Beautiful Moth

I was able to capture one last picture of the Hummingbird Moth with it's wings fully extended before it departed!  God has some truly amazing creatures!

Hatching

They hatched!  I am so overly excited that our caterpillars have turned into butterflies and moths!  It has been the most amazing thing to watch as the caterpillars eat, poop (the kids favorite part), and then cocoon.

I wasn’t really sure how this would all turn out.  I started with some bugs and dirt from my garden, found out the sand is not to their liking, and just kept feeding them and giving them a sprinkling of water…hoping for the best!  I think I really got into it more than the kids, although they have liked seeing the changes in the bugs.

Our first learning experience was that the horned tomato worms eat A LOT!  Then we learned that the little green caterpillars are not baby horned worms, they are something else that turns into a beautiful little yellow butterfly.  Their metamorphosis only took about 2 weeks from start to finish.  The horned worms took about a month to turn into a butterfly, from the time they buried themselves under the dirt to cocoon until their cocoon actually moved up above the dirt and they hatched.  Through that, we learned that there are bugs that cocoon underground!

The first horned worm just hatched today and it turns into a beautiful sphinx moth or a hummingbird moth.  They are named that because they are huge, roughly the size of a hummingbird! Their wings start out small and expand as they dry out, as you can see in the pics below.

This was a wonderful science lesson for the kids that took a month in the making, an old aquarium, and the rest was free!

Pests to Pets

My kids love to look for bugs in our yard.  I found that our broccoli and Boston ivy have a variety of tomato worms.  There are little baby ones that have just hatched and a big grand daddy one that has the girth of a penny and is 4 inches long.

About 4 years ago my son wanted to have an aquarium.  After going through a bunch of fish (pretty sure the money I spent on fish over a 2 year period would have paid for a papered Golden Retriever) we decided to put the aquarium up in the garage.  All the fish had died, except for a plecostomus, one of those algae eater fish that sucks the algae off of the side of the aquarium.  The fish store I had bought him at had gone out of business and I didn’t know what to do with him.  I stopped feeding him, thought he might just perish on his own…but no, after 2 months of no food he was still going strong, and was about 6 inches long.

After much deliberation (I couldn’t kill him) I put him in a zip loc baggie with water and placed the baggie in my purse.  I marched off to our local Wal-Mart Super Center and when I thought no one was looking, I emptied the baggie, fish and all, into their fish aquarium that was housing other plecostomus fish.  Of course the one I donated to them was about 6 times larger than the ones in their tank.

To this day, I am sure there was someone in the back watching security cameras and saying, “Hey, Joe, check out this crazy lady putting a fish IN the tank in the pet section.”

I digress, the reason for this post was to tell you that with an old aquarium some found caterpillars, a little sand and leaves to eat, you have FREE pets.  The best part is, they aren’t permanent.  Tomato worms will cocoon and turn into a beautiful Sphinx moth.  If they die before that, oh well, get some more, or put the aquarium away for later.

My kids are having a great time checking it throughout the day, collecting extra food, and showing their friends!  Great FREE summer fun!

Field Trip

I think that adults should go on field trips!  We think they are just for kids, but we are just as likely to learn and have fun from a field trip of our own.  Since both of my kids were in capable hands until 3pm on Wednesday I was able to indulge in a field trip of my own with my mom.

My mom suggested Sherman Library and Gardens down in Corona del Mar, California.  I have driven by it many times and have always heard amazing things about it, but have never been!  My mom and I both love all things flora (and fauna as well) so I knew we would have fun seeing some amazing plant specimens, learning new facts, and maybe even sharing our knowledge with the docents there.

Sherman Library and Gardens is situated on 2.2 acres of land on the ocean side of Pacific Coast Highway (prime real estate for sure).  It was started in 1966 and today houses wonderful plants, fountains, and an amazing 5 star (in my opinion) restaurant.  It is only $3 to get in and walk around the gardens.  They even have a cell phone tour you can take for free.  We had a lovely time walking through the rose garden, orchid house, and succulent garden.  We even had a great conversation with the plant expert!

My favorite was the “Hot Cocoa” rose in the rose garden (pictured below) and the unusual bumble bee we encountered.  I also loved all the large pots of hydrangeas; they have always been one of my favorite flowers!

Our Garden

This year we decided to build an elevated garden box to have our own vegetable garden.  My husband and my father designed a square box that would serve as our garden and keep the tortoises (we have 2 California Desert Tortoises as pets) away from the garden.  It has been a lot of fun watching the veggies grows from seed and starts.  The kids love it and are happy to help take care of the garden.

We now have our winter crop growing strong, I know, winter crop sounds weird to most of the country.  Here in SoCal we can grow many things straight through winter.  Right now we have different kinds of lettuce, spinach, radishes, and carrots.  It is so fun to send the kids out with a bowl and my garden scissors to harvest our dinner salad each evening!

The kids love the radishes; they grow fast and are ready to eat immediately.  I highly recommend growing radishes if you have children.  They are ready to pull out of the ground in about a couple of weeks.  It doesn’t matter if your kids like them or not, they are excited to see the transformation from seed to red radish.  My kids will now eat them, just because they grew them…hmm, great idea for picky eaters, we all want our kids to eat more veggies, so just grow them!

You don’t have to have a large yard to have a garden, ours is quite small.  Just a tiny area of dirt will do.  You can also have a container garden; my aunt shared with me how she had a container garden made from recycled containers on her patio when she lived in Santa Barbara.  Try some seeds anywhere, it is fun!