miracle monarch

One day, about three weeks ago, I was pulling all the tangled vines out from among the flowers I'm trying to grow in my yard. In one fist-full of vine, I found a little black and yellow caterpillar. I found a second one just a few feet away. Since I had destroyed their home, I brought the caterpillars with some of the leaves they were on to look at them and see if I could figure out how to raise them. When Pat saw them, he said, "Monarch caterpillars!" That was the first thing to know. But since then, I have learned a great deal about these tiny creations that astounds me. I'm sharing with you my list of...

AMAZING THINGS ABOUT MONARCHS
1.) They start out as eggs that can only be laid on milkweed. (Good thing I had let the weeds in my garden go for a little while!)
2.) When the caterpillars hatch out of the eggs, they eat the milkweed, which is what makes them poisonous. (And I thought milkweed only killed out my vegetable plants!)
3.) The caterpillars grow to be pretty big. They have yellow and black stripes and antennae-things coming out both ends.
4.) When you see them hanging upside-down, they're just about to make their chrysalis. They hang and hang and hang and then, suddenly, in the span of half an hour (I know because I missed it happening...) they're encapsuled! Just like that! 
5.) This chrysalis looks a good deal smaller than the caterpillar that went into it. I was perplexed about this and then I saw body parts in the bottom of the container. Turns out, the head or the tail (can't tell which) falls off when they go into hiding. Crazy! It all looked so necessary half an hour before!
6.) The chrysalis starts out jade green with gold (like, metallic-looking) dots on it. How and why do they make these gold dots? I don't know! They're perfectly arranged just-so. Decoration? Maybe. They don't seem to have much to do with the entrance or exit, which was my first guess.
7.) Those dots start out white and yellow, actually. I know because I saw it. I have no idea how they change to gold.
8.) And then...nothing. Mine took 15 days of nothing. Both of them. 15 days.
9.) Then you start to see wing patterns -- swaths of orange, black, and white dots. I held it in my hand, then. It struck me as one of those capsules that turns into a foam animal when put in water. It was a butterfly-capsule! I could tell!
10.) Overnight, the whole thing turned black, minus the orange swaths. It got a bit of a bulge on one side. Even the gold dots turned black on the bottom. How was this happening? Nothing was going into or out of the chrysalis, and yet crazy magic was happening inside.
11.) It explodes. It must be a silent explosion, or at least a very quiet one, because I didn't hear it from the next room. But it's so fast and so much comes out that it has to be an explosion.
12.) And then, there's this monarch. It's got a polka-dotted body. Imagine that!
13.) Most monarchs live 2-6 weeks, laying their eggs and dying. There are three generations like that every spring-fall where we live. This is a lot of extravagance for such brief glory.
14.) Not all monarchs die off that quickly. For some reason, the fourth generation, born in September-October, (i.e. MY monarchs...) live 6-8 months. Why? What process knows to make these bodies sturdier? I'm amazed.
15.) These built-to-last monarchs make a trip all the way to Mexico to winter. This little creature sitting on my table, when I let it go, will fly all the way to Mexico. I am hundreds of times its size and am built to last a hundred times longer, and still I could not do it. How does it know where Mexico is? How does it not just end up lost over the Gulf? How does so much wind pass over its wings without breaking them? How can it weather storms on its way? I don't know.

I am amazed by this creation. So much work gone into this beautiful thing I've watched be born into the cage I have for it. I have nearly seen the entire process (though I admit to missing the precise beginning of the most pivotal moments) and I am left with more questions than I had before that day weeding my garden. Learning often leaves me this way.

 

one of the little caterpillars I found

 

getting ready to build its chrysalis

  

finishing up its chrysalis

  

from the back side, making its chrysalis

the yellow and white turned into the gold in the picture below

 just beginning to see the wings through the chrysalis (yesterday)

 it looked like this, minus seeing the wings, for 14 days

 butterfly capsule an hour before it emerged

 only now I realize this is part of its face looking through the chrysalis

 just coming out, unfolding wings

 curled wings and other things, floppy antennae

 

black and white underside before the wings unfurled to cover it

 first butterfly taking flight

I can see this second butterfly in front of me, hanging and drying its wings beside its empty chrysalis now. I have no idea how this birth just happened. I see it. It looks impossible. There's no way this creature just emerged from something 1/2 its size. I know it's true, but it's kind of unbelievable. It's one of the every-day miracles on this planet. Maybe it's ridiculous to go on this way about a butterfly. This happens all the time, after all. It's not like I've seen something never-before-seen. I could say, "Yes, I've known since The Very Hungry Caterpillar that this is what happens." Or I could watch, mouth gaping, scratching my head and praising whatever Being understands this and made it so. Maybe it's even more amazing that this is so common-place. How in this broken world can miracles like this happen every day? I stand amazed and believing.

