August, into early September always seems to be when we get the most butterflies in the garden. For the Monarchs, this makes sense – they are either laying the last generation that will wing its way back to Mexico…or they are that generation.

I went out the other afternoon and counted at least seven monarchs on the White Profusion butterfly bush alone. I’m not sure why, but of all my Butterfly bushes, that one is the most popular.

And while I haven’t found a chrysalis this year…

I may still get a chance because there are still several of these guys out munching away on the milkweed.

And speaking of munching… I’ve been terribly sad that I have not seen and Black Eastern Swallowtails this year. Not the butterflies, not even the caterpillars on my carrots or parsley (the parsley I plant specifically for them!)

But then I went out the other day and…

I found these guys on the dill! These are both Black Swallowtail caterpillars – just at different stages. I didn’t even think of the Swallowtails when I planted the dill. I was trying to attract beneficial wasps! But hey – I’ll take caterpllars too!

Now… back to butterflies

These common checkered Skippers are very abundant right now. Their caterpillars eat things in the Mallow family, like hollyhocks, Hibiscus and Rose of Sharon.

The Red Spotted Purples have been very plentiful this year.

But it’s not just butterflies… we have lots of moths too!

These Chickweed Geometre moths are a pretty regular sight around here. And you wouldn’t think they are too much to look at

Until you get a close-up look at those fabulous feathery antennae!

This next one was bigger and flashier…

It’s an Ilia Underwing moth. Their host plants are oaks.

And last… not a moth or a butterfly, but one of our favourite winged visitors.

The Hummingbirds have been quite plentiful this summer, often buzzing my head when I’m out in the garden. This is the first one I managed to catch on camera. Mostly because I just haven’t been out there enough with the camera.

They are loading up on nectar, preparing for their long journey south. Summer is quickly coming to an end.

When I said I had a productive weekend, I wasn’t just talking about the renovations. In the evenings, I was cross stitching… and my needle was just flying. Saturday night, I got the whole deer done.

And the night wasn’t even half over yet.

Burton settled in and we got a really good start on the fox.

Sunday, I planned to work in the garden all day. But we woke up to pouring rain. I’m not complaining – we needed it badly. I decided to do a little stitching in the morning to see if it would blow through (like it usually does). I did a little morning stitching while I waited.

It was still raining by noon, but Dave was getting antsy so I took him out for a late lunch and to run some errands. But when I got back…

I finished that fox! I couldn’t believe it!

After 33 years, just like that… all the cross stitching was done! Now I still have to outline, and there’s a lot of it. There was still an hour or so left until bed time…

So Rupert settled in and we got a start on it.

We didn’t quite finish outling Mr. Fox… but we came close! We truly are on the home stretch now!

It was a very productive weekend here. On Friday, Dave finally conceded that it was better to replace the drywall instead of trying to get the wallpaper off. (After only an hour of trying to strip it – I honestly thought it would take him at least three hours to come to that conclusion). So Friday, we hit the home improvement store and ordered what we needed.

We don’t have a vehicle big enough to haul drywall, so it has to be delivered. That’s happening today… so I used Saturday to finally take down my giant work desk, and pull up the gross, old carpet.

I needed a little help from Dave to get the desk apart. It was a bit of a puzzle, and he was the original person who put it together.

But once it was down, I was off to the races.

Unlike the carpet on the main floor, this carpet wasn’t glued down as heavily, if at all. It took some good tugging to get it up from the staples used around the edges, but I had it all up in a matter of minutes.

When I say that I will never live in a house with carpets again it’s for a couple reasons…. the first – it’s far easier to keep hard floor clean in my opinion (especially with cats who like to barf on the floors on the daily)

And the second is this..

While the majorit of it is disintgrated underpad, it’s also year and years of dust and dirt that your vaccuum just can’t get to.

Now don’t worry – I did wear protection

Though I probably should have worn something more substantial than my flip flops on my feet.

It all washed off in the end. And we have a nice subfloor to work with from here on out.

Dave will hang the drywall this week – there’s just two walls to re-drywall so it shouldn’t take him too long. I will start mudding, and fixing up the other two walls on the weekend. It’s hard to believe it’s coming together as well as it is! I’ve even started thinking about paint colours.

