Seeding our love of Edibles!

Earlier this year I came across an old sunset magazine which had a "one block diet" garden. To grow almost everything you need in your backyard. I had remembered glimpsing the article and not giving it to much thought. Ed and I had planted a few things last year, but nothing really inspired us to live off our land. With the winter rains along with spring heat caused our yard to become a true jungle, weeds grew well over three feet tall. Our boys had a blast playing hide and seek!

Fast forward to the day I re-found the article! It truly inspired me to return to our yard and revive it with flowing edibles! The first sign of inspiration was when Ed pointed out that the artichoke plant had buds that were beginning to grow.

Luckily Ed's brother Mike and some of his friends came down with weed whackers and did away with our jungle. They also removed an old dog run, turned into a tool shed. I gave the frame of shed another purpose: a bean pole house. We brought in good soil and planted seeds of peas, green beans, onions, garlic and shallots. Our neighbors gave us some tomatillo plants.

We had some old fence wooden fences from a previous project. Most of it was reused to create a coop for the chickens. Two pieces were left over and we decided to use them for a grape vine trellis.

The third project in progress is growing a pumpkin patch. We had grown some our first year living here and they did very well considering I planted them in Mid June. Today I got the seeds in the ground. Next to it, I'm going to sprinkle some corn seeds and see if any grow.

Congrats Alexis Gutierrez, she had two butterflies hatch today!

They are a little fragile and don't move much in the begining. After a few hours, they will walk around and fly from side to side.

When you release your butterfly, they don't fly away right away. You can gently place it on a flower or on a tree branch.

Do butterflies get scared? Yes! When we were going to release our butterfly, it lifted its wings together and seemed to be trembling. Once he became calm, he lowered his wings and sipped nectar from the flowers.

The cool thing is: even though we set them free, both butterflies are still around. The following day, we saw in our backyard tree and this morning I saw one basking in the sun on top of a flower pot!

Congrats to Butterfly Parents!

This week, Karina, Heather and Helen are proud parents of a butterfly! Heather already released hers, as did we! Karina and Helen will be releasing their butterfly in a couple of days!

Thank you guys all for participating!! Maybe we can get together on April 19 and see the huge release party at Kidspace musuem. Let me know if you want to go, I have a couple of free passes!

Small plastic bag with brown stuff...

If I gave you a small plastic bag fill with brown dirt like stuff in it. It's wild butterfly seed plants. You can sprinkly them in your yard and hope it turns to flowers for the butterfly to feed on later. I thought it was butterfly food, ***SO DON'T PUT IT IN YOUR CONTAINER, IT'S NOT FOOD!"

Hot Wings the Butterfly is HERE!!!

Hot Wings went from this:









to this:










Ed was the first one in the office today and spotted the pupa open! As he looked around, he spot "Hot Wings" on the side of the box! How amazing such a big creature popped out of the pupa!

Let me know if yours have appeared! Don't forget to put food inside:
Recipe 2 tablespoons of sugar to one cup of water, Mix well, and place half of it in the cup it came it (be sure to clean out the cup!) and place a cotton ball inside the cup to absord the liquid. The butterfly will land on the cottonball to drink! Serve clean sugar water with cottan ball ever day.






AFTER 3 DAYS PLEASE RELEASE YOUR BUTTERFLY IN THE AFTERNOON!!!

Send me pics of your Butterfly's Home! 4-2-08

Nothing has happened for about a week already! So I'm posting pics of my friends and families decorated butterfly home!