Released into the wild

Once upon a time, late last fall-ish, I was puttering around in our sorry excuse for a garden and found a weird bug sac of some kind on a stem of one of our very woody basil plants. I showed Dada and broke the piece of stem off and sequestered the entire thing in an empty, clean Jif jar. He didn’t hold out high expectations of anything hatching and I sincerely hoped it’d be something cool and not something disgusting. Dragonflies, ladybugs, etc are welcome in our corner of nature. I’m less thrilled about wasps, for example, but did have one land on my knee the other day and he or did she absolutely no damage to me whatsoever. Thanked him or her for landing on my knee instead of, say, my head or my face, and I asked if it was a larva eating wasp or some other kind, at which point it perked up as if remembering it had a job to do, and off it went. We both lived happily ever after.

Anyway, I stuck that Jif jar on a sunny windowsill facing south, after Dada kindly poked small air holes in the lid. He is so good to put up with all my whims.

I’d kept an eye on it, as it was at eye level every day that I opened the curtain in front of it. Today, as I went to close the curtain to block some afternoon sun, I noticed movement.

BABY PRAYING MANTISES!!!!

I am SOOOOOO excited!! I called everybody and when everyone got their fill, I took them outside and released them by twos and threes all along the side and back of the house. I know they are excellent hunters so I wanted to make sure they all had some territory to work, but it is a big world and thought they might at least want to start their first day of freedom with a sibling. If they eat each other, that’s their business. Some were quite eager to climb out and explore and others I had to coax out. I even charged a pollen-covered bumble thunder beast with showing a few of the babies around. 

I popped by stick with sac back in the jar and put it back on the windowsill in case there are any late bloomers. I’m so glad I got curious last fall! What a neat surprise!

Gettin' dirty

Yesterday I smelled like I was at camp. That's a good thing. That means I was outside in the sunshine, enjoying the huge bees and the many birds and the sunshine!

Our strawberry patch, sans baby bunnies, who have moved on:

Irises which came with the house- my favorite kind of plants- the ones I don't have to do anything to, haha! They come up and surprise me with their gloriousness every year all by themselves. Yippie!

Our "pond", as usual, is a disaster zone. We didn't even cover it last fall so I've been attempting to remove the gazillions of drowned leaves, spreading them out to dry, letting them air out all that stink, and then wheelbarrowing them to the compost pile where they'll probably sit until the second coming. But we have a big froggie! He's on the stone in the foreground, to the left of the small sapling. 

Dada and I worked in the garden yesterday. Since he burns pretty easily, we waited until after 5 as it was 90 degrees during the day. I know it doesn't look like much, but we are optimistic for a good showing this year. Unless these four days of storms which start today do everybody in...

This is my Borage Triangle. At least, I think that's what those guys are. I didn't plant them there this year, but that's where some were last year, so I'm hoping they're repeat guests. I can't say offenders as I'm more than happy to have them for the bees and butterflies. My mother insists they look like alien bioscouts, haha. 

Dada, the purist, and I are once again disagreeing about gardening. I planted the cucumbers right along the fence so they could grab hold and go up. He says I'll be fighting a losing battle with the weeds along the fence line. I suppose we're both about to be proved right.

These tomatoes are called Allegheny Sunset. I didn't prop them last year and so they got very sprawly. I think a vole was helping himself as I didn't get a single bite; by the time I found them they were all chewed up from below, so I guess they're tasty but I wouldn't know from personal experience.

The yellow broomsticks mark basil, to the left in the back are pepper plants, and then everybody else is a tomato of some kind. I love the teeny cherry ones so we planted Sungolds, black cherry ones, yellow pear ones, and red currants. Scott likes real sized ones, hence the Allegheny Sunsets, Cherokee Purples, and Brandywines. 

We didn't get around to adding in the carrots yet, though there are some in the back garden with the onions and the peas. I forgot to take pictures of them, hmmm. And we saw on facebook that you can wire old bananas to a post and the butterflies will come enjoy them, so I want to do that, too!

Here at the end of all things

Not quite. We are more, "and miles to go before I sleep" than Frodo and Sam making it to Mount Doom, but we are chipping away.

I'm done with my Nerlynx prescription, wahoo! Apparently I can't count, and ended up with one last lonesome pill (my dose was three of them daily) as a stray. I guess it just wanted to ease my Tamoxifen and allergy meds into doing without the Nerlynx, ha. So that's a year done. I've been on Tamoxifen for going on 15 months now, so far, so good. 

I feel like for every kid's assignment we cross off, two more take its place. I know that's not really happening, but I am just about done with the kids doin 75-95% of the work and then having to backtrack through weeks of assignments to find the links or the directions or the passwords, etc. You finished it, right? Is your name on it? Did you hit "submit"? Did you click "turn in"? THIS WAS FROM LAST MONTH! Can we please just be done!?

This was the last week they were to receive new assignments, so as of next Friday at noon we are done one way or another. Please pray that we finish strong. 

(Envision a skeleton crawling pitifully, painfully, despairingly across the desert sands. That'd be me. Except it's been raining for days, even on days the weather channel says it won't be raining. This is the lushest desert you've ever seen.)

Send rum.

Holy smokes

So this Thing turned seventeen. It is always amazing to me how we feel like we've had her forever while simultaneously wondering how in the world she's so old. 

Still a huge fan of all things dog. Including the cute, stupid one, above. 

Missing karate a lot. Understatement of the year, probably. 

Cleaned out her room, which involves tossing everything she doesn't feel like owning anymore into the hallway for the rest of us to fight over sort out dispose of deal with. Now there is tons of space and you can see the floor!

Our friend Connie's son is a chef and he offered to cook her amazing birthday dinner:

Rarely are teenagers easy, but we have been particularly blessed with this one overall. As they say in The Shack, "I'm particularly fond of that one." Small children often gravitate towards her (or did, back when we could gather) as do dogs. Thankfully, she no longer colors on the walls, but most other surfaces are still fair game, including her light switch plate. As seen in previous posts, proportion especially has improved dramatically, and I'm occasionally asked to stop what I'm doing to model holding something or am otherwise posed for a quick sketch. Running on Vampire Time, we usually see a black- or very, very dark gray-clad creature hulking over a bowl of whatever sweet cereal we have and a glass of chocolate milk in the early afternoon. Apparently vampires are sugar based. I suspect we are not alone in this, and I for one am kind of glad for the staggered schedules, at least while we are sharing resources, and especially as Damon has what feels like three times the work the big kids do. 

There is a lot of mumbling, though, so here's a very public "I'm sorry" to my own mother for giving her grief about not hearing me because I was mumbling as a teenager, at least according to her. Sorry, Mom. There's lot of "what?" going on around here, which makes me think of my cousin David as a small person, trying everything in his power to get anyone within hollering distance to say, "what" just so he could exalt, "you said the woooooord, you said the woooooord!" My aunt and uncle got awfully creative in their answers. 

"I didn't have any exams..."

"Did they tell you there wouldn't be any exams or did you just miss them all?"

"No, I didn't miss them. I get notifications so I'd know about them... but I made it onto the leaderboard (of my game)!"

If anyone asks how 2020 is going, that sound you hear is a facepalm...

Anyway, happy birthday to the one who made us Parental Units. Sorry about your luck, haha! Sorry we couldn't have hordes of your friends over even though you prefer your friend circles like your food: not overlapping. Still wish more of them could have helped you celebrate as I know they care about you. We are pretty crazy about you. 

*insert the crazy, noisy kisses I give you*

*insert the "eeeeeee, deeeesgusting" you squeal*

Love you. Happy birthday. 

deeeeeeeeesgusting