More Luna Moth

Too pretty, can't stop taking pictures of giant luna moths! Please note the lovely straw-colored antennae and how it contrasts with the lilac shading along the top of the wings. Pretty! Giant bugs are pretty!

update: the moth was eaten and two sad wings were found on the ground. Nature red in tooth and claw...

For Allison

First Harvest from the garden!

Radish thinings and chive flowers made into a salad with pears, goat camembert, buttery salad greens, and carrots. Miss Critterpants ate only the cheese and the carrots, but bravely sampled a chive flower.

Giant Moths

Rain!

It rained all day yesterday! A good, gentle, soaking rain. I've been out stomping slugs. Here is my slug-chewed horseradish. It may not look like much, but I've been told once horseradish has established itself, you can never get rid of it. Just one tiny bit of root will regrow the plant. I'm not exactly sure if one leaf on a root chunk is considered established.

Chickens

I want a couple of chickens, five at the most, to provide fresh eggs and bug control. Our neighbors think it's hilarious for a city girl to want chickens and planted ceramic birds in the yard while we were out. Miss Critterpants has claimed them and gives them mud baths in her garden box.

Someday we're getting chickens, a straight run of easter egg chickens from Cackle Hatchery, in a few years when Miss is in school and I can't travel like I do now. Easter egg chickens lay blue, green and sometimes even pink eggs! A straight run is a mixed group of chicks, so there are boys and girls sent to you in the same box. Once they arrive and mature it is a game of survivor, one rooster stays, the others also stay. They stay very, very still in the freezer.

Little Bitty

tiny blueberries

tiny grape buds

raspberry buds with enormous bumblebee.

blackberry flower bud

Tiny tiny plum





It's still early spring here, so everything is small and full of promise.

Rain!

It rained today! It's raining right now! Hooray! It hasn't really rained for weeks and everything was terribly dry.

We have been watering with the hose, which I find ridiculous because we have a well. We draw water up from underground, to sprinkle it back onto the ground almost directly over the well. Ridiculous.

The 6x10' garden shed is eventually going to be fitted with gutters and rain barrels, but for now I park the wheel barrows under the corners and collect what I can. There has been very little to collect.

and a pretty picture of what My Guy and I gave to each other for our 6th anniversary. The Cast Iron anniversary. Next year is copper and wool.

today we did...

painted tounge, before flowers

daisies, before flowers

planted and mulched

Look Ma! No Hands!

Just a little prettying up.

My Guy trimmed the dead out of our white pines, up to about 16 feet.

My Mom had sent me a little folding money for Mother's Day and I scurried off to the garden center to spend it all all all! I have been wanting to spruce up the front walk which is made up lovely slate, but tends to be a bit bare. I prefer perennials for getting my money's worth, but self seeding annuals are always fun. You never know where they will pop up! Any woody ornamentals are kind of out, because of all the snow and plowing and all, so no azaleas or lavender or any shrubby thing.

So, lovely perennial daisies head up the walk. I love yellow and white daisies for their lack of pretension and their ability to flower all summer. In the self-seeding annual category there are (wait for this name, it's so good) Salpiglossis sinuata, or painted tongue. They will be really pretty if they survive the stomping that this household can dole out.

For Jessica

This is what Chocolate Chocolate Sea Salt Fudgie Bites look like. Neener neener neeeener