Cross Country season has started in our house with three school age runners, middle and elementary. It has been very busy and I keep forgetting to post for Harvest Monday (<please visit Happy Acres and participate)! There are a lot of things coming out of the garden, mostly tomatoes! I roast them and make sauce and usually freeze them, so my freezer is full!
I have also been chasing a lot of butterflies around the garden and posting submitting them to Butterflies and Moths of North America. I have had several accepted and several are still pending! It is a great project if you have a butterfly garden, consider submitting your own butterfly sightings!
Here is one of mine >> BAMONA
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| Red Spotted Purple |
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| Red Spotted Purple |
This is one of my favorite sightings in the garden this year. It is a first for me! This is the Question Mark Butterfly, which I have also submitted to BAMONA. I love this butterfly. It i so pretty!
This little mark under it's wings is suppose to look like a question mark...
These butterflies were all fighting over the sap in the sunflower stalks as well as the wasps in above photo. These other butterflies are Hackberry Emperor.
This weekend was our home XC race. It is always the funnest but this year was even more exciting with the remnants of a tropical storm coming through. The course was a big muddy mess. Cars getting stuck, kids losing shoes, kids sliding down muddy hills. Crazy! This was my families mess! Ha!
And both of my Middle Schoolers got medals. 11th and 24th! And both the boys and girls placed 1st for teams! Yay!!! The girls beat out last years State champions for the last 3 races, they never could beat them last year! And so far it is looking like the boys may have a 4th strait year of all wins, although it is early...here's hoping!
And in addition to the rain causing a big XC mess, it also made a mess of my garden. All my tomatoes that were tied up to 10 foot metal stakes have fallen and the strings have snapped. They are laying down around the raised beds all the way to the ground! I'll have some garden clean up this week for sure!
Hope you are having a happy harvesting close to summer!
Love your butterfly shots. I'm sure those aren't easy to do. Ah, homegrown tomatoes, I'm so jealous.
ReplyDeleteAww! I saw that! Hopefully next year. There is always something every year! Hopefully you can get the rodents under control!
DeleteYou got even more rain than we did! I bet the XC event was fun in the mud. You are getting lots of tomatoes still. Mine are taking a break. Like you I have lots in the freezer though, which will be nice this winter for sauce and soup.
ReplyDeleteI love those butterfly shots! I've never seen the Question Mark in person, only in photos. My wife and I are going to a butterfly tagging event this coming weekend, which should be fun.
how fun!
DeleteVery impressive harvests, and the butterfly pictures are beautiful! Congratulations on your athletic family.
ReplyDeleteThank you!
DeleteLook at all those lovely tomatoes and peppers, and those long beans are really producing for you. Long beans usually do better for me than other pole beans, I'll probably go back to them next year. It sounds like a fun crazy time at the racing event.
ReplyDeleteThey seem to be doing better for me too. I already pulled the pole and bush beans.
DeleteWe are busy cooking down tomatoes too. That first butterfly is lovely - not one we see here in the UK. The second one we call a comma also based on the little white mark on its underwing which we think looks like a comma.
ReplyDeleteapparently we have both the Comma and the Question Mark here. I have never seen a Comma though. But there are verified sightings on Butterflies and Moths of North America. They look so much alike you really would have to see the mark to know which one it is!
DeleteLove the pictures of your butterflies and it is interesting to see that Question Mark. Like Sue, I thought it was the same as our Comma at first glance. Lovely butterflies, that have been quite numerous here this year. Well done to your runners too!!
ReplyDeleteThank you so much.
DeleteInteresting!
ReplyDelete