I’m leaning toward something like this:

Here we are at the end of August, traditionally when the harvest really starts to kick off. I should have tomatoes like crazy right now…

I’ve got two. (Well actually it’s been four since I took this picture.) My neighbour apparently had a terrible season with Hornworms. They didn’t bother my tomatoes… mine just didn’t do that great. I think it might be time to try something a little different next year. There are a decent amount of green ones still to come – but I won’t have to worry about being overrun with them.

The green beans are another matter. I just gave a giant bag to a friend.

And I finally broke down and blanched, vaccuum sealed and froze up a few bags for Dave and I for later in the winter.

I’ve got three Birdhouse Gourds that look amazing!

I’m not exactly sure when I should be picking these, but I think it’s probably soon.

The yellow squash seems to grow much slower than the zuchinni

But I think I’ll be picking these two soon.

We might finally get to eat a little swiss chard soon.

I am a little disappointed with this – not only did it take forever to grow, it was supposed to be a rainbow pack, with different coloured stems, but all I got was red.

The carrots have been a little more “as advertised”

Though their size has definitely varied.

Over in potato-land I had a bit of a laugh.

I did not plant potatoes in this pot – but a potato plant appeared and I let it do it’s thing. It was obviosuly time to harvest..

That’s it! That’s the whole harvest. Well – I’ll get a meal out of them, at least!

I do still have one surprise potato growing in the old potato bed and on my last post, it was asked it potatoes have flowers. The answer is sometimes. None of the potatoes I have this year flowered – many have been bred not to have flowers, as its believed they take away from the production of potatoes. (When people plant potatoes that do flower, they often cut them off – much like scapes on garlic)

But the flowers seen in the picture that evoked the question were not potato flowers…

They were melon flowers. I have cantelope and honeydew melons also growing in that bed because I was not planning on growing potatoes there (as I said, it was a surprise potato). And while I have LOTS of flowers on the melons – I have no melons!

I do however…

Have a new yellow-fleshed watermelon! The first one got blossom end rot. Hopefully this one will still have enough warm weather to grow and ripen. I have the two mini-mike melons – and I think they are near to being ready to pick!

Over in pepper land…

I have a pile of new peppers coming! And the older ones are starting to change colour. I did pick one green one to bbq up with some zucchini, mushrooms, and tomatoes for Dave.

The blackberries are still coming daily, but are starting to dwindle

I’ve got five full bags in the freezer already – enough for at least a couple batches of jam.

And…

The Autumn raspberries are starting to ripen! I’m hoping to get enough of the golden ones for at least a small batch of jam. I already did a batch of red from last years raspberries, so the red ones this fall will get eaten as they come.

And Furby would like you to know…

The catnip has been fresh and fabulous all summer long!

How are we already at the end of August???

Since last week I showed you a couple of fails in the veg beds, I think it only fair to show you some in the floral department as well.

This sad looking thing is my HoneySuckle. I’m not sure what happened. It started to year off fine, flowered like it always does, then got covered in aphids. This happens every year. And by high summer, they disappear, and it flowers again twice as good. But not this year. I think maybe the aphids just overwhelmed it. You can see there’s still some green up there so there’s life in the roots. I’m hoping to get out there this weekend and cut it right back so hopefully next year it comes back beautiful.

I’m also pretty sure that it’s sad state is the reason I’ve only seen ONE snowberry clearwing moth this year. Honeysuckle is a host plant for the caterpillars, but this one isn’t hosting anyone!

The roses have had a very hard season thanks to these guys

The really seem to have focused on the blooms this year. Despite my efforts, they have just decimated every single one. As we approach the end of August, the onslaught is finally lessening and the roses are trying to make a come back.

The little jerks have also been hard on my weeping pussywillow

It’s a host plant for The Red Spotted Purple butterflies, and thankfully it hasn’t seemed to affect them.

The biggest garden fail is, of course, not having enough time to get out and keep the beds properly weeded.

Thankfully, the beds are packed so full of plants, it’s hard to see the weeds unless you know what you’re looking at!

And one last fail for you….

A certain Orange Mr. lept into the air trying to catch a Monarch….

And he landed on the plant support around this Chrysanthemum, got himself stuck and required assistance from the human.

Oh, the indiginity!

Just when you think the old man can’t get any cuter…

He pours himself into a basket like he’s liquid!

As I mentioned on Tuesday, the evenings are getting cooler. So if Furby is not in my lap, it’s not unusual to see Rupert there, taking on supervision duties and soaking up the body heat.

