stacy_cats's Xanga

Window Planting Box

Thu, 08 May 2008 19:01:15 GMT

It all started with Uncskainch. She posted this really neat idea for learning about plants, and suggested a blog-along. Crunchy got her hands on it and posted her version. I was so intrigued by the brilliant simplicity, that I was inspired to follow suit. So, without further ado, here is our version of the see-through carton garden.

We started off with a orange juice carton. Sunshine is still a little young to cut the holes, so I did that. We decided to go with two large windows so that we could try two different types of plants while still maintaining the structure of the carton. Only time will tell if this will work as we hoped.

Next, we wrapped the whole thing in plastic wrap to make the transparent windows. I sealed the bottom of the carton afterward, and then put the whole thing in a plastic dish in case it leaked. I cut the excess plastic from the top so we'd have clear access to the inside of the carton. Having since reviewed Crunchy's post a second time, I see that we probably should have left some of the plastic there on top to keep things moist. I'll fix that later today. Moisture's going to be important, especially in this very arid climate.

Next was the fun and dirty part. We filled the carton nearly to the top with potting soil. (Thank goodness for the iRobot Roomba!) Sunshine had fun getting his hands dirty. When it was completely filled, we went through our seed bags to see what might be interesting to watch grow.

We started with sunflower seeds because they are big and fat and easy to see. We planted two seeds on one side of the carton, being careful to press the seed up against the plastic to keep it in view. Sunshine (who is still five) felt a little bit of confusion about how the window worked, and he wanted to "dig a hole" to plant the seed. I showed him how to put it up against the plastic and he caught on quickly.

For the other side, we wanted to try something completely different, but also easy to grow. Marigolds! Marigold seeds are pretty odd looking things. They are spiky, long, and papery seeds that Sunshine quickly pointed out "don't look like seeds" at all. Due to their fragility (and their pointy, plastic poking ends) I planted the three marigold seeds. I'm not sure which of us is more curious about how they will sprout (compared to their sunflower counterparts). I'm pretty sure it's me, though.

Next, we watered our seeds. Sunshine was fascinated by the way the water infiltrated the dry soil. We'd never seen what it looked like from below when soil is watered. We made sure to get everything nice and damp.

I explained to Sunshine that it's going to take some time for our seeds to sprout, but he was convinced that it would happen immediately. It was actually pretty cute. He sat, staring at the seeds, waiting for them to "break open". At one point, he hollered up to me that he was just sure that one of the seeds was "squishing" and getting ready to burst open. After about ten minutes, though, I think he began to believe that it was going to take more than a few minutes for nature to take her course.

On the left is a picture of the planted sunflower seeds. (It's clear that I'm going to have to find a more appropriate form of lighting to photograph these further.) On the right, is a real close up picture of one of the marigold seeds. It's actually only about a half inch long, but I enlarged it a bit to show the shape.

We'll check our seeds everyday, and when they sprout, I'll be sure to get pictures. Thank you, Uncskainch and Crunchy for the wonderful idea. It's a great homeschooling project. We are really having fun with it, and learning a lot to boot!

What to Say...

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 17:06:35 GMT

Well! All of my Good Friends are being so GREAT at posting to their blogs, and I have been nothing but remiss in that department. So, I am feeling inspired to say something...

But what...?

Hmmm... you see, although I've been busier than ever, I don't actually have a lot of news.

Oh! Well, that's not entirely true! A few weeks ago, my wonderful husband and I celebrated our first decade of married life! My (terrific) mom took care of Sunshine while we escaped to the far reaches (Las Vegas) and pretended to be adults for a whole four days. It was glorious. To make it all the better, we renewed our vows, at which time my beloved presented me with a beautiful ring that surprised me and knocked my socks off. Then, thanks to my brother and his wife, we were treated to a sumptuous supper at a fancy restaurant. (The waiter even dusted off our table between courses!) It was a beautiful day and a fantastic trip. I am the luckiest woman in the world to have the husband that I do, and I wouldn't trade him. Not even for chocolate.   ;)

Outside of that, we've just kept real busy with the usual stuff. Homeschooling Sunshine (he's really blowing us away with his reading and math skills!), working on the house (inside and out), a few coding/design jobs (one of my favorite ways to spend time), planning for a trip north later this summer, meeting with other homeschooling families for fun and activities, writing, photography (less than I'd like of that), and other general busy-ness.

