rebirth!

ladies and gentlemen! i'd like to introduce the first black swallowtail butterfly!



the chrysalis.


pixelated.









she's coming to get me!

i need to give you a garden update as well!

a cute little cucumber.



tomato BUSHES!




beautiful green zebras!


cucumber, french beans (delicious), white corn.


herbs



blue corn.

emergency caterpillar relocation!

sooo.. i've had lots of little babies the past week or so. four or five at the most at one time.. but i had noticed i was missing a few. i had to do some emergency vine borer removal on my pumpkin who's planted next door to the fennel.. so i just assumed i had probably knocked off some and accidentally buried them.

nope.

i came home to do my daily after work inspection.. only to find this horrible little bitch. the caterpillar was half eaten when i first noticed the wasp.. by the time i ran inside and got my camera, she was only a head and guts. UGH.



look at her just gnawing away! UGH. i know where her home is. i've been kind up until now.. because wasps really are good beneficial predators. they eat larvae of all kinds, even the bad ones...

BUT NOW.. that nest is coming down. i'm not harboring murderers!@!




so i decided to do some emergency fennel relocation and take it and the babies to the green house. i have a few spiders living in there.. but no wasps! hopefully it will be a safer environment for them..


that is.
look at her coming back to look for the other juicy caterpillars i've moved.







if the fennel makes it.. if it shows any sign of poop outage, i will be at the store buying a new fennel plant before the night is over, just for my babies to live on.


HOWEVER, i'm an idiot, and cut the stalk with the chrysalis on it. hopefully it will be okay even if the fennel dries out. i have a few spiders in the greenhouse that i'm worried about. but if i see the chrysalis start to open i'll take it directly outside.

black swallowtail caterpillars continued..

so once i realized what was going on.. i found out i had been mushing the caterpillars in their earlier stages of life! so i've been out hunting for the past three or four days.. and this is what i've collected! i'm pretty sure i've got every stage, minus the butterfly, captured!







they molt between stages.. and i noticed this guy right as he finished. before i could get the camera focused he had turned around and begun to eat the shedded skin! nature!






i love the two tethers that hold the chrysalis to the fennel stalk.

black swallowtail caterpillar

when i first stumbled across him, i thought he was a monarch. but glory be google for righting my wrongs!



he was perched upon my fennel.. and upon pokage he began to vomit a really foul liquid. i'm sure that it's a naturally foul smelling deterrent.. but since all he's been eating is fennel? i bet it's TEN times worse.


upon further pokage.. he stuck these little sticky orange horns out.



a very handsome fella! ol' wikipedia told me this is the last growth cycle of the caterpillar and then it's ready to pupate! hopefully he'll hang out on or near the fennel and i can get some photos of the chrysalis/butterfly!

a little garden update.

little green zebra.


blue corn.


white corn.



green beans.



cucumbers!

the tiger lily!

the wildflowers are finally waking up!

early june 10 veggies!

blue corn!



baby bell pepper.



head of a cucumber plant.



i'm growing straight 8 cucumbers this year.. last year i grew a burpless.. it sucks if you only like cucumbers for pickles!

my first tomatoes! this one is a green zebra.. see the little stripes already?! yay!




all the tomatoes and the flopping potatoes.. that means its time to harvest the taters, right?



herbs, herbs and more herbs! basil, oregano, greek oregano and sage below.


beeeautiful greek oregano.



birdhouse gourd, headed up the tree!


oregano, fennel stalk!


under the pumpkin canopy. we planted the pumpkins where the carrots were over the winter.




wildflowers and tiger lilies!
from left to right.
french beans, cucumbers, josh, grapes.