[gardening] Monarch Butterfly

Saw my first monarch butterfly of the summer on the (aptly named) butterfly weed plant yesterday:

And as I was standing there, trying to get a good picture, I looked down and saw a monarch caterpillar on a stem:

I really hope this caterpillar makes it's chrysalis where I can see it and watch it while it... incubates? Gestates? Transmogrifies? Turns into a butterfly.

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Another night of no knitting and I'm starting to lose my mind. I had to clean up my craft room. It was already in an embarrassing state and I got home to find that someone (my money's on Santana) had jumped up onto the table and knocked alllllll kinds of stuff off. There it was- patterns, fabric, knitting needles, yarn- strewn all over the floor and I was like, "You can't really even tell there's extra mess. I gotta clean this shit up."

The room feels fresher and more inviting to finish up projects.

Also, I ran out of space on my phone and had to start moving pictures to my computer. Dollar asked what I was doing (I'm never sitting at the kitchen desk, looking at a laptop) and I said "Downloading pictures, I have too many on my phone. Guess how many I have." He said, "Oh god, 3000?" I frowned. He said, "10,000?" I looked down and shamefully said "21,000" and covered my face with my hands. It's so many photos, I can't even download them all at once. I spent hours trying to get the last 12 months of pictures moved to an external harddrive and deleted from my phone. And there are still a couple more years to do...

But it was nice to look back- see all the nice memories over the last year. I should start compiling and ordering photo books.

Lots to do this weekend- baking and cooking and pickling and knitting and sewing and gardening... and maybe some chores. TGIFFFFFF.

[vermont] Pearl Crescent Butterfly

Speaking of butterflies:

Pearl Crescent Butterfly on a daisy. I've seen many yellow and black Eastern Tiger Swallowtail Butterflies around but they are a bit more apprehensive of looming phones taking pictures.

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No craft stuff done yesterday. Got home from work and it was 150F in the house and 115% humidity (roughly) and had a PILE of CSA veggies to take care of. You know what I don't love doing when it's 150 degrees out? Cooking a ton of vegetables. But I really don't have room for it all in the fridge so I cooked down a bunch of chard and kale together. Sauteed up zucchini, onion, tofu and garlic for a vegan stir-fry. Local beer bratwursts cooked with peppers and onions. Did rice in the rice cooker. 

Siiiigh. I complained to Penny the entire time I did all the cooking, "Penny, it's so hot. Why am I cooking all this, Penny? Penny, come here. Penny, get up off the tile floor, you're making me jealous. Penny." At least she kept me company. Or the floor was cool and it was too hot to move. Either way.

I need romaine recipes. Like, seriously. I have two heads of romaine lettuce the size of... heads. Large human heads.