It’s been a hot minute (literally) since I’ve posted on this blog — you have no idea how many drafts I’ve started in here, only to lose steam halfway through and never publish them!
When I disappear from one place, it usually means that I’m busy elsewhere, and that has definitely been the case this time around.
Although summer has technically just started, it’s been so much fun so far.
releasing my dear Painted Lady butterflies (more on this later in the post)
We had a pretty major heatwave hit us this week, and Taylor and I took advantage of her friendships made while working on an organic farm last year. They have a river on their property, and have given us an open invite to come swim any afternoon.
The first time I went I was not made aware of just how much mud you have to wade through to access the river, but it’s so worth it once you get a tube out on the water. A big shoutout to the local beavers who created the perfect little swimming hole for us in the middle of the long, winding river!
a common musk turtle (left), and a painted turtle (right)
I just put together a YouTube short with all my river footage and posted it this morning (you can watch it here!), and I think it pretty accurately captures the perfect summer vibes.
We even convinced Riley Mae and Mom to tag along on the most recent trip, although Riley Mae’s first impression was, uh…slightly tainted by the fact that the mud sucked one of her flipflops to the center of the earth on the walk there.
Oops.
The perfect example of why I invested in my first pair of Crocs specifically for the river days. I stayed out of the Crocs cult for all these years, but damn. They’re so frickin convenient, I find myself slipping them on for all my garden work as well.
FUCK YOU, CROCS CULT.
Staying on the subject of the garden for a short moment: everything is doing well and made it through the horrendous heatwave. Both Mom and Riley Mae are too busy to garden this year, which means that I took both gardens as my own personal projects.
the meadow is doing wonderfully again this year, and we’re slowly beginning to add more native plants to it
Last year we made it through winter with the amount of winter squashes and green beans that I grew and stored, so that’s my not-so-humble goal again this year. It’s been a lot of work: cleaning the gardens out, spreading compost, planting, weeding, and watering, but it’s been great for me to be out there, and it looks beautiful.
I also successfully got some echinacea seedlings to sprout inside, so I’m hoping to get some of these established in the gardens and in the meadow.
my most recent get ready with me video, you can watch it here!
I’ve still been enjoying making and posting my YouTube shorts (and I’m still doing my monthly wraps — you can find a playlist of all of them here!), and I just recently started throwing around the idea to start creating some longform videos. This would give more time to my visually-pleasing footage that I enjoy collecting so much.
I’m going for some kind of “aesthetic vlog” theme.
Honestly the hardest part for me is talking into a microphone and trying to make it sound natural. I also worried that I wouldn’t have enough to actually talk about, but then I realized that I jabber on quite easily on this blog, so if I can just translate such things into actual spoken words (without stumbling too many times), I should be good to go.
I put together my first longform video and posted it yesterday, and although I’m definitely not planning for all of my videos to have this same serious tone, I wanted to set the theme of my channel by sharing some of my story, and why I’m doing what I’m doing. The rest of my videos should safely fall into the small moments of everyday life kinda category.
You can watch my longform video on YouTube here!
I’m not really sure what I’m expecting from this project yet; Riley Mae is working hard and investing a lot in making YouTube a giant part of her future, and Mom is experimenting with making longform videos for their soap business (you can watch her first video here) but for now, I’m just trying to enjoy the creativity, and sharing what I want to.
I imagine that each one will be totally different, as per usual with the work that I do. The video that I’m currently working on is the step-by-step process of me pinning my first butterfly (and almost screwing it up).
I’ve wanted to try this for a while, and when Taylor found a dead butterfly on a hike recently, she brought it home to me (wrapped up securely in a leaf). I’m so crazy excited about it, and am dying to share the final results, but I’m going to save that for my video!
pinning my red-spotted purple butterfly
And on the subject of butterflies: it’s been so long since I’ve posted, that I’ve completely missed the beginning of all of my butterfly lore.
Long story short: I’ve been weirdly getting into bugs lately, and I decided to add raising butterflies to my lore by buying some Painted Lady babies this year. But the project soon grew when I got my hands on some Black Swallowtail babies that had hatched on a few dill plants that I bought from the farm this spring.
Needless to say, I got super obsessed and ended up buying supplies and a book to learn more about them.
after a few of the Painted Ladies hatched, I learned the signs for when they were about to emerge, and through great patience, I successfully captured the process on video! I posted a YouTube short of the Painted Ladies, which you can watch here ❤
While my Painted Ladies have all been successfully released, I have four Swallowtails currently sitting in chrysalises, and I was just blessed by the butterfly gods to find a teeny tiny Monarch baby last night.
I’ve been looking for one all spring/summer, and so I immediately took him home with me, and he’s currently happily munching on some milkweed after molting this morning.
Black Swallowtail baby on the left, and Monarch baby on the right
I’m so excited.
I’m in a weird place, cause on one hand I’m doing all that I can to bring these butterflies to adulthood and successfully release them, and on the other hand I’m keeping my eyes peeled for any dead butterflies in the wild that I can pin and preserve.
What can I say, I’m clearly in my bug era™
the photo on the top left shows how small the Black Swallowtails start out, and by the time they pupate they’re about the length of a thumb; when they form their chrysalises they match it to their surroundings, so each one looks different! also, it should be noted that the little silk threads wrapped around their bodies and holding them up is called a “girdle”
I think that pretty much covers the most of it, but I’ll close this lengthy post with some rapid-fire photo updates, because going through my camera reel, I’ve realized that a lot has happened lately.
thanks to a roadkill-beaver that my grampa brought home for me, we finally finally spotted our neighborhood bear; we’ve been waiting for this moment for our entire lives, and of course Little John immediately proceeded to pull down a birdfeeder, lay down in the yard, and eat every last seed
the beaver skull that is the reason we had a dead beaver laying in our yard; it’s almost ready to be painted, and will be hung on my wall with the coyote and the deer skulls; I’m planning to make a video of the process!
Frankie is still healthy and happy, despite having something bite off the top half of her tail; now I never have to second-guess if it’s her coming over for seeds though ❤ there’s also a baby chipmunk that visits frequently, and I like to believe it’s one of her babies
we’ve had an abundance of baby birds this year; so far there’s been: five bluebirds, six tree swallows, and two separate families of baby wrens. We’ve named all of the parents, and Riley Mae posted her first longform video where she introduced all of our tenants (you can watch it here!)
this girl’s baby shower is this weekend, so after that I’ll finally be able to share photos of the gift that I made her, and on the subject of babies: Jemima the groundhog has four little chucklings this year…she also comes to the door every night and begs for kale and broccoli stems
art by jordan rae 