.. which is not that far away! I am going to have to reconsider my list of ideas and plans!
Our pollinator garden is always buzzing too, quite literally! I see flying creepy insects (like Great Black Wasps!) out there all the time, mixed in with cute little honey bees and adorable bumblebees. I had to look up Great Black Wasps, they are very intimidating looking in appearance, with huge black bodies and blue wings. I learned they are actually a friend to gardeners, as they kill grasshoppers and katydids – I love grasshoppers and katydids but we do have a ton! Nature at work, right here in this small patch of garden. Our pollinator garden is made up of so many different plants for butterflies, but other insects seem to love them too – as do hummingbirds! We have forget-me-nots and blanket flowers, verbena, black-eyed susans, nettle, butterfly weed (which I just learned is a type of milkweed, good for monarchs!), sage, rue, lovage, dill, bronze fennel (I always find black swallowtail caterpillars caught up in this plants greenery), lemon basil, and a cola plant. The cola plant was one I stuck in there years ago when I made a sensory garden for Wyatt – it smells just like soda, hence the name!
Another plan for next year is to remove what is left of the chain link fence and replace it. I want wood, something natural.
Our front garden area is full of yarrow. I saw it at the garden center and fell in love with it, so I planted like three or four of them. I also have brunella, butterfly weed, raspberry bushes, and lavender in that area, and I love to look out at it in the morning. This morning I saw a tiny bunny checking it out.
Gardening to me is.. a place to be creative. To buy the plants that call to me and find places for them. To provide shelter and food for insects and animals and for us as well. I love that I can change it up and add to it. And you can just keep going and going until you run out of room. You can buy plants or start from seed. There are so many options, flowers, veggies, night gardens, shade gardens, pollinator gardens. There is always something new and different to see when I visit the garden. I can’t wait to see what else we do with the things we grow this year, and I am already excited to start planning for next year.
Hi everyone! One thing I love about blogging is the people that I “meet”. And while we have never actually met, Lisa from Boondock Ramblings is someone I love sharing stories with, photos, chatting about our day – she has become a friend, even though she lives states away from me. We message back and forth throughout the day, and one thing that we share with each other are the goings on in our communities, and talk about the differences in where we live. She lives in rural Pennsylvania; I live in the most populated county in Michigan, right outside Detroit. The views outside of our windows, what we see everyday, is very different. And I love hearing about the dairy parades, the trips through the narrow winding mountain roads, the bear that lives in her neighborhood. She also sees cool bugs and sends them to me, since I am such an insect person these days. One she sent the other day, the Rosy Maple moth is one that is only found in her area! It was so pretty and I would not have known its existence without her sending me that picture.
Anyway, we have teamed up to share some of our hometown views on our blogs. When we talked about it at first, we decided to look at it like, if we were to visit the other, what would we like to share with them about our hometown and area? And since we are both lovers of words and reading, the library was only natural. You can see Lisa’s post here – she is an amazing writer and photographer, so I am sure you will enjoy it!
The library has always been a place I have loved. My mom introduced me to it when I was just a little girl, and I started taking Wyatt right away too. The three of us have been checking out and reading books from this library our whole lives. When my mom was younger, this is the part of the library that she used. She remembers my aunt taking her there to read, and later hanging out in the rooms on the upper floors in high school.
It began its life in 1898, as the family home of Edward Ford, and later the home of his daughter and her husband, Mark Bacon and Mary Ford Bacon. It is a grand old dame, with 27 rooms and 11 fireplaces, a four story bell tower, and a huge porch. In 1942, when Mary’s husband died, she gave the home to the public school system and it now serves as the public library, and has since at least the 1950s. When my mom was younger, she remembers more of the home being open, as it was the main part of the library. Now only a small part of it is open to the public, and it holds meeting rooms, reading rooms, and periodicals. I love to go and sit in the reading rooms, and in college I would study there as well. No one uses those rooms too much, which is sad but at the same time, I like that when I go, it is almost like my own quiet getaway.
I feel so fancy sitting in here. These next photos are of the Max Schwartz room, which was the children’s library area when my mom was little. I picture her sitting on the window seats (where the old Life magazines are now), reading her favorite books, glancing out the window occasionally.