I know, not very exciting. Hence the lack of blog entries, I tell ya! But we are Happy and prospering, and boring or not, that's all that really matters.    :)

So there. I posted.    :)

Next time, I'll try and be interesting too!

::::waves to my Girls::::

Happy Spring!

Thanks Giving

Thu, 22 Nov 2007 13:57:21 GMT

Happy Thanksgiving!

Please visit my stacycats plus blog to view the list (albeit massively incomplete) of things I am thankful for today.

And, while you're at it, please have a wonder-filled (and delicious!!) day!

::::WAVES::::

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 17:56:50 GMT

I'm still here! I'm just busier than a one-legged tap-dancer wearing socks.

So, here's a little run-down...

In late October, I had family in from out of town. As a result of that, we ended up having a sort of impromptu family reunion at my parents' house out of town. A week later, I dressed my son up in a completely homemade "rainbow kitty cat" costume (100% HIS idea!) and did the Halloween thing. Meanwhile, I had entered a photography tournament, and was desperately seeking decent shots amongst the chaos. The day after Halloween, NaNoWriMo began. That next weekend was spent alternating between writing at mach speed and getting our house ready for renovations.

Oh yeah, and there was this local photography contest, and at the last minute I decided to enter. I got my entries in with a whole hour (!!) to spare. The best part of that was that not only did I take first place in one category, so did my Good Friend in another!

Then! A dream come true! (Literally. This was deliberate manifestation at its best.) Friends came from out of town to help us to install wood laminate flooring in our house!! We were going to start in the living room, but decided that the kitchen would be more complex and therefore we should start there while we had the benefit of experienced installers with us. As it turns out, our friends came back the next weekend to help us finish two more rooms and a hallway!

Oh MAN, it looks so GOOD!! I am loving our new floor!

However, we have been working from dawn 'til dusk pretty much everyday to get this done. Installation is a pretty big job all by itself. With a houseful of living going on, it's even more... big.

Oh, but it looks so good.

In the midst of all of this, I was asked to give a Rudy presentation to a small group of (wonderful) women that I meet with a couple times a month. I'm sure a couple of snapshots would have sufficed, but miss-over-do-everything (that would be moi) just had to go overboard and sort through hundreds of pictures, splice up a nice video, and bring the chrysalis (which I managed to destroy on the drive home). It was really fun to relive that experience one more time, and it made me all the more sure I'm going to do it again next summer.

So now, we've got Thanksgiving in two days. Hubby got a wild hair and decided to create our first ever real Thanksgiving dinner at home. I bought the stuff, and I'll make the peach cobbler for dessert, but he's got the rest of the menu.

So THEN! We are going to my parents' house for a second Thanksgiving! It should be pretty fun. We're doing something completely different and fun. Fondue! (Who knew there were so many recipes??) I'll let you know how that goes.

And, through all of this, both Hubby and I are both writing our novels, home schooling our son, and trying to get our house into some semblance of order.

Other than all this, I'm bored out of my mind.

And then, there's Christmas...

Emergence (Rudy, pt. 4)

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 13:52:08 GMT

For fifteen days, the bright green and yellow chrysalis that had once been Rudy the caterpillar, hung silently. Except for the one occasion I mentioned previously, the chrysalis did not (to my knowledge) move for that two weeks. On the morning of Wednesday, September 26th, I noticed a distinct change in color.

The chrysalis had darkened considerably in the night, and it appeared softer - almost wet. There were now dark striations, especially around the belly of the chrysalis. I lifted the bell jar and took a couple of pictures. I knew Rudy's time was coming.

Then, it moved! It whipped back and forth, clearly powered by its tail, and I was sure this change was going to take place any minute.

