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 […]
I’ve never had an organic garden before. I grew up in a house on an acre lot, and there was lots of nature going on… but the garden and the flowers were always sprayed with strong chemicals, and so there wasn’t much in the way of garden insect life. Here on the creek, and in […]
I’ve been busy with a lot of different things, and haven’t gotten around to posting about the gardens and the chickens and such. So, I’m going to do this in a couple of posts, breaking it up by theme. This is what the garden looks like now. Some of the parts are finally filling in […]