Forest Friday | Fennel Chomping Edition

My child has turned into an herb connoisseur. The moment he gets into the garden he’s searching for dill or fennel to snag, and of course carrots if they are available. In the flower garden we have creeping thyme and he’s all over that, too. I mean, I’m pleasantly surprised and delighted that he’s into eating fresh herbs from the garden but I wouldn’t have pinned it as something he would do.

The dill we had in fall and early winter succumbed to all of the freezes and I have since resown more seed, both for Forest and our pantry, but for the hopes to get the black swallowtails to return and lay eggs again. Now that I have the caterpillar tent—and I plan on ordering one more this year so I can separate out older caterpillars from younger ones and keep chrysalides separate—I want to try to raise some black swallowtails as well. We had quite a few caterpillars last year but I’m fairly certain predator insects and birds snagged all of them before the could pupate.

With the warmer temperatures, we are finally spending more time outside once again. Last weekend my parents were in town and Forest enjoyed time in the sandbox. Chris had made a pile of wood pieces that had fallen from various trees so he could take them to the fire pit and Forest took it upon himself to move all of the pieces, one at a time, over to his makeshift fire pit on the back porch! Talk about modeling behavior! It was too adorable to make him take it off the porch and later in the week Chris moved them to the actual fire pit.

Finally, I wanted to get a photo of Forest with my parents and Forest is entering the no-photos-of-me-please phase and so it took some convincing to get him to do that. We told him he could give my dad bunny ears and well, they turned out more like a peace sign! So, peace, y’all!