In The Incubator: Lavender Ameraucana Hatch #2

Welcome to my shipped eggs adventure, part 2. After a terrible hatch of shipped Lavender Ameraucana eggs earlier in the season, I was left with a single hatchling…and she’s grown into a beautiful bird with a charming personality. I had to have more! So, ever the glutton for punishment (or perhaps secret optimist?), I purchased more eggs from a different seller, in the hopes that they would eventually become more lovely lavenders.

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Haiku: Silken Symmetry

The spiders here run the gamut from large to small. This particular orb weaver is tiny…so tiny that, to the naked eye, she looks like a speck. I’d noticed this line of objects atop the rooster tractor and when I looked very closely, saw that the diminutive arachnid was perched in the middle of the line. Do you see her?

For perspective, my finger – photo taken a few days later, her web’s a bit worse for wear

Growing Things: Raising An Eastern Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly

Just look at that “face”!

Mornings have been chilly – down in the 60s – and I was very surprised to find a bright green caterpillar on the rim of a tub outside. Having recently researched caterpillars for another post, I knew this was a special caterpillar, and I wondered why it was motionless, out in the open, covered in dew. Was it even alive?

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Haiku: Mercurial Mammatus

A strong storm blew in yesterday – the kind that made me wish I’d shut the solid coop door (often open for airflow this time of year, with the chickens safe behind a wire-covered “screen” door). The rain pounded the earth in slanted sheets, and the trees’ limbs flailed in the whipping wind. Thunder rattled the glassware in the china cabinet and I steered clear of the windows, wary of the brilliant flashes of lightning.

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