Boy meets Butterflies

My two-and-a-half year old son’s favourite book lately is The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. It's a charming story of a "very" hungry caterpillar that eats his way through the week and then builds a cocoon and transforms into a beautiful butterfly. It's a really fun book to read aloud and one that my little guy loves.

We read it nearly every night and he puts his little fingers in the holes and waits with a little smile that turns into a grin when we get to the page with the chocolate cake, ice cream cone and pickle. Some nights he sleeps with the book. So we decided on an early September day that waffled between rain and sun to take him to the Devonian Gardens to the Butterfly House. I had been there before so I don’t know why it seemed so magical this time. But it did.

The flowers were more exotic.



The textures more fascinating.

And, of course, the butterflies more beautiful.



I don’t know, maybe it was just the joy of seeing it through my son’s eyes that made everything seem a little more luminous. Or maybe gardening is heightening my awareness of the world around me.

Either way, it was one of the most enjoyable family outings so far.

Beautiful and graceful, varied and enchanting, small but approachable, butterflies lead you to the sunny side of life. And everyone deserves a little sunshine. ~Jeffrey Glassberg


PS. If anyone knows what any of the butterflies or exotic plants are, I would love to hear from you.

PPS. I will share some photos of the gardens in upcoming posts.

Have I told you lately...?

Have I mentioned lately how much I love my hubby? Thoughtful man that he is, he got me a new camera (beginner DSLR) for my birthday a couple of weeks ago! Not that I didn't hint. Oh, I did hint...you know, musing aloud while reading camera ads in the paper, mentioning how I missed my old film SLR that tanked ages ago, sighing that I could never get a decent picture of our toddler because he had long since left the frame by the time our 'point and shoot' got around to actually taking his picture...how when we were old we probably wouldn't remember him at this cute age and all the pictures would simply be a blurry shot of blue that was his shoulder or back.

[Ladybug taken with my new(!) Nikon D3000 with an 18-55 mm lens]

What I really love about my husband is not that he gets hints - most guys can conquer that. No, what I love is that he acts on the hints. Now that is a man worth holding onto!

Thanks, honey! I really, really like it! And, um, I promise to stop taking so many pictures of you when you are reading your paper ;-)

Spring lives here!

We are still working on a plan for the back yard. In the meantime, the real spring found us; slipping softly into our yard with an early morning shimmer of gold that the snow simply couldn’t resist, so it melted at spring’s feet.

It couldn’t have happened at a better time – the beginning of the Easter long weekend. Time to finally go into the yard and listen to the sound of the returning birds.

I took this photo from the second storey of the house to show you the big picture.




Here is the south facing side of the yard. Pretty empty, hmm?



And here is the north…

Here is a small sampling of the caragana runners that had taken over under the spruce along the west of the yard.
Before we put the fence in last summer there was a chain link fence that ran under the spruce to divide us from the back lane. Along this fence was a 40-something year old caragana hedge gone rampant. We cut it down and had the stump man grind it out; however the runners remained.

While the toddler napped yesterday afternoon we hacked and clipped and loped. Hubby even cut down a dead tree and tore down a long-dead shrub with his bare hands and a few tools.

The best part for me, though, was when I pushed on a dead spruce and it started to wobble! I gave it a few pushes and…

Voila!! I winked at hubby and told him he could just call me Wonderwoman.

*hee hee*

Oh, and as I poked around the garden, I even found a sign of life

The Lamium maculatum 'White Nancy' I planted on the side of the house peeping out from under some well-established Convallaria majalis (Lily of the Valley).

Because our soil is such hard compacted clay (water pools on it), I didn’t have to worry about compressing it as I walked on it (or the gravel), so to top this luxuriously warm day off, we pulled out the wee toddler’s new play set and when we woke him from his nap he squinted at the sun and seemed hesitant to step out the door. (At just-turned-two, he is probably too young to remember anything but winter!) Once he tapped his way across the gravel and made his way to the play set, he too found the joy that is Spring.

"If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall." ~ Nadine Stair

Next up: After all my hard work yesterday, today I slipped off with a friend to one of my favourite garden centres to be inspired…not, ahem, to actually buy anything...

As spring settles in to stay, we begin to create...

Spring is springing! Yesterday we went into the ravine and the creek was opening...

...the freshets were gurgling.

and the snow was retreating...


This morning we made it official as we decked our little toddler out in spring gear and he made his first splash in the puddles in his new alligator boots!

We played in the park and...

collected pinecones. (His new favourite word)

Next up: We have drafted a plan of our lot...

...made copies and are sketching ideas for a dream backyard.

Then we hire a landscaper to take the gravel out of the yard, clean up some of the brush at the back, bring in some nice, rich topsoil, a little sod (so the wee toddler can run free!) and, if we can afford it this year, perhaps a stone patio.

I think the rest may have to wait to be done in stages as we can afford it. But, hey, with the beds prepared I can always start hitting the sales for trees, shrubs and perennials!

In the meantime, I foresee us BBQing in the snow!