Everything Is Sacred

Flickr Friday: Black Swallowtail

// May 15th, 2009 // No Comments » // Gardening, Photography

I saw three tiny caterpillars on my dill plants one day and thought I’d wait and see how big they got. For a couple of days they stayed tiny and didn’t really do any visible damage to my dill. Then we went away to Austin for two days to go see Damien Jurado in concert, and when we came back they had devoured one whole plant and had moved on to the other two. They had also at least quadrupled in size. It was at this point that I decided to research to see what they were. They are the caterpillars of the black swallowtail butterfly, which as it turns out is very beautiful. Upon researching and finding that they feed on plants from the parsley family (Umbelliferae) , I decided that instead of killing them or leaving them to destroy all of my dill that I would move them to my parsley plants, which were very large and unlikely to see any real damage in the final couple of days of the caterpillar stage of the butterfly’s life cycle. Sure enough, they only stayed on the parsley two more days, molted and let out it’s last big poo or whatever it was, then moved off to find a place to go into it’s chrysalis stage. I’ve not seen any of the chrysalis or any resulting butterflies yet, but I am still hoping.

I would also like to note that this is one of my first opportunities to show off the macro capabilities of my newest lens, the Sigma 18-50mm f2.8 EX DC Macro HSM.  I purchased this lens in February because I needed something wide, and I really wanted something that had 2.8 throughout.  I have been very impressed with it’s build quality and the quality of the images I have taken with it.  It was an added bonus that it is a macro lens.

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Square Foot Gardening (My new obsession)

// May 9th, 2009 // No Comments » // Gardening

I promise that I started gardening before the Obama’s did…

So for some strange reason this year I decided I wanted to grow a vegetable garden.  Last year I started growing my own herbs and loved it.  I also attempted half-heartedly to grow a bell pepper plant that I bought for transplanting.  It lasted all of a week before some critter (probably a possum) dug up the poor little plant and ate it.  This year, around February or so, I decide I wanted to grow more.  As is usual with me, it started off with a small idea, and the more I read and learned, the more I decided to do.

If I were to do it over today, I would have decided to use a different border material, probably cedar or some other wood that is more aesthetically pleasing.  As it is, I used concrete blocks to create my first Square Foot Garden bed.  I’m not sure what I read that made me decide to use the SFG method, but I first checked the book out from the library and eventually purchased it.  The method is simple.  You create raised beds and fill them with your own special soil: a combination of vermiculite, peat moss, and compost.  The bed is raised so it is easier to get to, the soil is never compacted by being walked on, and should have relatively few weeds to deal with.  I don’t do many things small, so my first bed is a 4′ x 8′ (twice the recommended size that “Mel”, the author of the book, suggested).

I decided to plant many number of things, including some from transplant and some from seed.  I am keeping track of the progress of every plant using Evernote.  You can check it our or I can just tell you what I’ve planted so far:

Transplant

• Broccoli
• Cauliflower
• Carnival Tomatoes
• Sweet 100 Cherry Tomatoes
• Sweet Basil
• Mild Jalapeno
• Queen Siam Thai Basil
• Red Sails Lettuce
• Chives
• Italian Parsley
• Thyme
• Asparagus

Seed

• Bush Beans
• Sugar Snap Peas
• Paris Island Romaine Lettuce
• Baby Spinach
• Bell Pepper
• Sweet Banana Pepper
• Green Bunching Onions
• Dill
• Cilantro

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