Friday, July 08, 2005

The truth about butterflies

The butterfly net we bought her a few days ago apparently works. And there is a beautiful specimen in her nifty specimen jar (the entire lid of this container is a 6" diameter magnifying glass). Today Hannah finally fulfilled her lifelong dream of catching a monarch butterfly.

"I know all about butterflies", she told me sitting in the garden with the specimen jar in her lap. "The mom butterflies are the ones who lay the eggs. The dad butterflies take care of everyone and tell all the butterflies not to be mean to each other." No sense in arguing with her on this, is there? Clearly she has thought about it more than I have.


In remotely related news: there are blossoms on my green bean and on my snap pea plants. I put in a bunch of tomato starts today. And eggplant. Mmmmm... Eggplant parmesan fresh from the garden. (I need a cow.) I plan to get a bunch of herb starts at the farmer's market tomorrow. Also more lettuce. We have this truly wonderful garden spot out here. Sunny and sheltered with nearly perfect soil. Too many deer though. Stinkin' deer.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

We had a lot of deer in the garden when I was a kid. My parents would spread dried up blood, probably available at the feed store in Eureka, around the perimeter of the garden to keep them out. It was very effective. Not the prettiest solution, but the blood is a by-product of the meat industry and its good to know that more of the animals are getting used.

Hannah

heels said...

Or you can do as my neighbor did when I was growing up- just use your dirty Depends! Just hang them up on trees around the perimeter of your property. Maybe it didn't keep the deer away like he thought, but it sure kept the people away!!