The rest of this floor is for the current periodicals and meetings and crafts. I love that they have figured out how to make this beautiful space work for the needs of people now, although I can’t help but wish it was still just the library in here, all the books spread out. But I know it is not practical or accessible to all! I can’t even take my son in there without using the little elevator to go up to the next level to enter. So I do see that it is not possible. But I can dream of what it was like! They had the upstairs closed off while I visited the other day, I think it has not completely reopened due to the pandemic, but upstairs are offices and rooms that can be used for meetings. When I was on the board of an animal rescue group, we used to have our meetings up there.
It is under construction right now, but when it is not you can sit on the porch and read which I of course love.
However, the area of the library that I grew up using is just through the door and down a few stairs. Out of the frame to the left is an elevator for those who need to use it.
The main part of the library now. I sat at these tables often in high school, and have been browsing these stacks since I was a little girl.
The children’s area. It usually is a bit more lively and filled with more displays, but they just reopened the library and are in the process of setting everything back to normal. I did see they are doing a chicken hatching demonstration for the kids.
I also took some time to wander around outside, while Billy and Wyatt read on the steps. I of course had to take photos of my guys.
This library has been a refuge for me for years, and I love that Wyatt enjoys going as much as I did as a kid. Three generations, one library.
How about you? Are you a library lover?
To read about more charming libraries, hop on over to Lisa’s post!
Good morning butterflies! Good morning caterpillars! This is a pretty common thing in our house these days, greeting all of our little friends that share our space, however temporarily. Wyatt still remains more in love with the caterpillars than the butterflies, but the magic of a watching a butterfly emerge from the chrysalis then fly away into the wind never gets old to me.
Last week all of our butterflies emerged from their chrysalis! At the time of my last posting, we had 14 monarchs in chrysalis, and 1 black swallowtail. As of today, that group, which I am calling The Toad Hole group after my friend Kelly’s house’s “name”, are all living their lives, free and wild and gathering nectar and hopefully creating more butterflies.
One morning I woke up to 6 butterflies! I actually had to work that morning, but I work for my cousin, and he is working from home these days, so I took them with me to release there. You have to give them some time to allow their wings to dry, and they would be ready while I was working. So, the butterflies went with me. And as a bonus, his daughters were there too, and got to watch and help out.
Although I had to laugh at myself, driving with a car of butterflies. I wonder what they thought, if anything?
So last week was all about these beautiful creatures – releasing them and collecting eggs for the most part.
I am planning on keeping a running tally though for those who are interested of the number of butterflies released, either in the sidebar or somewhere else. Maybe a whole dedicated page? I’ll have to see what works best. I am also hoping to start tagging monarchs, but I need to order the tags today or it won’t happen. If I do, it would be really cool to see if my blog friends down in Texas find any of the monarchs that I release! Tagging happens in the fall, we will see if I can order the tags today, since I think today is the last day to order!
So, the breakdown of butterflies last week:
14 released monarchs : 5 female (Janet, Scarlet, Wendy, Penny, and Freya) 9 male Larry, George, Peter, Frank, Captain, Loki, Odin, Thor, Fenrir.
1 released Black Swallowtail – male, Cavendish
If you are wondering why I am doing this, here is a great article. I can’t imagine a world without butterflies, can you? I remember going to Jack Miner in Canada as a child, and seeing trees just covered in monarchs and thinking it was the most amazing, wonderful, enchanted thing I had seen. I want to take Wyatt one day so he can feel that too.
This week was yet again another busier than I wanted week. Things should be much much better by next week – and we will have air conditioning too! Yay! Today we are camping out at my mom’s while a new furnace and a/c unit are installed – Wyatt is actually coloring with my mom right now as I type.
Read Last Week/Reading This Week:
Nothing. I was dismal at reading last week. I had so many good intentions but they went out the window sadly. I have high hopes for this week though. I am switching my plan – I think I need something not so serious and Bacchanal is sitting on my Kindle. I love this cover!
Maggie likes to sit right next to me when I am working. She matches my “Strega Nona” mug perfectly. Lol.
My office is one of my happy places these days. It is so full of life in here, my lizards, my butterflies, the plants. The scent of dill and fennel from the caterpillar tanks remind me of being in my garden, and combined with the green wallpaper, the desk, the carpet, it just feels so peaceful in here.
I’ve thought a lot about my “happy places” this week. It’s been a rough week honestly, with lots of ups and downs, emotional moments, and frankly just all topsy-turvy. I’ve had to actively seek out those places and things that can ease my soul this week, fitting them in where I could. Time spent in here definitely is one of those places.
