Afternoon walk.

This afternoon, the kids and i took a walk down the road to pick up trash and recyclables, scope out the wild blackberries and look for monarch caterpillars on the milkweed patch at the bottom of the hill. So we set out, equipped with trash bag and gloves, bug house and berry basket.

Sequoia wanted a bandanna to hold his hair back, and so of course Sage needed one too. :)
It's is only about 1/2 mile to the bottom of the hill, but we picked up enough trash and soda/beer cans to fill our garbage bag. We could have easily filled a second, had i brought one.

The kids are both very enthusiast about picking up litter. We've been doing this since they were tiny. Sage liked to spot and then yell each time she found something, and then Sequoia would collect it.

We found a few blackberry along the way, though not many. The kids had stopped and eaten them all before we made it home. :)
We checked all the milkweed on our way down, and didn't see any caterpillars. When checked the large milkweed patch at the bottom of the hill and were disappointed
that we still hadn't found any. So we headed back up the hill. About half way up, i wanted to check the milkweed one last time..and somehow spotted a tiny 1/2" caterpillar on one of the leaves. So we gathered him up, to bring home.

i found a young milkweed plant and snipped of the top section to bring back to feed our caterpillar. If you place it in some water it will stay fresh for several days. Then you need to replace the leaves with some fresh milkweed to keep your caterpillar happy.

While examining our milkweed, i was delighted to find two monarch eggs! Not long after discovering them, one hatched! If you click the picture above, you can see one egg and one newly hatched monarch caterpillar. This impression in the leaf is where the egg was, after the monarch hatches...it eats it's egg. This little caterpillar is only about 2 mm long. We look forward to watching them grow, and transform.

Butterfly morning.

So it's probably no surprise to anyone that we love butterflies. We have butterfly attracting plants and flowers planted all over our yard and garden. It is not at all uncommon to walk outside and be able to count numerous butterflies, of every size, shape and color. i love sitting outside in the morning, and watching them flutter about.
This morning on my butterfly bush, i counted over 20 butterflies. In just a few minutes time i captured pictures of several different kinds, and even spotted someone new.

This is a female Diana Fritillary butterfly, and this is the first time i have ever seen one. It looks very similar to many butterflies we frequently see, so it took me a minute to realize it was something new. It was the little black spots on the wings that gave it away. We had a difficult time identifying it, because it looked very similar to a red spotted purple, and i thought it must be in a similar family. It is actually a type of fritillary, and the males look quite different from the females. The pattern is the same, but the males are a dusty orange. i am very eager to spot one of those as well, now that i know they are in this area. It's always very exciting to find something new after all these years of chasing butterflies.

This lovely monarch has been fluttering about for the last two days and i'm quite certain this is the one that we released.


American painted lady and silver spotted skipper, although they are both looking a bit weathered.


This American painted lady is a bit more vibrant.

Spicebush swallowtail, we have several of these fluttering around. They are smaller and usually darker than the Black Eastern Tiger swallowtails. They look similar to Black swallowtails, but lack the defined double row of spots.

Eastern Tiger swallowtail black form (female).

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail.

Red spotted purple.

hummingbird moth, not a butterfly...but still a common visitor to the butterfly bush.


Fritillary and Spicebush swallowtail.

Three of the many fritillaries that frequent my yard.

Butterfly line up! Fritillary, Eastern tiger swallowtail and monarch. Everytime i approach the bush, they swirl around me and seem to dance with each other before setting back down on the flowers.

This is just one more simple reminder that life is beautiful.

Monarch Emerging.

Last week we watched our monarch caterpillar transform into it's chrysalis, it was amazing to watch and kept the kids quite mesmerized. We've been watching our chrysalis for any sign that it was getting to close to emerging.



A few days before, we begin to see the faint colors of a monarch inside.

On the morning that it emerges, the chrysalis becomes transparent and the butterfly inside is quite obvious. When we saw this we knew that our monarch would be emerging at anytime.

Only a few minutes after i took the picture of the translucent chrysalis, i glanced over and saw the chrysalis split. The kids gathered round and we watched in amazement as our monarch emerged.

It dropped out head first, but held on with it's feet. It abdomen is very swelled when it first emerges.

As it begins to uncurl it's wings, the blood from it's abdomen is pumped into the wings. So the abdomen becomes thin and narrow, as the blood is redistributed.

It takes a few minutes for it's wings to uncurl and stretch out.

Once the wings are out, it sits in this position for about an hour or so to let them dry. Then we bring her outside to release.

Sage begged me to put it on her nose, like the swallowtail a few weeks ago. Always a classic picture in our household. :)

Time to fly little monarch! Fare thee well!

It flew away, but didn't go far. She seemed quite happy to hop from flower to flower in our garden. For the last two days while we are outside playing, we see her flutter by while dancing with swallowtails and fritilaries. Sequoia is certain that it is 'our monarch' that we keep seeing fly by. It always makes us smile.

Peep, peep.

Every once in a while, one of our hens disappears. Sometimes they are gone for good, having become a meal for some local predator, and other times they reappear from a secret hiding place with a brood of cute fluffy chicks. i just happened to find this missing hen, Sunny, setting on a clutch of eggs in the weeds around our compost bin. She was sitting on a ton of eggs!



i knew that she wasn't big enough to hatch that many eggs, so i pulled a few and stuck them under another hen who has been broody for almost two months now. Poor Peepers had been setting without any eggs for so long she must really want to be a mama!



