Raising Monarchs

Say hello to Owen

Sometimes new hobbies just show up overnight, don’t they? There was discussion on Facebook about finding and raising monarchs, and I was bemoaning how I planted some milkweed two years ago and still hadn’t found any. Next thing I know, a friend drops two caterpillars off, and she and I find two more in my garden immediately. Then I found a bunch more. Then I gave some to friends to raise, since I figure if you are trying to save a species from extinction, you should definitely recruit members to your cause.

If you’d like to learn more, I highly recommend this book: How to raise monarch butterflies: a step-by-step guide for kids by Carol Pasternak.

Here’s who we found, in order of appearance in our lives:

• Owen
• Rosie (taken by the Nash family)
• Daisy (taken by the Slusher family)
• Sophie-Robert
• Izzy (taken by the Long family)
• Smally
• Junior One
• Junior Two
• Stuccy
• Beanie (Raised himself outside. Made a chrysalis on our bean teepee. Given to my dad as a birthday present.)
• Buck
• Timber
• Flash
• California (from an egg!)
• Johnny Test (also from an egg! Born today!)

Junior One, Junior Two, and Stuccy

And a swallowtail named Ziggy. Still in chrysalis at press time. Rescued off some dying dill in my garden.

It’s amazing how quickly they grow up. From a tiny egg-dot to a caterpillar almost the size of your little finger in two weeks. At that point they eat around the clock and can finish off one and a half milkweed leaves a day! And those are big leaves. Then another 10-14 days in a chrysalis and VIOLA (ha), a butterfly that’s ready to party.

Beanie, cleverly hiding among the pole beans. That's him in the green with golden accents.

So go plant some milkweed. The flowers are pretty and smell nice and will attract all sorts of strange insects you’ve never seen in your garden before. Surely you have a bit of room behind the garage?

 Bon Voyage, Sophie-Robert!

Late start to Zone 5's Spring

I finally got my seeds started a couple of weeks ago, which is crazy late, but I just couldn't get excited about planting stuff when there was still snow on the ground. Winter came late and stayed late, in stark contrast to last year’s insane 87 degree days in March. Here we are, mid-April, and we've only had a small handful of nice days. Lots of rain, though, which considering the drought we had was very welcome. For awhile. Now it’s mostly just boring.

So, the rhubarb is coming up, but there’s no sign of the asparagus yet. I ate my first thing out of the garden today – chives! On my egg salad bagel for lunch. Yum. I direct seeded radishes, beets, carrots, peas, bok choi, lettuce, spinach, and broccoli raab. Mostly the radishes seem to be sprouting. Inside I started all the usual stuff, plus kale. I started tons and tons of cukes, including lemon cukes. I want enough to give a lot away, esp. after last year’s non-cuke production.  I think after school today I’ll finally buy my seed potatoes. I have the pots ready to go, but last time I went to Sneed's they weren't in yet. See: late snow mentioned earlier.

I put garlic in last fall, and that’s looking pretty good. Parsley continues to self-seed. Egyptian walking onions are also growing nicely.

I have so many seeds. I was in charge of getting them for the school garden, and I did not disappoint. I went to a local seed swap, and the woman in charge was nice enough to give me the leftovers. She had gotten 50 packets from High Mowing Seeds, so I applied for the same type of donation ($5 for 25 packets of seeds packed for 2012). They can’t take requests, though, so some of the seeds weren't what we needed. So I picked up the rest at Sneed's.

Speaking of the school garden, I was in charge of getting the build team staffed to build the veggie garden. The principal and 11 parents showed up, which was fantastic. Didn't take too long to build 6 raised beds (from kits), 2 benches, and a storage shed. Luckily, since we've been all DIY for years I knew who to ask to help. I wanted only people who knew how to work a screwdriver. The dirt and mulch will be delivered in a few weeks. We plan to have the students move most of that around. That’s the low-skill end of the job, so that should be fine.

Last week I invited myself to help make newspaper seedling pots with the school's Garden Club (4th grade, including Boo). We managed to churn out 150 in an hour, which is pretty good if you consider that they were very interested in getting the best possible photo to be showing on the outside of their pots. Kids are not very hard workers these days. Blame the unions.

Busy busy busy

So, exciting things are underway at our grade school. Our neighbors are landscape architects, and they made up a fantastic, ambitious and wonderful plan to change our school property from a dull wasteland that regularly turns marshy to a vibrant eco-system, with a vegetable garden, butterfly garden, two play areas, a peewee soccer field with a running path around it, native plants in the village-owned floodplain, a better engineered baseball diamond that doesn't flood, an outdoor classroom, etcetera etcetera!

Even better? We got our first grant, which will be used for the veggie garden. Everything else will come in later stages, but let’s face it. This is the best part. And it’s coming this spring! While my kids are still there! So I've been writing grants and making fundraising plans with a bunch of other parents, and it’s all been very exciting. One grant is pretty much my baby, and if we win that one, I’m adding grant writing as a skill on LinkedIn. I’ve always thought that sounded like fun. Whee!

So that thing I did, with the fruit and vegetable tasting during school lunches? That’s being heavily touted in these grants as something we are doing to fight obesity and promote wellness in the community. I’m happy that all worked out so well! Plus it's listed on the back of the school phone book as something the PTA offers to the students. Which is too bad, really, as I was sort of tired of doing it. Now I'm thinking kiwis and cauliflower for next time. Need to set up some dates.

So, because I don’t know how to do things in small doses, I said I’d put together one of the fundraisers. I thought I’d do something that fits in with my role as the PTA Wellness chair, so I said, how about  we participate in local races and raise money for the playground? Get some parents exercising, maybe do a little community building in that direction. I’m hoping for 20 people, at several hundred raised per person. The current plan is to offer training runs and bike rides this spring to get interested people ready for a 5K run and/or sprint triathlon.

NOTE: I've set up a new email account for this blog. If you've emailed me in the last few months, um, I didn't get it. I got locked out of that account. So embarrassing to admit. 

Break your bottled water habit

Oh, how I loathe plastic water bottles. I really really do. They are a sign of the incredible waste of our culture. And the laziness. And the stupidity. I have very strong opinions on water bottles. Can you tell? If you love the earth at all, stop using water bottles of the non-reusable kind. There are exceptions, of course. These exceptions should add up to maybe 5 bottles of water a year. (“I was in the desert, unprepared, and I couldn’t find my car. But, lo! There was a water bottle stand. I bought one.”)

Here's a good resource with more information: http://www.newdream.org/water/

From that site:

Top Five Reasons to Give Up Bottled Water

1. Disposable plastic water bottles are not meant for multiple uses.
2. Bottled water is full of oil.
3. Bottled water is expensive!
4. Your tap water is fine to drink.
5. At least 40 percent of bottled water is tap water anyway.

Top Five Ways to Break the Bottled Water Habit

1. Check your water utility’s “Consumer Confidence Report.”
2. Have multiple reusable bottles available to suit all your life’s needs.
3. Encourage your local city officials to create a policy to limit municipal spending (i.e., your hard-earned tax dollars) on bottled water to emergency needs only.
4. Talk to your office manager about the water situation at your workplace.
5. Spread the word to friends and family about the environmental and financial problems with bottled water.

There's much more info on each of those points on the site.