Texas primrose

The kids are usually only found outside in the early morning or evening at this point. The entire last week's temperatures have been in the triple digits. I am slowly getting used to spending several hours in the house during the middle of the day. I fear that we are in for a long, long, long hot summer. I find that I am getting up by 5:30am and spending 3-4 hours outside in the gardens and dealing with animals before I head inside to start the day with the kids. I am fortunate that they are now old enough to get their own breakfasts. I usually come inside to find Elder watching PBS and Lily sewing. I guess that it could be worse!

We have gone swimming often in all of the area lakes (this week will be less because of the 4th of July holiday crowd - too much rowdy-ness for us) but the water is getting tepid and is less satisfying with every passing day. We are all missing the Sacramento River and it's refreshing frigidity. At this rate, I'm not sure what we will do by August. The bacteria levels will be alarmingly high for my taste, not to mention the nasty algae growth.

papilio polyexenes

Here is one of the little guys munching away on the flat leaf parsley. I need to harvest enough for my marinara but the tomatoes aren't ready yet. Hopefully, they will leave some for me.

caterpillars

Today is ridiculously hot (101) but didn't keep me out of the garden earlier to see what was ripening, dying, being crowded by weeds or thirsted out. I found about twenty striped caterpillars on the parsley and the carrot tops. I looked up the variety online and discovered them to be Papilio ployxenes...otherwise known as the larva of the black swallowtail butterfly. I made an instant decision to leave them because that particular butterfly is one of my local favorites with it's black wings that are accented with blue, gold and white. They are simply beautiful. Last year many were attracted to the butterfly garden that is much larger now, so hopefully there will be more of them. I am trying to identify all of the regular butterflies here this year. I will hopefully get a few photos but due to the lack of macro lenses, it is most difficult.