Her eggs were the first to hatch.



When i went down to check on Sunny, she only had one chick out of her clutch hatch. When i checked a bit later i found that she had abandoned the nest. We had gotten a ton of rain during the weekend, and i was worried about them setting out. So i moved the eggs into the coop, where it was dryer and put her and her chick back in there with them and she again began to set.



The kids love to see the new peeps. So, not long after that, we went back to check on her to see if there were any new hatchlings. This is what we saw.

As i was snapping pictures of the hatching chick, a peck hole appeared in the egg next to it, and we heard the faint, 'peep, peep' of a new tiny peep trying to break out. Such an amazing sight to witness.

Floydfest 8 Revival

This year, we were blessed with free tickets to Floydfest. This local music festival has grown immensely over the last 8 years. We attended the festival the first few years as vendors, and haven't been in a couple of years. It was amazing to see how far it has come, and the progression of it all. It is truly a wonderful festival for people of all ages.

There are 7 stages around the festival grounds providing a variety of live music all day, and sometimes late into the night. There is a dance pavilion, and many free workshops offered including yoga, belly dance, juggling, hooping, drumming, Tai Quan Do and much more!

The festival grounds are absolutely beautiful! There are fountains and ponds, herb gardens and wildflowers everywhere. Not to mention, the natural beauty of the area. The festival is located just off the Blue ridge parkway, there are mountains and rolling hills surrounding the a festival grounds, woods to camp in and wild blackberries all along the trail to Global Village. Truly the best festival venue we've ever been to.

This year there was a small petting zoo in the Children's Universe. There was a camel, llamas and donkey. We loved the camel, and Sage spent quite a bit of time petting it and chatting with it.

One of my favorite parts of the festival is the Children's parade. The dress up tent is opened up, and all the kids chose or create costumes. The adults hold flags, balloons, hola hoops and other props and we all march along the festival grounds.

This year, right before the parade the sky opened up and the rain poured down! It was brief, but intense with thunder and lightening. We all huddled under the tent at the Kids stage waiting for it to pass. As soon as it ended a huge rainbow broke out over the Main stage.

The kids parade began, and we enjoyed the music of Donna the Buffalo while the parade marched on.

The kids universe offered all kinds of fun activities for the kids. The have a swing set, and giant wooden ship play structure. A large covered sandbox area, arts and crafts workshops, the dress up tent and the stage area with all kinds of workshops.

Sequoia really enjoyed the jugglers workshop, and Tai Quan Do workshop. The instructor was really good with the kids, he taught them a punch technique and then each child got to break a board a half with their punch. Sequoia was very pleased with himself, he broke the board on his first chop.

Sage loved the dress up tent, and chose several extremely amusing outfits through out the weekend. You can see more of our weekend in our Floydfest photo Album.

By the end of each evening the kids were wiped out!

Blues Traveler was the only band we actually sat through the whole set. The kids were passed out on our blanket, and we sat under the stars and enjoyed the music. It was awesome!

Sunday afternoon, the sky suddenly turned black and it quite obvious something nasty was on it's way. We packed up the tent, and headed to the shuttles as quickly as possible, but didn't make it. The rain came down hard and we got completely drenched. We returned wet, exhausted, but happy.

To see more Floydfest photos, and get a better feel for the entire festival (rather than just the Children's Universe) check out these amazing photos by Richard Cox photography. His pictures really seem to capture the beauty and energy of the festival.

Munching, crunching caterpillars.

Earlier this week, we took a walk up the road to go berry picking. However we came home with more than blackberries. We stopped to look at a patch of milkweed that was in full bloom, and Sequoia quickly spotted the first monarch caterpillar, and not long after that we spotted another. So we gathered them up and brought them home. In the wild only 1 out of every 10 monarch caterpillars survive to adulthood, because of the many predators and the lack of milkweed which is the monarch caterpillars only food source.




We gather, raise and release these caterpillars almost every year. Last year was the first year we didn't, because the county mowers mowed down the entire patch of milkweed before we could find/collect the caterpillars. We gathered milkweed seeds and have helped to plant and spread them around the edge of our woods and yard.

We love watching the little caterpillers munch and crunch all day and night, until it is time to transform.

This fat little caterpillar has chosen this spot to rest. He spins some silk around his back feet, to secure himself.

Then he drops down into the familiar J shape. He remains still for many hours.

Then he begins to puff up, and straighten out. He skin splits, and he begins to wiggle.

and wiggle.

and wiggle.

Until he has has completely shed his skin. Then he rests.

At this point he is still very soft, but over the next hour his skin will begin to harden.

As the skin hardens and tightens, he begins to take on the familiar monarch chrysalis shape.




In the past our caterpillars have all shed their final skin during the night or early morning, and we've never witnessed the actual process. This was really amazing to watch, and both the kids were totally fascinated by it...and amused at the wiggling dance the caterpillar seemed to do in order to shed his skin completely. When it was over i printed up this coloring page that shows the entire transformation. Although we raise caterpillars every year, it never ceases to amaze us or seem any less magical.

We look forward to meeting these new butterflies when they finally emerge.