July has come and gone (if you missed my July wrap, you can watch it here!), and we are well and truly into summer. As in, it’s frickin hot, and I don’t remember the last time we got rain. I’m giving my gardens just enough water to make it through these hot days, but they could really use a good soaker.
The pole beans are finally producing (I always forget how late they start, but once they start, the harvests are plentiful until the first frost), the butternut squashes are climbing to the sky and have quite the collection of babies growing, and the zephyr squashes have been as delectable as ever.
my friend Brandi sent me these marigold seeds (left) a few years ago, and I’ve continued collecting the seeds and growing them every year since!
Unfortunately the rest of the “extras” in the gardens are suffering a bit, due to me not doing a good enough job of keeping the squash bugs at bay.
But c’est la vie.
A girl can only do so much, you can’t expect me to win every battle ✌🏼
zucchinis are great, crookneck squash are delicious, but zephyr squash are superior
No matter how good my vegetables are doing, nothing is ever doing as wonderfully as my flower beds.
Three beds of zinnias, some random sunflowers (I tossed some in with the zinnias, and a few of them managed to survive the squirrel raid), twelve beds of calendula, and a lush patch of marigolds.
I’ve already started collecting calendula seeds as well as some marigold seeds
Every year I notice more and more that the calendulas are cross-pollinating with each other and giving me more colors and variations. This year I have the most diversity yet, with deep yellows, buttery yellows, bright oranges, burnt oranges, peachy oranges, and even a pale pinkish hue.
I love calendula so much; not only because they’re so incredibly easy to grow, but also because they’re so much hardier than they look. They’ve been dealing with these hot dry days like pros, and they’ll also continue flowering after the frosts start!
Taylor planted a few choice flowers for her pressed-flower projects, but since she’s been so crazy busy this summer, I’ve mostly been the one getting to enjoy the fruits of her labor
In other news: my one tiny monarch caterpillar (Miko) that I mentioned finding in my previous post successfully grew up, pupated, and hatched. It turned out to be a stunning lady, and I brought her down to the farm to release her with all the blooming milkweed.
Despite the fact that she may have already laid her eggs and died at this point, I still loudly declare “that’s my child!” whenever a monarch flies past me at the farm.
Because…it could be my child.
her chrysalis turned completely transparent the morning of her hatching. I knew it was going to happen soon, so I put her enclosure next to me while I ate breakfast; I heard a slight crinkling sound, looked over, and she was already out!
Raising this monarch was a million times easier, and less stressful, than raising the black swallowtails (I’m planning on doing a full post on the swallowtails soon). I’m definitely grateful for that fact, because not too long after the release of my beautiful Miko, I spied an old, weathered lady flitting around the small patch of milkweed on the edge of our yard. No flowers were in bloom, so I figured she could be doing one thing, and one thing only.
Sure enough, I went out there and started turning over the leaves, and discovered over a dozen eggs! I brought them all inside on a bouquet of milkweed and within a few days they started hatching.
Unbelievably tiny baby ‘pillars everywhere.
Unbelievably tiny.
my little dudes — I’ll go into full detail of their growth in a future post completely dedicated to them
Ever since then I’ve continued to find and collect eggs (and a few tiny monarch children that I’ve stumbled upon…because, hey, there are no laws to stop me from kidnapping tiny monarch children). I believe I currently have a total of twenty caterpillars, two newborns (they’re too small to even count as caterpillars at this point), and ten unhatched eggs. The biggest caterpillars just started hanging upside-down today, so I expect to see some gorgeous green-and-gold chrysalises tomorrow.
I’m pretty sure I’ll singlehandedly be able to save the entire monarch species this summer (it’s a small feat, right?), and I’m planning to do a full post on raising these guys once they’re successfully released back into the wild. I must say: I am well and truly obsessed with watching them grow and documenting their daily lives. They simply sleep, molt, inhale milkweed, and headbang when you bother them. Dramatically headbanging is clearly their only defense mechanism, aside from being toxic, of course.
Typical. You know ya girl has an affinity for toxic men.
‘Scuse me, did I say men?
I meant caterpillars.
…obviously.
a stunning Tiger Swallowtail has been a frequent visitor to my zinnias
On the subjects of births (that’s the subject we were on, right?), Taylor turned 29 last week, and although she originally had slightly bigger plans, she ended up just having a chill bonfire with the fam and a couple good friends.
The night was perfect (aside from the persistent mosquitoes), and of course we had to bring out the sparklers for some good ol’ fashioned fun (after we were thoroughly wowed by a Prince Rupert’s Drop demonstration — it pays to have cool friends).
Mom originally screwed up her “W” in the “WOW MOM,” so we had to take a second photo and I pieced the two photos together to make the picture complete — truly a WOW MOM moment
I feel like the past couple months have held so much movement; in general it’s been a lot of fun, but every once in a while ya girl needs a good quiet day to decompress, catch up on things, and recharge.
I’ve had plenty of pet-sitting jobs, which has been fantastic, and I’ve been filling my downtime with pinning bugs (a post will be up about that soon), painting skulls (again, you can expect a whole post on that subject), swimming at the river, and going on weird little side quests.
Riley Mae and I spending a Sunday morning harvesting, processing, and drying indigo leaves for dyeing at the farm
Like on Mom and Dad’s anniversary when we decided to go on a chill family hike at our local state park and ended up having to rescue a blue heron who was tangled up in fishing line and attached to a dead tree with a lure stuck in its wing.
The story was stressful, and dramatic, and didn’t have the happy ending we hoped for. Because although we did successfully manage to wade into the swampy waters (and miraculously didn’t end up with a fish hook in any of our own limbs), cut the heron free, get it safely in a box, and drop it off at a bird rehab, we ended up getting the unfortunate news that due to the amount of necrotic tissue around the wound, the heron couldn’t be saved.
while Taylor, Mom, Riley, and the park manager all waded into the water to grab the bird, I mostly got to stay on shore and get all the footage for Riley Mae to later use in an educational YouTube short
It was a crazy experience to have such a bummer of an ending, and the whole thing made us all want to lecture every lazy and irresponsible fisherman on how important it is to pick of your fucking lines and lures. As if it’s not enough to kill the fish, you have to kill the other wildlife too? This, unfortunately, was not the first heron we’d seen with a lure attached to it in this park.
Our heron was named Frankie Evans (for a strange multitude of reasons), and Riley Mae will be creating a whole YouTube short on his story in the near future for her 11k subscribers to enjoy (and hopefully learn from ☝🏼🤨).
my crocs tan is getting obnoxious at this point…yes, I hate myself too
All in all, it’s been an interesting summer so far, and if I can just get my shit together, then I have plenty of interesting things to share on this poor neglected blog!
I mean, I should have more time to sit down and write now that I’ve sworn off men for…my entire lifetime.
You’ve heard of the crazy cat lady, but what about the crazy caterpillar lady???
THE FUTURE IS NOW, PEOPLE 🐛
art by jordan rae 