Maybe we can all emerge from these cramped conditions stronger, more beautiful beings, taking flight.

visions and sights around the corner

If you read the post on my other blog about needing to get out of my yard sometimes, you'll catch the irony that I just returned from a vacation across the mountains and am happy to begin work in my yard. Then again, the whole point of vacation is to help you return  ready to tackle your normal life with renewed vigor, right?

At least for the first week+ back, we've all felt the extra umpf to work out in the yard we bought last year, which is just around the corner from our back yard. Iz in particular only wants to "work outside" all day, every day. Walk to friends? No, thanks. I want to work in the yard. Eden is happy picking raspberries to share with the neighbors all day long.

You see, we've had this plan. We drew it up months ago on the site growveg.com. It makes me happy to sit and just look at it. We won't get the plan done in one year, for sure. I've been calling it a 5-10 year plan. But the awesome thing is how much of it we've been able to get done in the last month!

There it is! THE PLAN. You can map out your yard (our house is along most of the bottom of this drawing, with the kids' playhouse in our regular back yard at the bottom right and the front of the property on the far left) and fill in whatever plants you want! It automatically fills in the suggested spacing for each plant and will even give you a graph showing when to plant and harvest each crop! Genius! So here's how it's going:

The weekend before vacation, we rented a bobcat to pull as much gravel as possible out of the yard. I think the yard was about 40% gravel, at least a foot deep. Maybe more. An epic 2 driveways and an improved alley later (you're welcome, Muncie...), our yard looked slightly different than it had before the three days of work. We're gradually pushing the wild brush and random stuff back to the edges, at least.

 

At this point, neighbors started coming over to ask what we're doing. One next-street-over neighbor we did not know previously came and operated the bobcat one hot afternoon, just because he has a lot of experience doing it and wanted to be kind. Another just came to check it out and give advice. Others say we are absolute angels for working so hard. (I have yet to figure out how those two things are related. Working on my own yard feels just a bit selfish, though I hope to host people in it eventually...or now.) Some let Eden give them raspberries to eat. Kids see us digging and come over to help. It feels like the way things should be.

We didn't get as much done with the bobcat as we'd hoped, so we have been and will be leveling and smoothing the land by rake and shovel from here on out. It sounded horrible to me, but we were able to level the whole garden area in just four evenings of work. Ta-da! (The garden level we did by hand is at the far end of this picture.)

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This is not in our yard...yet.

The PLAN is to dig a trench pond like the one I saw at the Indy Zoo/White River Gardens. It had these frogs shooting water into it and that seemed really fun to me. (That's the blue in the drawing.) It is so much fun to me to be an adult who is able to see something like that and realize I could put it in my own yard for very little money. (I think. We're not done, yet!) We were going to have it just be a semi-circle near the house, but then we went to Williamsburg and saw the cute bridge over such a feature and thought, Why not? We have lots of extra wood to build one. So I think we'll give it a shot. Not that we know about building bridges. Maybe our neighbors do.

the little bridge at Williamsburg
It will go to the right of the left-hand tree in the picture below.

 

After we got the basic garden shape dug and leveled, we got a bunch of old cedar boards (like 50 years old!) that had been the stands at the fairgrounds in town. We've heard a rumor that John Dillinger's butt may have been on one of these very boards.... :) In one day, with the help of a dear middle school student, we built, filled, and planted nine beds! (We have to leave open space for future construction for now.) To my astonishment, we have not 2 beds of tomatoes, but more than four! 50 TOMATO PLANTS!!! Oops! I kept thinking we didn't really have many. I will have to become well-seasoned at canning this fall.

 

as close as I can get to an aerial view of the yard to show how the overall plan is coming along

So there it is for now. It was long past its due date, but I'm proud of it like it's a new baby or something. But this time of year, everyone's inviting each other over to come check out their gardens. It's what we do. Hope you enjoyed the virtual tour. Come over whenever you want and I'll hand you a shovel as I expound upon this brief history! Holler down the street or send me a link and I'll come check out your garden, too!

finding things to celebrate

Last year, we purchased the lot next door from our neighbor. It has a pole barn/garage building (which we will not use for our car for a few years...) and all kinds of various things on it. We've been tearing down all the stuff and trying to clear the lot so we can have a yard and garden. Our neighbor did a lot of gardening, but you know how life gets sometimes when you get digging. You find all kinds of stuff that needs cleaned up. (Did I mention the lot used to be some kind of service garage for cars?)

