Guess who got 7 inches of snow yesterday?
Weeeeeee diiiiid!!!
Snow ball fight!!!
Our very first snowman!!
View from our front window before we went to bed...
Riley enjoying the edible white stuff...
Untouched... and breathtaking!
My snow angel!
Dr. Riley tends to the now faceless, leaning and frostbitten snowman...
Woohoo! :)
So I returned home last night, with a very dirty puppy in tow, after a crazy busy trip to Houston. While I was there, I spent time with family, worked, drove ALL OVAH the place, and did a ton of wedding planning.
Some wedding decisions were made, some weren't. Overall a productive trip though.
I'm sorry I wasn't able to see many of my dear friends who live in Houston during my visit this time. If it's any consolation - I probably wouldn't have been great company! My mind has been swimming with save-the-dates, photographers, venues, food, dresses, and pretty much everything else wedding-related!
{ by the way }
I returned to see that my amaryllis, which I had left before my trip, decided to have a growth spurt in my absence.
Here it was the day before I left:
and here it was when I got back last night...
The blooms that were there when I left were wilted... and the other stalk just shot up (it's around 2 to 3 feet tall) and has blooms too! Pretty amazing considering it got little sunlight and no water while I was gone!
Anyhoo... just wanted to share.
Happy Hump-Day!
xxoo!
Went to the Magnolia Plantation & Gardens in Charleston yesterday...
It was stunning... even in the rain.
My favorite was the conservatory deck that overlooked a pond. It felt secluded, quiet and was surrounded by plants in every nook and cranny...
Loved it.
We're going to have to go back one day when we can take it all in in the warm sunshine!
:)
Got a l'il dirty planting our new golden cypress trees...
And paused to take in the amazing changing colors that have taken hold in the trees surrounding "our" pond...
The iPhone camera sucks... It is absolutely stunning in person.
Note to self... must make a decision on a new camera soon... at least before autumn has passed!
We went to pick up five Golden Cypress youngsters that we'd ordered from our favorite local nursery on Saturday...
And somehow we wound up being offered ripe Satsuma oranges and fresh kumquats from trees growing right in the nursery's garden!
What a treat!
The orange was SO delectable (seedless and sweet), that we couldn't resist in taking one of the young orange plants home...
It's a small little thing... here's Riley sniffing one of the unripe oranges...
While we were there, I also spotted a Meyer Lemon Tree. The lemons have a lovely smooth skin and an incredible scent. The one we selected and brought home had 7 (Yes - SEVEN!) ripe lemons on it!
I already nabbed one to use in the kitchen. Now I'm busy thinking of all sorts of things I can make and bake with these yellow goodies!
Don't forget... fall is a great time to get awesome deals at your local nursery.
Our favorite is Cooper's ... the Cooper family and the other employees always take great care of us and provide an endless stream of gardening knowledge and know-how. The people of Columbia can trust they will always be in good hands there.
All of the plants we purchased came from Monrovia.
Many thanks to both of these great companies for helping to continue to make gardening a pleasure for me!!
I watched "The Last Beekeeper" on the Planet Green channel yesterday...
And I was absolutely mesmerized.
It's a documentary that follows several beekeepers in different parts of the nation as they try to figure out why so many of each of their colonies are randomly dying.
You may have heard stories in the news in the last few years that have mentioned the unexplained decline in bee colonies over the last few years. The film documents how beekeepers and experts across the nation have been baffled by the unexplained deaths and are scrambling to figure out whether disease, parasites or maybe even stress are to blame for the hemorrhaging loss of their financial investments.
Apparently, the current "bread & butter" of beekeepers is not in harvesting honey - these days, beekeepers travel thousands of miles across the country with their hives to get paid for their bees to pollinate crops. Some crops, such as almonds, rely solely on bees... so more and more beekeepers have been forced to abandon the honey industry, which turns little profit, for the larger promise of pollination contracts.
If you have a chance to catch this flick, please give it a chance. It is surprisingly moving and inescapably captivating.
I know it's fall... but I fell in love with these pretty pink sage flowers and blue salvia. So I finally got around to getting plants potted for our front porch!
I know it kinda looks like I'm trying to hold on to spring + summer...
(and either my right leg is shorter than my left or I don't know how to take a straight picture...)
but I really love these plants. Maybe they'll survive until next year!
(Fingers crossed...)
Remember how I told you we have a bunch of caterpillars "nesting" on our front porch? Well, many of them have emerged. (Some, sadly, never made it.)
But new ones are still arriving each week... seeking out nooks and crannies on our porch where they can comfortably hang upside down for a week or so... and now I've been very lucky enough to have witnessed two different species just moments after they emerged from their chrysalises!
They are both in the fritillary family.
The first one is a Variegated Fritillary (Euptoieta claudia).
I watched the little guy change from a reddish-orange crawler with black spikes into a lovely green chrysalis with golden flecks... he didn't shed his skin or anything... just forced himself to change shape and color over the course of a day. Absolutely amazing.
Here he is when he had first chosen his spot (sorry for the poor focus)...
And here he is after he'd changed...
The picture is really dark, so here's a picture of another one to give you a better idea of the incredible color they have...
And finally... his chrysalis started getting dark and slightly translucent one morning. So I kept my eye on him each time I passed by the front window...
Later that day...
Voila! There he was!
As for the second one... although we've had close to 20 Gulf Fritillary caterpillars set up camp around our house, I hadn't caught any of them leaving their chrysalises.
But today was apparently my lucky day!!
I noticed this guy this morning when I stepped out to get the mail. He had already stretched into his new butterfly wings (they pump blood into their wings after they emerge to fully unfurl them) and was slowly flapping them in the sun to pick up some heat and to dry them out...
I'm really excited to have finally been able to see one of these guys after weeks and weeks of just seeing their crawling counterparts. And when I think about it, the whole process of their metamorphosis stuns me a bit. You have to admit it's quite remarkable the drastic changes they undergo in such a short period of time!
The weather's starting to get cooler here, so we will probably have to say farewell to these guys until the next generation returns next year... *sigh*
xxoo!
-h-
Feelin' a bit better today. Have gotten plenty of rest - and the Tylenol & 'Tussin seem to be doing the trick.
Remember that crazy caterpillar that stung me a few weeks ago? Well, we found another interesting-looking guy hanging on our house a week or so ago.
The next day he had already shed his soft spines and formed his protective chrysalis...
We looked him up and apparently he's going to be a Passion Butterfly (or Gulf Fritillary) when he emerges in another day or two.
(photo from cirrusimage.com)
Amazing that so much life + color is packed inside that grey cocoon!!
Also, Ryan's been busy building an his arcade machine... here it is at its current stage:
Back to work today... and going to find a spot of time to put the final details on my little canvas goodies for Karis. Can't wait to wrap them up!
A productive Tuesday to you all...
-h-
