Southern Living Yankee

My garden failed in everything except a pot of parsley. Last week I noticed tiny green beads stuck to the parsley leaves, and a few days later some small black caterpillars, and now.... PETS! Yep. Pet caterpillars. Not Monarchs, though. They kind of look like the Monarch butterfly caterpillar, but these are Black Swallowtail butterfly caterpillars. Love the parsley. They totally destroyed my plant so I bought them some from the grocery store. I put the stems in a cup of water and it's holding up well enough---at the rate they're going they might eat it all before it wilts anyway! I wish I'd taken their pictures on Wednesday when they were less than 1" long. Now they're a good 2" long. Let me introduce you:   This one is named Parsley. Start up the music for Scarborough Fair. Sage. Rose, Mary, and And (yes, one of them is named And. Scroll down and see if you guessed why I named it And). Thymes Seven. Yes, this last one is named S...

A friend sent me this picture. Or would you say a "friend" sent me this picture? Gave me a "start" to my day, lol!

I enjoyed spotting this speedy little bird hovering and darting around the cherry tree and zinnias today. Too fast for me to take a picture, so here's a composite from Wiki Commons. The bird is smaller than a sparrow but the best clue from the bird book description was that he looks like a miniature mocking bird. The tail sort of fans out, edged in white like a mockingbird. Really cute because it's so tiny. Bonus: diet = bugs! Blue-gray Gnatcatcher From The Crossley ID Guide Eastern Birds

I'm auntie to 8 great girls on my side of the family, but I've always lived so far away that I'm not able to get to know them as well as I'd like. I don't see them at their games, pick them up from school, take pictures of their proms and dances, lecture them about boys, or spoil them! So I created a bribe that would give me the chance to do some of that---taking pictures, lecture them about boys, and spoil them rolled into what I call a "Beautiful Girlhood" weekend. The bribe is that they read a book with the same title. It's a pretty old-fashioned and therefore probably quite boring for them. But it's all about building character and a moral compass, so it's important stuff. And if they make it through the book they spend the weekend getting spoiled rotten by Auntie Ferree! This past week my neice Kendall finally had time to get-away here to South Carolina. I would have gone up to her place, but she decided long ago that when she finished...

It was a hot and hazy morning and the heat index would top 100 later in the day. We left shore at 8:45, went through Murrell's Inlet at low tide, and then out over a mile into the open sea. There was a light breeze that helped keep us comfortable and no one got seasick. Including the captain and crew there were twelve souls on board, and ten of us went parasailing. All my fears were stupid and unfounded. Once I saw how it all worked I didn't have any qualms. And once I got up in the air I didn't want to come back down! Like the little girl on that tv commercial I kept saying, "More! We want more! We have to have more!"