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Tag Archives: gardening
“Wow. That was just about all she could say. Wow.”
(said Lilly with her purple plastic purse.)
Happy BIG red-orange Friday to you!
It was obvious that it was going to be the theme of the day….
In the garden–
AND IN THE HOUSE.
While we snorted and rolled around the beds. ( SOMEONE snores in this house.) Look what was happening down in the RED room–
The rest of the cocoons continue to do their twisty dance. See how the two brown ( Gulf Fritillary) ones are at weird angles now? They seem to change each day. The remaining Red Admiral cocoon is about 2x the size that this one was– so we’ll see what comes of that!
Thanks again to the oh so nice folks at Shady Oak Butterfly Farm! They have been ever so nice. We call when something curious happens and they are always so genuinely excited about our little friends. This has truly been one of the coolest projects we’ve done in a while.
Red orange on the sticks, splashes of it anyway–
Those Jaywalkers are coming right along. Ok, ONE of them is. It is a really fun knit. Just enough to keep you awake, but really easy too. I am enjoying them and will REALLY enjoy wearing their lovely loudness!
More to come over the weekend. I have some yarn-a-soaking. The fruits of WAY too long a time spinning a sheep called Oreo. A nice fluffy brown fuzz of a sheep. Next I am going to get into some of that Mama E tencel blend.
We’ve got strawberries now. Why is it that something always gets to them before we do?? And what is it?? Come on over and check it out.
Earthed.
I am reading The Fairy Rebel to Rosemary right now. When a fairy accidentally touches a human it is called being “earthed”. The are suddenly visible and can’t fly away again unless the person believes in them. It’s a wonderful kids book, if you haven’t read it.
We had a whole different kind of “earthing” going on here the past few days. The wonderous gardening kind of earthed. You know–where you start and you CAN’T STOP. The good news there is that we’ve got it all planted aside from some beets.
There are a couple of days that I really look forward to in a ritualistic sort of way in our garden…
The hanging of the Tibetan prayer flags for the new garden-year.
The day the gnomes break out of the basement and run around the yard for the rest of the Summer. They are still banging away down there, but I expect they’ll be out later this week.
Here are a few pics…
Then I am off to bed. It is very late. We just finished a warehouse update. It’s full of lovely wool for spinning. Check it out!
I will tell you about the new members of our family tomorrow. 
Sweet dreams.
On A nice warm day in SPRING….
Here are the things to do—
1. Put on your bathing suit and glasses that match yer mamas and get your garden on.
2. make a garden sculpture–
3. and a bottle tree for those PEAS. (for peggy!)
4. Then you should make INGENIOUS water balloons with flowers suspended inside.
BUT YOU SHOULD NOT THROW THEM AT UNSUSPECTING NEIGHBORS. No, This is bad.
you can even make the dreaded double- whammy
Then…. after it all you can put on a dress and your fancy knitted shawl and pretend you’re an angel– and that you definitely DID NOT throw any water balloons at ANYBODY!
Enjoy this day!
A raucous opera of birds, a little mystery and SPRING FEVER!
Can you hear this?? This is what was going on up in our really big tree this afternoon!
Spring is in the air. I can PROVE it….
1. The COW is OPEN. It closes down for Winter. You can get the crazies flavors of italian ice here. Today? Cupcake and cotton candy.
2. The garden is growing despite me. Underneath the wreckage of the cleanup I did NOT do last Fall–
That there is GARLIC, and lots of it. It goes on for yards and yards.
3. Treeclimbing
There.
I was looking for a site that my sis mentioned today, but I was too daft to remember the exact deal, and I found this. Thought it was really cool and I would like them in my garden.
Laura Ford’s trio of bronze wood nymphs wears shiny red Mary Janes and certainly does not fit into the traditional sprite mould. Ford was propelled by the idea of incorporating sculpture into landscape and ended up doing the opposite as well when she created Stump Girl, a tree stump with little girl legs. Conifer Girl and Bush Girl joined her, and this little clique sparks a range of reaction. Are they really trees, or elements of nature? Are they watching us wreak havoc? Are they girls hiding? If so, why? Are they funny? Creepy? Is there subversion at play? What kind? Amazing what a set of gams and a nice pair of shoes can provoke. (And the plain truth is, no questions asked: this trio is one of my favorite pieces of public art ever.)Artist: Laura Ford
+ sculpture.org.uk
Lastly, I leave you with this found ART. I was walking to pick up the poppets from school and strode over this:
On the cusp of Spring is a great time to think about IF. The warm and lovely seasons are stretched out ahead of us. So much possibility.
Beauty and Fragility
Greta oto is a brush-footed butterfly, and is a member of the clearwing clade; its wings are transparent. Its most common English name is glasswing, and its Spanish name is espejitos, which means “little mirrors.” Indeed, the tissue between the veins of its wings looks like glass. It is one of the more abundant clearwing species in its home range, which extends throughout Central America into Mexico. The opaque borders of its wings are dark brown sometimes tinted with red or orange, and its body is dark in color. Its wingspan is between 5.5 and 6 cm.
Adults inhabit the rainforest understory and feed on the nectar of a variety of tropical flowers. G. oto prefers to lay its eggs on plants of the tropical nightshade genus Cestrum. The silvery-gray caterpillars feed on these toxic plants and store the alkaloids in their tissues, making them distasteful to predators such as birds. They retain their toxicity in adulthood. The same alkaloids that make them poisonous also are converted into pheromones by the males, which use them to attract females.
G. oto adults also exhibit a number of interesting behaviors, such as long migrations and lekking among males.
I was amazed. Then I looked at more pics of them on the net and found these comments that cracked me up. Sort of sums it ALL ( you know the BIG all) up.
08 Dec 06
Isn’t it funny: houseflies have translucent wings, too, but nobody finds them noteworthy enough to blog about.
13 Dec 06
Erin, why don’t you start your own blog and blog about translucent housefly wings?
I saw a mass of flowers ( crocus) blooming away today and my soul smiled. Winter is going. Soon. I have felt the shift in my body now. I am done with the hibernation.
I am getting out some seed catalogs tomorrow.