bugs

Recently my mom bought Maggie a bug catcher. Maggie saw it in Michaels, had to have it, and, of course, who is my mom to say no to her? So off we went to find a bug to trap. It was harder than we thought it would be. The net worked well, we just couldn't find any bugs! So a few days later Chad and Maggie tried again. Maggie shouted, "here buggy buggy!" and eventually they caught an ant. Hooray! We gave the ant some fresh lettuce. As expected, unfortunately, the poor ant didn't last long. Needless to say we're going to hold off on pets for awhile.

Art Club

For January's toddler art club we painted butterflies. Chad drew the butterfly template, I cut them out, and 11 kids painted them. Seriously, they loved the craft. In fact, a few of them painted two because they enjoyed it so much. Basically you let the kids paint as they want, then fold the butterfly in half and press the wings down. After pressing, let the child open the wings to unveil the neat pattern they designed. At the end we taped antennae to the back of the butterflies and then let them dry while the kids destroyed the house played with Maggie's toys and chased each other around. The children played so well together that the moms got to (mostly) relax for a few hours and chat. Fun art club day for everyone.

Praying Mantis

          We've had quite a few bugs outside our house lately. I don't know if it's the weather or the harvesting or just the fact that we live in the Valley. To my surprise this big guy was relaxing on our patio chair and hung out long enough for me to take a quick photo of him. It looks like he has big funky eyes, but in fact when you zoom in on him (as I kindly have done for you, below), you'll see that the eyes are instead very small black dots. I'm assuming that's some sort of survival trick, don't you think? He has a funny mouth too.

Paper Wasps

Chad was working in the yard this weekend and found this nest attached to one of our bird houses. Not particularly great for the birds (or us), but definitely cool to look at close up. The nest is from a paper wasp and is really intricate up close. As the name suggests, the nest really does feel like paper. Neat!

Goodbye Summer

This week we took down our vegetable garden. Our tomato plants were overgrown but finished producing fruit a few weeks back.

On Saturday Chad noticed some pretty yellow and purple caterpillars eating our grape leaves. Maybe they were Greek caterpillars? (Bad joke.) Anyway, they're gone now and thanks to them, so is most of our grape vine. No grapes this year...maybe next year?

They Finally Arrived

All summer we've been waiting to see these guys on our tomato plants. We've been warned and put on notice but haven't seen much of anything besides bees, wasps, moths and grasshoppers. Until today. We went to check on our plants this evening and my eye went right to this big guy. There were actually two of them and most likely even more since they blend in so well with the greenery. They're called horn worms. If they weren't so bad for our tomatoes and so fat and squishy I might actually like them. They have really neet legs/feet and an unusual eye-like pattern on their sides. We're going to let them be. Our tomato plants are about done anyway.

Another Dragonfly

A new dragonfly friend spent the evening in our front yard posing for photos. The lighting at dusk was a little funky so getting a good shot was difficult. Here is my favorite photograph we took of him. Try to imagine a bright blue body behind these super green eyes. So cute!

The Coast

Our holiday weekend was spent at the coast. Friday night we had dinner at Avila Beach. Saturday morning and early afternoon we enjoyed downtown San Luis Obispo. We ate breakfast at the Big Sky Cafe, walked along the creek, looked at Chad's old place (now boarded up and condemned), shopped, and people-watched before hitting our friends' wedding. The wedding ceremony was in Shell Beach and the reception in Los Osos. The weather in Shell Beach couldn't have been more perfect for their big day and everyone was happy to feel the sun and the light breeze. Los Osos was Los Osos: cool and foggy. Good thing the reception was inside!

Sunday before heading home we decided to walk along the newly opened Point Buchon Trail just past Montana de Oro. The land is owned by PG&E and they've done a nice job of keeping the area natural. The full trail is 3.5 miles each way along the rugged ocean-lined cliffs. We plan to take the full walk next time we're in the area.

Garden at 9 Weeks

Here are a few more photos of our garden. Everything is growing well and we even had a few tiny grape tomatoes with our dinner last night. The second photo is a tiny watermelon starting to grow. The large yellow flower is from our pumpkin and look!--there's a bee pollenating it this morning. Yay! Next you'll see our red bell pepper that's still green. I'm not sure why we aren't getting more peppers but this one is so big I'm OK with what we have. And finally we have tassels on our corn!

New Friend

This week I noticed a new friend in our back yard. He's a large grasshopper about 4.5" long and lives in our wisteria vines. Today he decided to show off his acrobatic skills and do the splits for me and my camera.