That wonderful warm weather we had earlier this week is now gone. I had an appointment in town yesterday morning so I watched the temperature rise to 75 at 10 am and then start dropping mere blocks before I arrived to work. When I got out of the car it was 67 and by the time I left at 5pm it was 51. I was just getting used to wearing crop pants and t-shirts again! I know, in a few short weeks they will be back out for good until next October. Let’s go on a garden tour! I took these photos on Tuesday at lunch. This is a bluebonnet…

Having an extended weekend has meant a little more time to get a lot of different things done as well as leaving plenty of room for laziness. I’ve dabbled around the garden the last few days, more than I’ve done in the last month or so. And that meant taking time to get a few photos in…so here goes a photo tour of our late December garden. The swamp chestnut oaks (Q. michauxii) are starting to develop good bark now that they have been in the ground for over five years. In the edible garden, we’re in the transition period between sowing and harvesting with many greens nearly ready to…

Imagine my surprise when I got home at lunch today to find a pipevine swallowtail had eclosed in the butterfly cage! The pipevine chrysalides I have in the cage have been in there since September and I fully expected them to continue over wintering until spring. I still have two monarchs that have been darkening the last few days and figured I would see them out soon so when I saw a butterfly on the bottom of the cage I assumed it was one of them. But no, I was completely surprised! When I checked underneath the rock that the chrysalis had eclosed from I noticed it was the one…

No, we didn’t get new bees, but I was on my podcast’s YouTube channel the other day, something I’ve kind of abandoned but am thinking of resurrecting, and found some adorable videos of Forest. One was the time we went to pick up a new package of bees and the second is him planting green beans. Man, it’s been so long since he talked toddler/baby-like I forgot what it was like! Also, I’m going to reach through and pinch his cheeks! Feel free to skip around on the bee video, it is a bit long. Anyway, I’m thinking of doing more videos again and just keeping them simple. All the…

I’m usually a lounge-about morning person, sipping my coffee, surfing the internet as I eat breakfast. This morning I was itching to get outside after our week away. It was compounded by the freezes the week before that and general dreary weather the last several weeks. I was outside by 8:30 this morning with a wonderful spring-like atmosphere. It was glorious! My goal was to start attacking the edible garden. Before the freeze it was in decent shape though it needed to be weeded and some leaf removal from the rows of seedlings needed to occur. After the freeze lots of plants needed to be taken down and added to…

*Behold, crappy phone photos ahead!* After I started raising the monarch caterpillars last year I read about tagging them with tiny stickers from Monarch Watch so that those counting the fall migration back to their roosts in the mountains of Mexico could attempt to put together the pieces of where the final generations of monarchs came from. Chris ordered some stickers back in the spring or summer and they are all mailed according to where you live in the monarch migration process. So, the further south you are the later you get yours. Considering last year we had monarchs in early August I was a bit disappointed we weren’t getting…

It was another camping weekend. This time we drove an hour and fifteen minutes east-northeast to Lake Livingston State Park for a single overnight camping trip. Being so close to the house permits this kind of camping trip, getting up early Saturday morning and spending the weekend at the state park. Saturday was glorious, still warm but fall blooms were amped up—swamp sunflowers and goldenrods were beacons of brightness along the roadways. Fall foliage was nowhere near peak but the golden yellows of the flora made everything better. I had been reading that the main monarch migration was in southern Oklahoma late last week, making a beeline for the DFW/North…

Back in the summer I noticed giant swallowtails laying eggs on our citrus. This was late May/early June and we were still trying to get our citrus trees to rebound from the harsh freeze last year. I still hadn’t purchased alternative host plants such as prickly ash or rue. Luckily another butterfly loving friend had host plants and was glad to take them on so when they hatched I gathered the caterpillars up and drove them to her the weekend before we left for Florida. Last week I had noticed that something had nibbled my rue, which I had bought back in August. The pot had several plants growing in…