Fall is in the air!

Ah, it feels very fallish today! The air had a bit of that autumn chill this morning. I turned off the air conditioner and opened all the windows. I expect that by noon the temperature will have risen enough that I'll close the windows and turn the cold air on again. But how good it is to have some crisp, fall air blowing in, if even for a little while. Fall has to be just around the corner...I can hardly wait!

Ripe raspberries

Time to pick raspberries! Look! Many are ripe already:

Let's look under these leaves:

Juicy, red raspberries waiting to be picked!

I think they are pretty all washed and sorted:

They look just like little jewels up close:

These will go in a bag in the freezer. As more ripen, they will be picked, washed, and added to the bag. Finally, when all the raspberries are picked I should have enough to make some raspberry jelly or syrup. Mmmm....delicious!

Today's dragonfly pic is a Great Blue Skimmer on one of my herb pots:

Volunteer tomatoes

These are "volunteer" tomato plants, which means that they were found growing in the compost pile. Little A and I potted up six to keep. Whether or not they will have tomatoes is anybody's guess since they came up from the seed of whatever hybrid tomato scraps were thrown into the compost. The plants themselves seem healthy, though. "We'll just have to wait and see," I told Little A. Gardening is always an adventure!

Manduca quinquemaculata

Lurking under the tomato leaves is every gardner's worst enemy. Cloaked in green corpulence, it is not easily spotted except for the tell-tale signs of excess frass and stripped leaves. Manduca quinquemaculata strikes again! Otherwise known as: the tomato hornworm.

Generally, those of us of the gardening persuasion feel they deserve a fate of squishing, stomping, or drowning. However, being homeschoolers as well, we had to satiate our curiosity and investigate. What do these voracious caterpillars turn into?

So we saved one (just one...the others...not so lucky) and put it in a gallon jar with a judicious amount of potato foliage that had sprouted in the compost pile, a layer of soil, and a spritz or two of water. Apparently, the tomato hornworm will feed on any of the nightshades such as eggplant, pepper, potato, and of course tomato. It is amazing the amount of leaves this caterpillar would go through in one day! After around three days or so of feeding, it mysteriously disappeared!

Further research revealed that it had burrowed in the soil to pupate.

This happened in June. The jar was put on a shelf in Big T's room and subsequently forgotten.

A few nights ago, Big T heard something making a flapping sound in his room. When he turned the light on the flapping sound stopped. Then it returned when he switched the light back off. Freaky! Finally, he located the sound...it was coming from the forgotten jar!

Here is the large beauty that had emerged from the soil:

A fine specimen of what is commonly called a sphinx moth. The picture doesn't capture the beautiful pinkish-orange markings on the abdomen and lower wings.

All in all it was a very interesting observation project. We learned quite a bit about the Manduca quinquemaculata, its habits and life cycle.

Know thine enemy.

Happy little flower

Why, hello little cyprus vine flower! You look happy today!

Homemade butter

Today we made butter from fresh cream. The cream we used was from milk that we get straight from the cow. We let the milk set in the refrigerator overnight and this morning there was a thick layer of cream. I spooned the cream into two clean glass jars and we sang the "shake the butter, shake shake the butter" song for about an hour.

How do we know when we're done shaking? When it looks like this:

At first when it was a small clump, Big T said it looked like a scoop of ice-cream. Then at the end he said it looked like scrambled eggs. Anyway, we had a large clump of butter in some clearish liquid which is the whey.

Then we drained the whey off (and saved it for soaking grains) and rinsed the butter of any remaining whey or it would cause the butter to sour. Then we salted it a little and here it is:

Fresh homemade butter, yum! Of course we had to try some right away!

It was very soft and spreadable and we enjoyed half a package of crackers with it LOL!

The remaining butter we put into the fridge and it hardened up just like any other butter. Altogether I would say that the amount we made would equal about 1 stick or 1/2 cup of butter.

This was our first time to make butter and I was so glad it came out so well. We'll probably be making butter once a week now that we are getting fresh milk.



Big T spotted this female pondhawk dragonfly hiding in the grass:

Sharp eyes, son!

And here's a little hummer at our feeder:

First Egg

Today we received our first egg from the 4H chickens that we got in March. From one day old chicks to egg-laying hens ... it's been quite an adventure.

The egg had a very interesting color; sort of a purple-ish brown. It was also a medium size egg as chickens' eggs are smaller at first. Since Big T does most of the chicken chores, he had the privilege of eating the first egg at dinner tonight.

Now on to the dragonfly pics:

These are a pair of Whitetails (male and female) on a rock in my yard.

Here's a close-up of the male:

And here's a close-up of the female:

First day of school

Today was the first day of school here at Dragonfly Corner. We like to start early in the year so that we can have the whole month of December off.

This is Litte A's (and her kitty Nip) first day of 2nd Grade:

Little A will be learning these subjects this year:

1. Bible
2. Reading
3. Writing
4. Math
5. Unit Study - various weekly topics
6. Top Secret Adventures (on Mondays) - a different country each month
7. Which Way USA (on Wednesdays) - a different state each month
8. 4H Projects (on Thursdays) - projects specific to 4H
9. Keepers at Home (on Fridays) - projects to earn Keepers' charms
10. Extracurriculur Activities - 4H, gymnastics, drama

This is Big T's first day of 7th grade:

Big T will be learning these subjects this year:

1. Bible
2. Math
3. Grammar
4. World History
5. American History
6. Science
7. Latin
8. Independent Research - research papers and projects on various topics
9. Extracurricular activities - 4H, boy scouts, drama, soccer

Whew! Now you know why we take the whole month off in December LOL.

You know you're a homeschooler when.....you do your lessons in the middle of laundry :)

Believe it or not we got all our morning chores and lessons done by noon. Then we had lunch while I read aloud a chapter from a book. We just started Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Then we went outside for a while for some fresh air and fun.

Look what we saw:

This dragonfly found the perfect perch on my mint.

Here's a bonus:

Can you find the dragonfly in this picture?

Raspberries

Saturday is usually the day we work outside in the yard and garden. However, it's raining quite heavily today (which is very unusual for this area in July) and I only managed to go outside for a few minutes to refill the hummingbird feeder and take a quick look at the plants.

The raspberries really like their new home. So much so that they are hiding the blueberries that are planted in the other side of the box. I will have to give the blueberries a new home of their own.

The raspberry plants had already produced berries earlier this spring and now they are producing again, although more abundantly. Seems very unusual doesn't it? At any rate I'm looking forward to a nice fall crop of raspberries.

Here is a close up of how the berries look so far:

I also found these little mushrooms all over my yard:

In the summer after a nice shower they pop up everywhere. I think they thrive in all that humidity. Then they are ususally gone by the next day or so when it gets hot and dry again.

Little froggy

We had a little visitor today.