Transplants

As I was picking some tomatoes for dinner last night I noticed several monarch caterpillars trying to make a living on some pretty marginal milkweed in the raised bed area.  Even with trying to keep everything watered, this summer has been hot and dry and the milkweed has paid a price.

I was headed off to our weekly Wool House Crafters zoom meeting so I couldn't do anything about them right then, but this morning I headed out to see if I could find and move them to a couple of greener plants in the nearby B Garden.

I stewed about whether or not it was okay to do that, but a couple of them were pretty small and sickly looking.  Moving them might be their only chance of making it to maturity.  I carefully snipped their current leaves from the dried plants and placed them on a greener neighbor.  Each caterpillar immediately started eating the fresh(er) leaves. 

I hope everyone has had a good monarch summer.  I've seen more butterflies this summer than I've seen the last ten years combined.  Same with caterpillars.  The one thing I'm not seeing...or finding...are their chrysalises.  Hopefully they are out there and I should just stick to finding four leaf clovers.

I'd love to find at least one to watch open though.

What are you seeing your way?

July

July was a pretty fun month...except the heat and drought...which is easier to forget when it takes over a week to get the month end compilation put together.

The highlight of the month was getting to see my friend Robin and her dear cousin Caroline.  We had a great visit and did pretty much everything we wanted to do including driving Frankie, complete with Christmas in July sleigh bells, making sauerkraut, taking a small painting class, setting up together for the Bluegrass Yarn and Fiber Crawl, some punch needle work, checking for monarchs, watering gardens, taking care of sheep, talking sheep and fiber, cooking good food, going to the farm market, taking Bea to Dairy Queen, and really, really enjoying just getting to hang out together.

"Our" purple martins had already headed south, but we had plenty of company from large groups stopping by on their way though.  More this year than ever.  I wonder if it's because we have two houses now and we are "on the map".

The Tour de Fleece happened and while I lost the course several times, I did get some nice yarn spun and I'll share that in my next post.  Maisie "kindly" has provided the perfect TdF wrap up picture to lead it off ;-).

 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Sara Dunham (@thecrazysheeplady)