Tag: garden

A butterfly morning 🦋

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Our little caterpillar completed her metamorphosis and became a beautiful Swallowtail butterfly!

It felt like Christmas morning, as I came down the stairs and saw her perched upside down on the tulle in the habitat box the kids had made for her.

What a wonderful surprise!
The chrysalis

When we found the caterpillar in our garden, the kids decided to “raise” her in a diy caterpillar habitat. Then, they named the caterpillar Cali.

Of course, we weren’t really sure if the caterpillar was male or female, but the kids decided it was definitely a girl. Lol

We waited a little bit before releasing Cali because her wings were still damp and needed time dry off.

Once we felt it was the right time, we brought the butterfly box to the front porch and slowly opened the tulle we had placed on top of the container.

Cali didn’t fly out of the box right away, though. Her wings weren’t ready just yet. So, we spent some time ohhing and ahhing over her. 🥹🦋

Two of our neighbors walked by wanting to know why we were huddled together and the kids were squealing with delight.

We showed them Cali calmly resting on Travis’ hand, and one of the neighbors said she thought the butterfly was beautiful. 😊

And then all of a sudden, the butterfly fluttered her wings and flew off of Travis’ hand and onto Zephaniah’s chest.

The kids squealed again, and Zephaniah froze. But he had the biggest smile on his face.

A few minutes later, the butterfly flew up into the air and fluttered away.

💜 XO

Broken sunflowers still bloom 🌻

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In the springtime, Travis and I discovered volunteer sunflower sprouts growing in between the sidewalk.

I’m pretty sure the sunflower seeds were left behind in the wintertime by the birds and squirrels when I put up bird feeders.

So, we gently moved the sunflower sprouts to our garden bed.

Photo of one of the sunflower sprouts growing in between the sidewalk. 🌱

We managed to “rescue” six of the eight sunflower sprouts we found in the sidewalk. All six of the sprouts recovered from transplant shock and grew strong and tall.

But as many gardeners know, sunflower stems can still be fragile, especially during storms or when pesky squirrels are rummaging through your garden. 😏🐿

A squirrel broke the stem of one of our sunflowers. 😭🌻
Another broken sunflower stem. 😫 This time the squirrel was stealing some of my cherry tomatoes, which is planted next to a sunflower.

The beautiful thing about sunflowers, though, is that they are resilient plants.

Despite nature’s challenges, sunflowers will try very hard to keep growing, even when broken. Sometimes they just need a little help.

This is something I have learned this gardening season.

She’s a fighter!

I was able to save one broken sunflower plant by trimming down the stem and placing it in a vase of water.

The sunflower still bloomed, and the bees loved it!

Another sunflower plant with a broken stem (thanks squirrel! 🐿😏) Travis was able to make a stick-based cast for it.

And the other day, that sunflower bud still bloomed!

Little Zaya (5) admiring our new sunflower bloom. 🥰🌻

It makes me happy that even though a couple of our sunflowers experienced hardships, we were still able to give the flowers a chance to complete their life cycle. 🌻😍

Despite being broken, the sunflowers served a great purpose by attracting the bees to our garden to pollinate our food plants (like our peppers 🫑 and tomatoes 🍅).

And perhaps there’s a lesson to be learned from broken sunflowers that keep blooming anyway. 😉🌻🙏🏽

💜 XO

Raising a swallowtail caterpillar 🐛

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When I bought a parsley plant at the farm store, I discovered what appeared to be a swallowtail egg on the plant.

So, we waited a few days for the egg to hatch, and sure enough—a swallowtail caterpillar emerged! 🐛

The kids really wanted to “raise” the caterpillar we found on the parsley. ast summer we took care of one and watched the swallowtail caterpillar’s metamorphosis into a beautiful butterfly. 🦋

Prior to finding our new little friend, I was thinking about buying a butterfly kit for this summer. Since we found a swallowtail caterpillar on our parsley, I didn’t need to buy a kit! 😁

Zechariah and Zhen looking at the caterpillar on the parsley plant.

It just so happens the kids have diy butterfly biome kits their big sis Mj (24) gifted to them last summer.

They placed one of their butterfly houses in a clear container box to create a caterpillar habitat for Cali (the name the kids gave the caterpillar lol).

We brought the caterpillar box inside our house and placed it on one of our art shelves near a window.

Based on our experience from last summer, caring for a swallowtail caterpillar is pretty easy. All you do is place it in a medium-sized box (preferably clear so you can see inside the box.

