Squeeee! A Chrysalis!!!

We think this is Bug's caterpillar working on metamorphosing.

A New Project

A friend of ours found four caterpillars in her garden this week and kept two for her son (Bug's best bud) and gave two to us!



We have been watching them munch on their parsley, dill, and Queen Anne's lace and are looking forward to seeing them metamorphose. We are pretty sure they are Black Swallowtails.

Fast Plants: Day 34

We are nearing the end of these Fast Plants! Just three days until we remove the water supply and let the seeds dry out so we can harvest them. The timing has turned out to be perfect, too. We planted our tomato seeds for the garden last week, so we will have more green things coming up and managed to "schedule" our rhinovirus during a less interesting week. Lots of very interesting seed development stuff going on, I'm sure, but not much to see from the outside.

Maple Syrup

Bug participated in the Maple Syrup homeschool field trip at the Aldo Leopold Nature Center on Tuesday. The rest of us tagged along for part and found a quiet spot to dig out crayons and paper for the rest. Here is Bean's take on the topic. Be sure to click on each one to go to Flickr to see the labeled details...

First, she gathers sap with her little brother:



Then she gets ready to eat the finished product on pancakes with Mom and Dad:

Fast Plants: Day 29

There has been some new growth with new buds and flowers. We have just left them alone as we will be removing the plants from the water in a week or so. I thought about pinching them off (as we did with the buds and flowers that arrived shortly after pollination), but in the end laziness and a rampant rhinovirus won out.

Fast Plants: Days 23 and 25

We have gone to every other day for pictures as the fast changes are slowing down. The seed pods are growing, but there just isn't as much to get excited about day-to-day. Here is Day 23:



And here is day 25:



And a bonus picture of the seed pods today. Since the progress photos have been sharply focused on the fireplace screen in the background, I finally pulled out my tripod for a detail picture. They look an awful lot like little green beans right now. As if I wasn't already having a huge hankering for fresh, local vegetables.

Fast Plants: Day 19 and 21

Day 19...lots of pods growing!



Day 20...Sunday again. Apparently we are hopeless on Sunday...

Day 21...flower petal almost gone...pods growing like crazy.