Logan down on the Farm!

Logan loves his new Playmobile farm he got for his birthday. (Always makes the parents glad when they actually play with what they got him!) We set it up today on the train table and his imagination went wild!

He donned attractive head gear...

He covered the people with cats!...

He sent the kittens up the elevator (the cutting attachment on my paper cutter!) ...

Here they are on the 10th floor...

And he watered his sunflowers (because mom waters her flowers!).

A beautiful butterfly day!

...among other things. Like cleaning up the yard and winterizing things and having bonfires complete with hot dogs and s'mores! But this is the one thing I snuck off and photographed. :-)


Painted Lady on my blue salvia...

No School day!

Well, I've been a bit busy keeping up my new blog...my 365/Grateful Project, but thought I better post something here. A collage is handy to do a bunch of pictures at once, so here's mine from today! Had fun with the boys playing putt-putt!

Swallowtail takeover

I have really enjoyed my Monarchs this summer, but now it's time for Black Swallowtails! They are a beautiful butterfly and also make a unique chrysalis.

Here's the top of my butterfly house right now. I still have a lot of Monarch chrysalises, but more than half of the ones that have come out in recent days have been plagued with disease, so I don't know how many more disease-free ones I'll be able to release to fly off to Mexico. It's hard to see them not make it, but I have to remember I helped an awful lot this summer make it to adulthood.

This is a Black Swallowtail chrysalis on a rock. I use these rocks to weight down my butterfly house so it doesn't fall over in the wind, but my, the Swallowtails LOVE them. About 3/4 of my Swallowtails chrysalises have hung themselves on my rocks. It's so funny! ...and I have to be careful when I clean the house out now.

There are 7 on this rock. You can see the 2 in the front left still have not shed their skin and turned into a chrysalis. They appear ready to, though. This rock is turned over, so normally they would "hang" off the rock like the picture following this one.

Here's another couple on the side of a rock. Some of these I worry I will smoosh them when I turn the rock back over, but if they found that spot when they rock was turned over before, there must be enough room for them.

This chrysalis is green, but is also a Black Swallowtail chrysalis. They can turn either green or brown, I've read it depends on what they're attached to.

These two are playing piggyback.

And these three attached themselves to the underside of the paper towel on the floor of my butterfly house. I almost threw them away when I was cleaning the house out! Yikes!

This is the bottom of my butterfly house now. I have one little Monarch cat left still chomping on Milkweed and the other plants are Queen Anne's Lace that the Black Swallowtail cats are feeding on.

Copy cat

This is a Viceroy butterfly...they try to look like a Monarch so they won't get eaten either. (Monarchs are poisonous or distasteful to their predators due to a chemical found in milkweed, the plant they eat when they are a caterpillar.) This one looked like it was considered tasty to someone because it had a lot of nips taken out of its wings. Amazing how they can still fly with large chunks of their wings gone.

Monarch photo session

Loved watching these two sun themselves! Beautiful creatures! I didn't have any tags left for them, but hope they make it to Mexico safe and sound!

Monarch tagging continued

I had 5 Monarchs come out today, so I got to use my other 2 tags for this lady and gentleman pair. #948 and #949!

Here's my little helper! He loves to let the butterflies climb on his finger for a runway before flying away. This one cooperated quite well!

My future butterfly tagger! It will be a while before I'll let him put the tags on, though. Phew, it's touchy work! The tag is very sticky and you've got to get it positioned just right with a toothpick before pressing it into position.