Zaya (5) checking out the little caterpillar. 🐛

Place an herb plant such as fennel or parsley in the box so the caterpillar can eat. Caterpillars eat and poop A LOT 💩. They’re basically like a newborn human baby. Lol! 😂 Just no crying. Haha

So, be prepared to see little, round balls in the box. 😆 You can just clean it out with a paper towel.

Later, we ended up scooping out the soil and straw because I realized it was just too much to keep up with.

Secure tulle to the top of the box for air flow and to keep the caterpillar inside the box. As long as there’s food in the box (such as fennel or parsley), the caterpillar will stay put.

But once the caterpillar is done eating and ready to form into a chrysalis, it will start to “wander” in the box. This is when it is looking for a safe place to change into a chrysalis.

This is also why we added the butterfly biome to the box for the caterpillar.

The chrysalis stage is very fascinating. Once the caterpillar turns into a chrysalis, you can actually see the outline of its body on the chrysalis.

I’ll share updates on our swallowtail caterpillar as it continues to grow!

💜 XO

Sunflowers and tomatoes 🌻🍅

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One of my sunflowers is blooming! You can see a few of the petals peeking out. 🌻🥹

It makes me so happy. It feels as if I’m waiting for a baby to be born. 😄🌻😍

And the cherry tomatoes are finally blushing. I have never seen cherry tomatoes so big before!

I read that homegrown cherry tomatoes taste better than the store. I’m looking forward to seeing if that’s true. 😊

This weekend, I plan on transplanting some of my seed starter plants (okra, sugar beets, basil, cauliflower, and sugar baby watermelons) and getting a few of the fall plants started in seed trays.

Mj (24, oldest daughter) invited the kids to come hangout with her on Saturday, so this will give me some free time to focus on gardening chores.

💜 XO

Happy Friday

Three things to reflect on in honor of September 11th.

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Baby cucumbers 🥒

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We have baby cucumbers! 🥹 I discovered about 10 cucumbers growing in our back patio garden.

Why is it such a thrilling feeling to discover your fruit and vegetable plants have started to produce food? I had the biggest smile on my face when I saw the tiny cucumbers. ☺️

A couple of weeks ago, I was worried the cucumber flowers weren’t going to get pollinated because I hadn’t really seen any bees in our patio garden.

But last weekend, I noticed a few honeybees flying back and forth to the cucumbers. 🐝 I felt relieved.

Gardening is teaching me to be more patient and have more trust.

And I loved showing the kids the little cucumbers!

They were excited to search through the big leaves and count how many cucumbers they could find.

I can’t wait to harvest our cucumbers once they’re ready! I told the kids we’re going to use the cucumbers to make homemade dill pickles. 😊

💜 XO

Happy Friday!

Four fun things for Friday, including a new art exhibit I’m excited to see.

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An unexpected visitor 🐣

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We have an unexpected visitor living in our patio garden—a Robin chick! 🐣

Apparently, the baby Robin landed on our herb shelf after a storm knocked it’s nest out of the tree onto our patio. 🥺

Every morning, I open the curtains to my patio door, and I scan the back garden to make sure all is well with the plants and no critters (i.e. pesky squirrels) got into the grow bags.

The squirrels love to tear up my marigolds sometimes. 😏 Just the other day, a squirrel dug into one of my strawberry bags and pulled out the entire plant. 🍓😭

As I was looking over the patio garden, I noticed on the herb shelf a little head peeking out of my petunia flower pot.

“Well, you weren’t there last night!” I said aloud to the baby bird through the screen door. 🐣☺️

That’s when I noticed the nest tipped over on its side on the shelf, and I immediately understood what had happened.

What I didn’t know, though, was how the chick got into the flower pot. Did it by chance literally fall into the pot, or did the mama bird gently move it to the flower pot?

My next question was, does the mama bird know the chick is here? Did she abandon it?

So, I stood back from the patio door and waited patiently to see if a Robin would show up. Within about 20 minutes, the mama bird swooped into the garden and landed onto the petunia flower pot.

Excitedly, the chick perked up and started chirping. It stretched it’s neck up and opened it’s beak wide.

Mama bird plopped a wiggly worm into the chick’s beak, and then flew off.

Whew! Well, that’s a relief, I thought to myself.

I really didn’t want to become an adopted bird mom 😅🐣, but I would have definitely figured something out if the chick needed help.

We did check the ground to see if there were any other chicks. Unfortunately, there was a second baby bird, and it didn’t survive the fall. 😥

So, now we have a baby Robin living in my petunia flower pot on the herb shelf! Hopefully, the bird does okay in the pot. 🐣

💜 XO

A front porch garden harvest 🫑

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One of the things I love about growing food in a small space is I can walk out onto my front porch and harvest foods we need for the next meal.

