Happy 4th of July!

It's time to celebrate! I think our evening will consist of grilled out food, a crazy game of Trivial Pursuit and then to finish the evening..fireworks! We have a few that we've bought to set off tonight. The neighbors buy really nice ones too, so between all of us it should be a lot of fun. We can see the fireworks displays from several area cities (that should tell you how flat it is here) from our back yard. Since we have teenagers now, the thrill of going to see a public display is not quite as fun as setting them off in our own backyard. Thankfully, we live in the country where we CAN set them off AND we are currently not under a BURN BAN. We are commonly under those this time of year when everything is dried to crisp.

Outside of that, the work outside continues. I'm working in the veggie garden trying to keep it from drying out. Within the next few weeks I will begin to set out tomatoes and peppers for the fall garden season. Everyone around here prefers the fall garden. It seems to do much better than the spring. Most of the insect problems are reduced and all around performance is higher.

Breaking News...After months of waiting I finally have swallowtail butterfly caterpillars!! Yay!!



The fennel plants have grown HUGE and I have checked often to see if eggs have been laid on them. I was beginning to think I had missed the chance to raise some swallowtails here. That's why I am so excited to have 5 hungry caterpillars now. The swallowtail caterpillars will use parsley, dill, fennel and any member of that family as their host plant. What a beautiful caterpillar!!!