When we were visiting my friend Rhys, she sent Pat and I out on a walk with her camera lens to go find things worth a picture. It is a dark time in her life -- darker, perhaps, than people should have to experience. When your toddler is pronounced terminally ill, it doesn't leave much of a view for whatever else may be going on in the world. There wasn't much of a view of the world from the house they're in temporarily, either, but I started from their front porch and worked my way out into the world, looking for things to celebrate. It was a good 20 minute life lesson for me.

I am convinced there has to be beauty to be found in even the most dire of circumstances and that part of my job is to find it.

My yard is certainly not the most dire of circumstances, but even so, I thought I'd apply myself to finding things worth celebrating in it, especially since this working season leaves me prone to complaint. Spring has offered a few small bursts of celebration, even in my own yard. I thought I'd share them with you.

one of the cherry trees in bloom

the serviceberry bush we transplanted from next door
(it's beautiful in the fall, too!)

yes, even the dandelions, which have provided some tasty springtime food for us.
and they don't look too shabby, tastefully taking root in a border with the daffodils.


blooming apple tree

the last daffodil standing (it is time for the tulips, after all.)

What are some of the things worth celebrating in your very own (literal or metaphorical) backyard?

If we were on Reading Rainbow...

Having finished reading THE HOBBITT, Pat and I have had to find other things to read before turning in each night. We are picking up where we left off before having kids with THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER, but we are also reading this book: THE URBAN HOMESTEAD. Now, Pat says he prefers reading fiction at night before bed, so we continue through the Chronicles of Narnia mostly. However, THE URBAN HOMESTEAD is every bit as fanciful and requires me to use my imagination every bit as much as a work of good fiction. The only difference is that I may be able to bring some of this book to reality in my own yard.

Having read this entry thus far, Pat informs me that I am a poser. However, allow me to make a disclaimer: I am not to the point of considering myself a homesteader* right now. As I said, this book does read as fiction to me. However, the ideas in it intrigue me and I'm willing to stick a toe in the homestead water to see how it is. The authors of this book are intense. I am not ready to have chickens yet or to make my whole yard into a wonderful jungle-like garden. I am not about to re-plumb my house to use grey-water to water my yard. Not there yet. But I am won over to the idea of edible landscaping and maybe having some bees around. I'm down with collecting rain water (once we can afford gutters...). I think home-grown food is vastly superior to the stuff you can get in a store. For starters, you get to brag that you grew it yourself and when you make a meal with it, you can feel like you really made the meal. But there are better reasons than that.

Perhaps the most obvious benefit is financial. Seeds and water are cheap; buying fresh organic produce is not. Gardening is the poor man's (or the wise person's) way of obtaining organic produce so that you don't have to worry about what someone else may have done to the food. No concerns about whether the person growing my eggplant is a good steward of the land. And I don't worry about what kind of stuff designed to kill other animals was sprayed on it or what effects might come from someone having done whatever to "help" nature out. I try not to think about that too much, though, since we have to buy most of our food right now and can't afford organic. "Organic" is expensive (not to mention that it has become associated with snobbery). "Home-grown" is simply what my parents and grandparents have done all their lives. Yes, it's organic, but it's also just plain practical.

And it's a great activity to do with kids. Israel, at less that two, can recognize tomatoes and associates both beans and strawberries with 'those things in Steve's garden." He eagerly picks out the raspberry plants to find the "ra-beezies" on them. Israel knows where food comes from and already knows that God made the earth such that we are intimately connected to it. It's hard to convince people who think food comes from a grocery store that it matters at all what kind of stuff we put into our dirt. But when you garden, you know that you have a relationship with the dirt and that you can either help or frustrate each other. Israel will also value life -- even the lives of things like spiders and ladybugs -- and will know that something that small can be of assistance to us. The kids from the neighborhood benefit as well. I have one boy who is learning patience as he waits and waits (and asks and asks) for the jalepenos in the pot on our front steps to be ready to eat. (I really don't know why. I tell him there is no way he just wants to pop one in his mouth and I'm having a hard time convincing myself to waste one of them on this lesson.) Kids learn there are rewards to tending and caring for something as small as a plant. We become more aware of the weather. I get to spend mornings doing nothing but holding a water hose and watching the plants grow.

So, while I am no homesteader, I am ready to get behind this book. I encourage you to read it, to take from it what is useful, and to enjoy reading the parts you don't use. Now, for something rare: Pat would like to post something on this entry as well, and he is much more of a homesteader at heart than I, so I'll let you see what he has to say.

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Thus far in my life two books have utterly changed the way I see the world. The first to do so was "Diet for a New America" by John Robbins. This one changed the way I saw food and what I eat. A few years later at my sister's behest I read the Gospel of John which introduced me to the most life changing figure to ever exist and thus changed me and my life forever. This book I am now adding as the third book I've encountered that has caused a tremendous paradigm shift to occur within me.

