Today was the first day I saw any blooms on the Lady Margaret passionflower. They’re lovely! They’re not as large as some of the varieties, but the color makes up for the size. The different types ramble along one another… it can be difficult with some of them to tell where one vine ends and […]
For Chris’s birthday, I took him down to central Texas for a skydiving class. Chris, looking dashing in his jump suit. We tried really hard to get him into the neon-green-and-pink one, but he swore it wouldn’t fit. Me, looking portly in my jumpsuit, and explaining something with lots of gestures. For some reason, Chris […]
I felt really bad. For the first time since the bees arrived in April, I walked toward the hive with treason in my heart. I was going to find, and kill, and replace the Queen. The decision had actually been made in June – the queen’s brood pattern was spotty, and the hive wasn’t happy […]
One of the reasons that I get really annoyed when people refer to outdoor sericulture as “wildcrafting,” is that I know from wildcrafting… we usually called it “picking blackberries” or “picking wild grapes” in my family, but we have a long history on both sides of going into the wild and coming back with jams […]
This time of year, it’s not just the moths that are getting busy in the garden. This lovely mantis is starting to show her egg belly – she’ll be laying hundreds of eggs in a tough, resiny casing soon. I have very much enjoyed all the mantises this year! Charlottte is yolking up, too. She […]
The day before yesterday, a lovely female polyphemus moth hatched out, from this June’s rearing. They had been taking so long that I was beginning to worry they would not hatch until spring, but I think they were just waiting for cooler temperatures. I put her in the little suet feeder cage and put her […]
I’ve been getting mulch, bucket by bucket, from a wonderful tree company, Preservation Tree Service. I haven’t hauled any for a while, because it’s just been too hot, but when I was spreading out the sheet mulch early this spring, I was going multiple times per week, sometimes even multiple trips per day. I probably […]
I looked at the spider web, and saw something weird hanging in the middle… I thought, “Aww, something killed Charlotte.” But, it turned out, it was something entirely more wonderful. Charlotte was changing her skin. The knees are always the hardest part… And, she’s out. She hung like this, soft-bodied and vulnerable, until it was […]
A lot of lovely purple is happening in the garden. This passionflower, Passiflora x “Incense,” is really coming into its own – it puts out three to five of these spectacular blooms each day. This is Purple Majesty millet; I was worried that the photo was out of focus, looking at it on the camera, […]
I got one additional chicken, this one a young laying hen; now, we have a total of six. She was advertised as a Black Copper Maran, but I am pretty sure that she’s a mixed breed; she hasn’t got the feathery feet and chocolate-brown eggs of a true Maran. She’s very sweet, though, and has […]