Another is outside in the butterfly garden. I love just being near all that beauty, observing the insects that are buzzing around, going about their own little lives in this place that I have created for them. And if I have a glass of wine with me in the evening, even better. I can’t wait to expand the garden next year honestly. We start small with our projects, and add on every year, and the garden is no different, a work in progress.
But I guess I am not all nature all the time. And especially this week, when our house has been so hot and humid. Our air conditioner is being fixed tomorrow thank goodness, but we have been either huddled in our bedroom with the portable unit, or sweating in the rest of the house. I needed an escape this week, and for me that is either the library (more on the library Wednesday..) or… Target.
I needed to be away. Out. Alone. Anonymous even. Not mom, not Erin. Just some lady walking around Target throwing various items into her cart, wandering the aisles looking at stuff. Plus, it is air conditioned. I also needed to be not hot.
Later this morning, we are visiting another of my happy places, one we haven’t been to for over a year. In fact, it was the last place we had been before lockdown March 2020. The nature center at our favorite metropark. We had celebrated Wyatt’s birthday, then boom, lockdown. During that time they were closed, they did a whole renovation to the interior, so today when we go, it is going to different looking, but still the same place. With the same people who work there who have become friends over the last twenty years, which is how long we have been going there. I am excited to visit and see the changes, and catch up with our friends, to watch the birds out the big windows, to explore the new displays. We are heading there soon, as soon as I finish up this coffee and we all get dressed. I can’t wait!
How about you? Where do you escape to? What are your happy places?
We have been having a blast exploring Italy this summer! Not in person sadly, but learning and reading and yes, eating Italian food together. Every few months we study a country where our family has roots, as part of an intro to geography type thing, and Italy has been so much fun.
If I started at the beginning, I would have to say it was with watching Luca. I love that movie, it is so good! I love how it is such a movie of friendship and acceptance. And even in cartoon form, Italy is gorgeous.
Then, our actual studies began – I wanted to keep it fun and sort of loose and unstructured, it is summer after all, so we are not working on it every day, and we have lots of books and videos and art projects instead of straight learning facts and worksheets. And I want to create a love for learning about other countries and cultures – geography was always a favorite of mine is school, and I really want to pass that on.
We started off easy, reading about Italy in general, making an herb flag of Italy, a pasta map out of macaroni noodles, and learning some basic words and phrases. I did buy a few resources online to help me out – the main one we are using is from Savy Activities, a maker I have never used before but will again in the future. I just love how they have the information presented and their activities are so fun!
From here, we zoomed in for a closer look. Last year we built an Eiffel Tower from wafer cookies. This year, we built the Colosseum.
Wyatt did great, although he did want to eat our building materials. He kept snacking on our walls! We did have it for dessert that night though. Lol.
And we had a Strega Nona day! I love Strega Nona. They are such classic picture books and remind me of my childhood. We read the book Strega Nona, did some story sequencing, and did a little craft of Strega and her magic pasta pot. For dinner, we had spaghetti, but I was careful not to flood the streets of our city with it. ( I can’t find the link to the materials I used for this although I believe it was from Scholastic. If I locate it I will update this post)
This week has been my favorite so far though. Monday was Pisa, Pizza, and Pizelles day. The kids learned about the Leaning Tower of Pisa, made their own personal pizzas, and tried pizelles.
Our tower crafts were not our best ever, so thank goodness we had the pizza and pizelles to follow it up. And seriously, that pizza was delicious. These picky eaters both ate all of it!
Wednesday was – are you ready – Michaelangelato day. Sometimes I crack myself up. The kids learned about Michaelangelo, did their own version of how he painted the Sistine Chapel, then we all had a gelato taste test! I bought five different flavors and we tasted them all, recording whether we liked it, didn’t like it, or were not quite sure. I bought Talenti Gelato in the flavors of Coconut, Mint, Peanut Butter Cup, Confetti Cookie, and Strawberry Cheesecake. The winner of best tasting gelato was hands down the Mediterranean Mint. It was the favorite of 3 out of 4 of us. I was the only one who placed the confetti cookie ahead of it. Wyatt was the only one of us to like the coconut, but he refused the strawberry. It was a lot fun.
Next week we are moving on to frescoes and music, and then we are finishing up in Venice!
This has been a fantastically fun month so far. We have a few other things planned, including a field trip and Billy and I have been conducting a local pizza survey as well, that I will write about later.
