Sick of butterflies yet? No? Good – neither am I

We’re seeing quite a few Red Admirals this month.

But this is the first Painted Lady I’ve seen this year. Painted Lady is one of my favourite butterflies.

And there have been all kinds of Skippers.

These little Crescents have also been very abundant this year. They seem to prefer yellow flowers, so I was tickled to capture this one on a pink Cosmos.

And the Monarchs…

Have been amazing this year. They are starting their long journey south so we are seeing so many of them – even while out driving – I easily spot them fluttering over the roads and farm fields.

I got very excited on the weekend – I was headed from the shed to the catio and something in the veg gardens caught my eye…

Can you see it? Let’s take a closer look…

How about now? Yup. That’s a little monarch chrysalis hanging from Mr. Raccoons book. And on first glance, I thought it was close to opening.

It was brown, and still mottled with green. When a monarch is close to emerging, the chrysalis goes clear and looks mostly black. This one has most likely been the victim of a parasitic wasp. It’s the circle of life, I’m afraid. Only 5% of monarch caterpillars make it to butterfly stage.

It just makes every one of these as little extra special!

In addition to renovations and gardening (and laundry) I also did a little stitching on my fairy.

All I had left to do was the outlining. But there was a lot of it!

I used to HATE outlining. But something has happened with age… like binding, I find it oddly soothing. I just stitch and stitch and stitch and don’t worry how close to finishing I am.

And eventually…

There’s nothing left to outline. You sit back. You admire your work. You do a little internal celebration. You compare it to the picture on your pattern.

And then you notice…

You forgot to stitch her poor foot!

So, you’re going to have to wait until next week for an FO post!

It’s Labour Day today… a nice long weekend here in Canada. But as I mentioned on Friday… I had work to do!

Saturday, I taped the new drywall hung in my office. Sunday it got a coat of mud. While you’re reading this, I’ll probably be up there sanding (and cursing). I’m going to try to paint the ceiling and wood work (closet and a beam) during the week after work, and with any luck, I’ll be painting those wall this coming weekend!

Of course, there’s still floors and trim too – but it’s starting to feel like progress!

But working on the office wasn’t the only thing I got up to.

I did some laundry – and it still delights me to see it hanging out on the line! And of course, that amazing smell when I bring it all back in!

I did a fair bit of work in the gardens. Mostly weeding, but these two.

Helped me hack down the dead parts of the Honeysuckle from the catio fence. Furby kept my stepstool warm when I wasn’t using it, and Lemmy took stock of all the dead vines as they came off the fence.

That corner of the catio certainly looks bare without it there. But I was happy to see that it wasn’t completely dead. There were some branches coming from much lower down that were growing green and strong. I left them, so they can help feed the roots before winter. With any luck, it will come back bigger and better next year!

It’s back to the day job tomorrow…

I think once I’m done sanding, I’ll be joining Rupert for a well-earned rest.

While I am thinking about my garden of bones… the garden of flowers is still going strong. Here’s a look at what’s still in bloom this month.

September is here, and of course that means I’m preparing for the Spooky Season. My little of garden of bones grows every year… and this year….it’s REALLY growing!

First… the graveyard got a new centrepiece.

Meet Gary!

Gary (on his pedestal) is pretty much as tall as me! And as you can see… he lights up! I think every graveyard needs at least one gargoyle.

And in addition to Gary…. I did it. I finally did it.

I bought the 12 foot skeleton. (I haven’t settled on a name yet). Now… he doesn’t look like much above. That’s the picture from the Home Depot website. I don’t have a picture of him put together yet… in fact… I had to go out and buy some extra large totes to store his pieces in until he’s ready to go outside next month.

This picture may give you a better idea of his scale. He was all stacked up on my big bench until I could get those totes. He’s a big one, that’s for sure. And yeah…. I totally did not really consider storage when I made the decision to buy him. Dave says after this, I’m maxxed on out decorations…

Good thing he doesn’t know about the skeleton fairies I have plans for… they are small though. I can sneak them in.

It’s a long weekend here…

I’d like to say I’ll be taking it easy this weekend like this one…

But that’s a luxury reserved for orange cats only…. Burton and I have work to do!

This one is a little video story… in three parts… so sound on.

And here’s some close ups of Mr. Columbo…

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: