No, this isn’t some weird halloween decoration. We are drying herbs from our garden!
A few weekends ago, I started the process of weeding and edging our herb garden. I exposed a brick that was completely covered with grass. Then another. And another. Pretty soon I uncovered a brick pathway that was entirely overgrown with grass. Christa and Ethan were out while I was doing this.
When they arrived home, I excitedly told Christa to go out back to see the surprise I found. She walked over to the little pond and I pointed her in the right direction. She was nearly on top of the new pathway and asked “What am I looking for exactly?”. I said, “that new brick pathway right next to you!” To her defense, she rarely goes over to that side of the yard. Oh well, I think it looks nice anyway!
A few months ago, one of Ethan’s friends spotted some milkweed growing in our garden. We looked for monarch butterflies but at the time didn’t see anything. Well today I was out in the yard and I noticed a monarch butterfly near the milkweed. It was laying eggs! She laid one egg on each leaf of the milkweed plant.
We’ll keep an eye on the eggs. Hopefully some of them hatch so we can watch the caterpillars grow and turn into cocoons. I’ll try to document all the stages, stay tuned!
Today we had an unexpected guest at our pond. I couldn’t grab my camera fast enough, so here is a picture I got off the internet. It’s an immature Cooper’s hawk. I’m not sure what he was doing. They eat birds, not fish or frogs. Maybe he was just looking for a drink or saw some smaller birds around the feeder.
One of the things I love most about gardening is all of the different animals that it attracts. Here are some recent critters I saw today.
Pictured are black-eyed susans, rosemary, mint, sage, petunias, impatiens, and thyme.
Last year I started building a small goldfish pond in our backyard. The goal is to create a mini ecosystem so you don’t have to add any chemicals to maintain the water quality. To do this, you need to add lots of plants and allow the good algae to build along the walls of the pond. Fish help to keep the water clean by eating bad algae and mosquito larvae. And somehow a few frogs have found their way to the pond!
Goldfish pond
We didn’t have a chance to plant a big garden this year (that’s on my list for the fall). But we did plant a few tomato plants, some basil, and some cucumbers. We’ve been enjoying pesto for the last month or so, but today we picked the first fruits of our labor. Ethan did the honors of clipping it off the vine. He also helped me plant the entire garden.
Ethan and his cuke