And we have a Monarch! Our very first chrysalis hatched on Tuesday morning. I was so excited I ran down the stairs to the basement to my husband’s office to tell him, and I asked if he wanted to come see it. He was not as excited as I was. However he did eventually come up to check it out before I let her go.
I usually start with the Black Swallowtails, but today, we are all about the Monarchs.
We had reached a point where all of our cats were in chrysalis! It was very quiet in the tanks. Then I went and checked our milkweed, and found monarch eggs!
I debated whether or not I wanted to bring them in. I was finding the idea of raising them from eggs a little intimidating, but I know that we have so many different insects in our garden that they probably were not safe – spiders, wasps, all sorts of critters. I decided to chance it, so I left them. And the next day they were gone. After that, I brought in every egg that I found. If you are interested, you peel the leaf off, and place it carefully into a plastic container that has paper towel lining the bottom. You don’t need to worry about little air holes as you will be opening it at least twice a day to check on them, and also to spritz them gently with water. If you have more leaves with eggs than you have room for, you can cut the leaves into smaller pieces. Then you wait. And eventually you will see a teensy tiny baby caterpillar. At this point, I leave them a few days in this little nursery, since they are even smaller than they are here. When they get about this size or a little bigger, I move them to their own tank with more milkweed. And then just keep feeding them and letting them grow.
We were at this stage for a few days, and then Monday night I noticed one of the chrysalis was turning dark, a sign that it was getting close to eclosing! If I had not gone to bed, I would have eventually been able to see the wings through the chrysalis. When I got up the next morning, I was rushing, running late to Wyatt’s therapy and I just glanced into the room to see if there was a butterfly hanging around, and nope not yet. However, when we got home, there was!
I gave her a few hours to pump up her wings and let her dry, then took her out to release her. She hung out for a minute before flying away. This one I named Faye.
The others went into chrysalis right after this one had, so I am expecting a flurry of butterflies pretty soon!
So, now the Black Swallowtails!
I only had a few chrysalis left at last posting, three to be exact. Since then, two more have eclosed, both males.
The first photo is the butterfly I named for my stepfather Jerry, and the second one is named DeWayne, for a blogger friend’s father. Both took off immediately when I released them. I have been tracking this actually, and every male I have had has flown off immediately. Every female has let me hold her before flying away. I wonder if this trend will continue and what it means, if anything.
And when I released DeWayne, I found two more Black Swallowtail caterpillars.
So the tally, as of Tuesday afternoon when I am writing this:
5 released Black Swallowtail, 1 released Monarch, 14 Monarch chrysalis, 1 Black Swallowtail chrysalis, 2 Black Swallowtail caterpillars, 5 Monarch tiny babies, and 3 Monarch eggs, and 2 Black Swallowtail eggs. This could change before tomorrow morning but this is my tally as it stands right now.
When I woke up this morning, I had one more butterfly, still coming out of it’s chrysalis. Within the hour, two more eclosed, for a total of three new Monarchs. I will share their story next week!
It was a looonnnnggg week last week! We had so much going on that I had to write post-it notes to myself and leave them places so that I could remember what I needed to do and when! We did manage to sneak in some fun times though, in between all the business. My son and niece had a pool night at my in-laws house, and oh my gosh did they have fun! Wyatt is a water baby and gets so excited and has no fear. He loves to be in the pool. He is screaming and laughing like crazy in that picture of him with my brother, who he was trying to splash. The kids and dads played in the pool for a few hours and then followed it up by devouring pizza and crazy bread.
Read Last Week:
I didn’t read quite as much as I had hoped last week, although I did finish this one. I loved it! I hope to do a few quick book reviews this week.
I had wanted to start Cape Cod by William Martin but I can’t find my copy! I packed it up when we redid the office and I can’t find the box it is in. So I put a hold on it from the library and I am waiting for it to come in.
Reading This Week:
While I was going through the boxes of books, I did pull this one out. Another oldie but goodie. I just mentioned it to someone on here the other day, when we were talking about Luna Moths. Luna Moths feature in this book somehow but I don’t remember exactly how. I grabbed it to read while I am waiting for Cape Cod. I also want to finish this one.
I got about halfway through it then put it down for some reason and never picked it back up. So it is on my list to finish this week.
Not really anything new. The Tour, Death in Paradise. I am listening to different creepy podcasts and some nature ones as well. Kind of boring on this front for right now.
Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs.. 