Until now I had always thought "Man, it sure would be nice to have a farm somewhere outside of town -- raise all of your food, and maybe some animals. Too bad you would have to move out of the city though. Maybe some day we'll retire from this city work and go retreat to the country." You know these sorts of day dreams. Reading this book has made me see how much we can actually do with the space that we have. I've just always seen the "yard" as some sterile plot of grass to be maintained and weeded so that the neighbors don't get annoyed. Now I see it as potential sustenance for my family. My backyard that could maybe host a small bonfire and perhaps a dinner party is now seen as a place where my kids could learn to raise chickens and tend bees. Instead of a yard that needs the weeds pulled we have a lot of potential crop space that the kids can pull bugs and worms out of and harvest food for us to can for the winter. All of a sudden this old house that needs a good paint job and a new floor is a 90-year-old farm house, and that thought itself makes me so much more appreciative of my house (and its history) as it is. Instead of being a place is always in need of my service that I need to fix, my little parcel is a plot that gives to me that I get to tend and make fruitful.

That farm that I used to dream of - it was probably more than I really could have handled. In my saner moments I was forced to admit that to myself. But this small farm that I've been given is totally doable - complete with plenty of challenges and room to dream.


*Homesteader: (according to Lezlie) One who does things like raises their own food, tends their own land, makes their own stuff, and is not very dependent on outside help to make it in life. Some even go so far as to associate this with living "off the grid." Usually, homesteads are farms. (According to Pat) One who sees their parcel as something to tend and make fruitful.

how our garden grows

Even though none of us are in school, the summer schedule has been more relaxed and we've had good times just being around the house, watching things grow.

We have finished the project of planting a garden in our back yard (and while we were at it, we threw in a small front vegetable garden as well). I have been enjoying taking the kids out most mornings to do the watering while we're all still in our PJ's. (Wow. Who knew having a privacy fence would be so nice?) I can't really say how much I like gardening in my own yard. If you happen to be nearby, chances are I will drag you behind my house to gaze upon it. While it has yet to produce the first edible thing, I still love it and am excited to watch the blooms appear on the plants. The beauty of a flowering eggplant plant never ceases to surprise me and the promise offered by all the flowers on the pepper plants and tomatoes makes me nearly giddy. We have a cucumber that is nearly a whopping one inch long! It happens every year I garden: I work at it, and then when the fruit appears, I am surprised and find myself asking the plant, "Now what did I ever do for you that you give me food like this?"

nasturtium

eggplant

Israel and Eden have been enjoying the whole process as well. Pat has taught Israel that there are "good plants" and weeds. From time to time, he comes over while I'm watering, pats the leaves of a few plants, and says, "Good plant." Eden enjoys being outside and looking up into the branches of a tree or watching me fiddle with the garden hose. When the sun is out, I try to show Israel the rainbow made by shooting water in the air. I can't help but feel a bit of superstitious luck that my son tells all the plants they are good while a little girl named Eden watches over our work. Israel smartly prefers our neighbor Steve's garden, though, and has fun searching for cucumbers hiding under leaves and helping to pick the green beans. He likes eating the broccoli while still standing beside the plant. Last night, when we told him it was time to come in, he looked up at me from the green bean patch and, wanting to stay, said, "More beans?"

Pat and Israel "working" in the garden

We have been eating from the bounty of our neighbor's garden, which words cannot describe. We have had many, many meals already that include his heads of broccoli and bell peppers and green beans! There are few things that make me feel so blessed as eating free produce grown about 10 feet from my own house. (Though 10 feet puts that produce in my neighbor's yard; do not be confused.) When you move to a neighborhood "with a reputation" where houses are so close together that you have nearly no yard of your own, the last thing you expect is to eat green beans picked minutes ago from right outside your window. But eating is believing, and it reinforces my assertion that we have the best neighbor of anyone we know!

Of course, the vegetables are not the only things growing around here. The kids are growing as well. Israel is making all kinds of verbal leaps and bounds as words take more of their true form. Just this week, "strawberry," went from "bee..." to "taw-beezie" and "banana" went from "diza" to "ba-nee-na." He loves to talk about events and people and is learning to sing songs. Eden has been working very hard and just today made it from her back to her belly on her own. This means she can now roll over and over and over, making her way across a room. She likes to push herself by doing full-fledged sit-ups and already loves to play while standing in the exersaucer. We expect she'll be crawling next week, just to have something new to do.

Our little cabbage patch kid
(Cabbage patch provided by Steve.)

Israel was actually VERY HAPPY in this picture and excited about making the water go everywhere. That's our raised-bed garden in the background.