This morning, we harvested from our front garden a green bell pepper (first one of the season!), two jalapeños, a banana pepper, and black seeded simpson lettuce.

Zaya (5) harvesting a green bell pepper on our front porch! 🫑👧🏼
The jalapeños needed just a little more time, but Travis said they still tasted good with his tacos. 🌶🌮

And from our back patio garden we harvested romaine lettuce, cilantro, oregano, and sage.

It wasn’t a big harvest, but it was the perfect amount we needed to make tacos for dinner! 😊

It makes me happy to grow a simple kitchen garden. At first, I didn’t think it would make much of a difference because we don’t have a regular sized yard.

But this gardening season has taught me it doesn’t matter if you have acres of land, a big back yard, or just a small patio, you can grow something!

Zaya said we needed to take a selfie to show our little harvest. 📸😅

If you have a small space, you can focus on growing kitchen ingredients like peppers, lettuce, herbs, and carrots for home cooking. You can even grow these plants on your front porch (like I do)!

Every little bit helps, and it will bring you so much joy! 😊

💜 XO

📸 feature image taken by Zaya 🥹

Tattoo collector

American traditional tattoos—I love the classic, vintage imagery and bold colors and lines.

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Attack of the ravenous cabbage caterpillars 🐛

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I discovered cabbage caterpillars in two of my broccoli grow bags. 🐛😫

I can only blame myself because I literally saw those white butterflies flying around my brassica plants, and I didn’t even bother to cover the plants with protective netting until a couple of weeks later. 🤦🏽‍♀️🙃

Lesson learned! Cover the plants right after you plant them!

The caterpillars ate up the broccoli leaves good, too! Wow!

So, I put on my gardening gloves and handpicked all of the caterpillars out of the grow bags

It was hard to find some of the cabbage caterpillars because their green bodies blended in with the broccoli leaves.

I think my broccoli plants can be salvaged. I immediately covered the plants with tulle for protection.

I used the kids’ construction straws to make hoops for the taller plants. Hey, sometimes you just gotta use what you have on hand! Lol 😅

Saved me about $15 so I didn’t have to buy a box of garden hoops on Amazon. 🙌🏾

Thankfully, only five out of the twelve broccoli plants we have in the garden were affected by these ravenous cabbage caterpillars.

💜 XO

Flight of the bumblebee 🐝

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I never thought I’d be so happy to see a bumblebee buzzing beside me, but I suppose that’s where I’m at now in my gardening journey! 🐝😆

About a week ago, it occurred to me I hadn’t seen any bees in the garden, even though I have plenty of pollinator flowers.

This morning, I was again thinking about the bees because I have a lot of flowers on the cucumbers now.

I started worrying what if the fruit and veggie plants don’t get pollinated (I know we can manually do this, but I’ve been waiting for nature to take its course 😉).

And then later this evening, Zaya (5) came running through the front door into the kitchen.

She excitedly yelled, “Mommy! Mommy! I saw a bumblebee! There’s a bumblebee on a white flower in the garden!”

So, everyone rushed out to the garden, and the six of us (me, Travis + 4 children) huddled together to watch this little, fuzzy bumblebee wiggle its tiny behind from flower to flower. 🐝😄

💜 XO

The old journal

A visit to an art thrift store leads to a journal discovery.

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A morning at the farm store 👩🏽‍🌾

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Going to the local farm store has become one of our favorite things to do this summer.

We’ve been going biweekly to look at the flowers (and sometimes buy flowers 🌸😆), get fresh baked goods, and checkout any new products.

The kids love it because I always buy them lollipops. 🍭😅

In May, I bought some of our fruit and vegetable starts at the farm store.

I must say, I am very pleased with the plants we got because they have been growing so well in our little gardens. 😍🌱

On this particular day, we bought a dozen cinnamon sugar donuts 🍩 (for only $8!), deli meat and sub rolls for lunch 🥪, lollipops for the kids 🍭, a hanging flower basket for the front porch 💐, and fresh parsley for the swallowtail caterpillar we’re “raising” 🐛.

Zaya (5) picking out lollipops at the farm store. 🥰🍭

A few weeks ago, we found a butterfly egg on our garden parsley. Since then, we have been caring for the swallowtail caterpillar.

But I’ll share more on that story in a different post. 😉🐛🦋

Fresh parsley for Cali the caterpillar 🌿🐛
Cali loves the parsley! 🥰🐛🌿

I was good, and I only bought three plants this time 😆🪴: flowers for the porch, onion starts, and more parsley for the caterpillar (because I didn’t want it to eat all of the small parsley plants I had in my grow bag).

💜 XO