An Odd Sort of Pillar Place

Beautiful and graceful, varied and enchanting, small but approachable, butterflies lead you to the sunny side of life. And everyone deserves a little sunshine. ~Jeffrey Glassberg

What a weekend! Sheerly crazy and nothing worked out as planned on any of the days. We discovered quite an infestation of tomato hornworms on our already emaciated tomato plants ... and DD is so desperate to raise SOMETHING that I let her select a few to bring in to raise (but I'm going to have to get their food from another garden because my tomatoes are pitiful). She wasn't allowed to have them all, which was tough. What a choice for her: "you live, you die". I'm sure there's a life lesson in there somewhere, but mostly it just made her feel guilty.

We didn't name them... but they are kinda cool. I'm afraid at least some of them are going to overwinter (I had her choose the largest ones to try to keep that from happening, but you never know). It's a learning experience for us, though. Interestingly, there is information on raising them, and they turn out to be one of the coolest moths ever, the hummingbird moth, which is the only reason I caved.

In other insect news, we had to rehome about 200 Milkweed Tussock Moth caterpillars on Saturday. They've completed decimated my milkweed and were nowhere near fully grown. So we took a container and scooped off as many as we could, then took them over to the library area. There is acres of milkweed there. I still have several dozen tussock moths, and only four or five milkweed leaves yet, so another batch may need to find a new home.

It's an odd sort of Pillar Place this year ... lol.

The time I didn't spend playing with pillars I spent working on getting the LASR/WC Anniversary Party up and running. This morning, I gave away our first grand prize (a Nook/Kindle/$150 GC) and we're doing a Nook Color next. Fun, but crazy!

We're also doing a retrospective on the LASR side in the author spotlight -- a look back at our firsts. It was a fun trip down memory lane (Charity Tahmaseb, if you're reading this, you should check out Wedenesday's post).

How was your weekend?

====================

You Are Oxygen

You are highly observant. No detail slips past you. You follow the rules - even if you don't particularly like them. Beyond being a good leader, you are good at inspiring others. You push everyone you know to be a little better. You are polite and courteous. You always mind your manners.

What Periodic Element Are You?

Mostly right...

=====================

I'm Bugged!

Cockroaches really put my "all creatures great and small" creed to the test. ~Astrid Alauda

DD and I were taking a look at the garden yesterday. A couple of days ago, she'd found a tomato worm, but he was infested with wasp eggs, and she knows the rules on that: we encourage natural predators so we left him in order to let the eggs hatch.

Unfortunately, it appears that mama wasp missed some of the other worms in our garden. We found them yesterday and HOLY COW were they huge!!! I've never seen tomato worms this enormous -- my bugs are on steroids. Check it out:



Sadly, I discovered that the hummingbird (or "sphinx" moth) is the mama of these critters. I LIKE hummingbird moths. They're really cool to watch. **sigh**

In other news, we also found a monarch pupa on the echinacea around my well pump. At first, we were VERY excited!! It was dark, which should mean it would hatch soon... but on closer inspection, you can't see the wings through the pupa wall, which probably means it has the black death. We're leaving it for now and watching it and hoping for the best. But I do wonder how we missed finding a butterbaby on our milkweed -- we checked it quite closely.

Still, the light is fading earlier each night, I have to grab the birdfeeders and bring them in by 7:30 (so the bear doesn't get them overnight) and I don't put them out until 6 a.m. -- next week, the temps will be in the mid-70s and fall is in the air. Summer was far too short this year, and it's time for school to start (tomorrow! DD is distraught) and time to think about splitting the wood we took down last fall. Time to winterize the lawn and gardens and put away the fans.

I miss summer already.

============================