With his help, I’ve been making good progress on the new socks. Another simple shortie pair, using the leftovers from the broken seed stitch socks (I can’t get into the studio closet to pick out anything new even if I wanted to). The lovely grey hand dyed for the leg/foot, black for heels and toes! Such a pretty stormy palette!

And speaking of stormy… On Saturday we celebrated Samantha’s youngest’s 19th birthday at her trailer. On the way back, Dave and I drove through some pretty wild storms. Heavy rain, thunder, lightning, the works! It was just settling down when we stopped in south London for gas.

And there we were treated to the most AMAZING double rainbow thanks to the setting sun and retreating storm. I’ve never seen one so bright or so big. It was so big, I couldn’t get it in one shot. I had to piece it together from these three pics

And they really don’t show just how magnificent it was! Science truly is magical!

As with everything lately, clearing my office out took longer than I planned.

It’s not a big room at all, but boy did I have a lot packed in there.

Sadly, it’s now all stacked up in boxes and totes in my studio. I wont’ be sewing for a while.

The intention was to take out the wall on the left side of the hallway, and make the office a little bit bigger (in addition to getting rid of the ugly wallpaper and carpet.) Before we started total deconstruction, Dave opened a portion of the wall just to make sure there wasn’t anything in there that would need to be relocated (or prevent the wall takedown all together)

There wasn’t, but there was a hole that had been patched with a large wad of news paper. Of course I had to pull it out and check it out!

Tornados, Teacher Strikes, and US/Iran tensions… seems like not much has changed in 46 years…

Once I was done up there, Dave went in and started on wall demolition.It took him a couple hours, but he got it done.

The wall was that little strip between the carpet and wood floor. The carpet was my office, the wood was the hallway. It’s not a HUGE amount of space, but it will give me about 24 more square feet. The room will still be small – but that extra space will actually make A LOT of difference. And if we sell and get our country house down the road… it will make it a much more appealing size for a small bedroom.

The next day, he went into move some electrical around. Namely putting that switch and plug hanging freely there into another wall, and disconnecting the light that once belonged to that end of the hall.

He also had to install a new ceiling light. Previously, there was no overhead light in the room. That switch controlled the plug below it, and I had a lamp plugged into it that hung on the wall. Now the plug is separate and the switch controls the new light!

He spent most of yesterday framing the area of the new door and hanging it, as well as levelling out the silly dip in the floor of what’s left of the hallway. While doing that he uncovered some more psychedelic wallpaper under the door trim.

I’m pretty sure there were some WILD parties here in the ’60s and’70s.

After that, it’s just fixing walls (we’re disagreeing on how to do that – he wants to try to remove wall paper, I think it will be easier and faster to rip out the old drywall and put up new), lay a floor, paint and add trim! If all goes as planned, I could be back in a refurbished office by the first day of fall!

Remember how I said the evenings were getting chilly? Here’s the proof

The only time Furby will stay in at night is when the weather is cold or its raining very hard. I was actually doing both Sunday night so he took over supervision duties. (Though he woke me up at 5 am Monday morning to let him back out to check on the weather – still cold, but not raining)

Sunday night was also the only night on the weekend I got any time to stitch.

But I put it to good use and was able to get her second wing done. Now there’s just a deer, a fox and a WHOLE LOT of outlining left! A few more weekends at least! Maybe this one will be done by October?

It was another busy weekend (socializing on Saturday, office construction on Sunday) so not a whole lot crafty happened. But there has been some excitement in the garden!

We’ve had a BRAND NEW visitor! This is a Eastern Giant Swallowtail! While we’ve had Black Eastern Swallowtails and Eastern Tiger Swallowtails, we’ve never had a Giant!

I can confirm it was a big one, if a little raggedy! It’s host plants are mostly citrus trees, which explain why it’s not super common here. Though apparently it will also settle for Prickly Ash, which is apparently in the citrus family.

This is not only the first time I’ve seen one in the garden, but the first time I’ve seen one EVER. I hope it’s not the last.

The Monarchs have been quite plentiful this year.

Though interestingly, I haven’t seen a tonne of caterpillars. Certainly not as many as previous years.

I did get to capture this one laying an egg though!

Other recent butterfly visitors include…

Red Admiral

Red Spotted Purple.

Pearl Crescents

Peck’s Skippers

Pale Beauty Moth

And a pair of very frisky White Cabbages.