I was intent upon seeing the process. I camped out next to the chrysalis and readied my camera. There was a little wrinkle though. I had one hour before I had to leave for a speaking engagement. I willed the little guy to do his thing before I had to go.

The little guy ignored my will and did not move again. He did, however, seem to get even darker in color.

I had to go, so I took down my DSLR and set up a video camera. It would tape for two hours. I would be gone for more than four. I hoped the miracle I seemed destined to miss would occur during those first two hours.

Due to some synchronicity, I was not gone for four hours, but only an hour and a half. When I got home, the chrysalis looked just like it had when I'd left. I set up camp, taking a quick break to make a bite to eat during which I had my five-year-old keep watch with strict instructions to scream at the top of his lungs should he see any movement at all.

When I got upstairs with my lunch, Sunshine went back into his room to play while I took turns eating and rewinding the video camera. (Two hours of a perfectly still chrysalis is about as fun to watch as paint drying.) I was trying to get to the point on the tape that showed the little guy wiggling, and my eyes were flashing alternately from the camera screen to the chrysalis. During one of these glances, and with no sound or other movement to warn me, I noticed that the top of the chrysalis was BLACK. It was a butterfly head!!

I immediately pressed "Record" (though, in my excitement, I think I pressed it several times and gummed up those first few seconds) and yelled for Sunshine to hurry and come see. (Unfortunately, it took me a few seconds to wrap my head around the idea of grabbing my camera!!)

There had been sort of a "zipper" type marking that wrapped around the "belly" of the chrysalis, and it turns out that's where the thing tears open to create a sort of lid. The butterfly crawled out of its tiny space. Within a few seconds, he was hanging from the top of the stick.

As you can see, he was very fat. I'd done some research on emerging butterflies, and expected this. See how his wings are all crumpled up? Well, his "fat" body is actually filled with a liquid. Rudy spent the next few minutes at the top of the stick, squeezing his body and pushing that liquid into a network of "veins" in his wings. Those "veins" act as a sort of liquid skeletal system for the wings. It only took four and a half minutes for his wings to fully "inflate".

The "new" Rudy was beautiful.

Rudy opened and closed his wings quite a bit at first. Then he excreted a red sort of juice that, had I not prepared myself through research, would have scared me because it looked a lot like blood. It was, in fact, left-overs from his last "supper" as a caterpillar. Butterflies can't digest leaves!

After getting a few pictures, I let him rest under his bell jar, with the intention of letting him go as soon as my husband came home. For two hours, he hung from the top of the stick, pretty much as you see him here. Every so often, he'd extend his curly tongue or slowly open and close his wet (and currently useless) wings, but mostly he just hung there.

Then, very suddenly, he began to flap his wings! And not in a lazy, kicked-back I'm-drying-out sort of way, either. They were literally buzzing. He took off from the top of the stick, but unfortunately, the bell jar did not give him much room at all to fly. None, really. So, he fell down to the side of the jar. I could see that he needed to be freed very soon, or he might tear a wing.

I called my husband to see if he was nearing home, but he was still more than a half hour out. We made the decision to let Rudy go right away, for his own safety. I gathered my camera equipment, my son, and the bell jar and we headed outside.

Upon (almost instant) hindsight, I wished I'd set the bell jar in a more photo-friendly spot. But once Sunshine lifted the glass, Rudy hopped out onto the dirt right away, and his setting was pretty much cast in stone.

He seemed to bask in the sun for about five minutes, during which time I took as many pictures as I could. Many of them were taken blind, however, due to the fact that I almost had to set the camera onto the dirt to get them.

Isn't he pretty?

Rudy did some nice posing for me, and then, without any warning, he flew away. I thought I'd get a flight shot, but he didn't flitter around where we were at all. On his maiden voyage, Rudy flew over our two story house! We ran to the front of the house to see if we could catch another glimpse, but our beautiful butterfly was gone.

Based upon his coloring, shape, number of orange dots (seven), and caterpillar beginnings, we are now pretty sure that Rudy is a Pipevine Swallowtail. I'll try and scrounge up a picture of the plants the caterpillars (exclusively) eat, but the season is about over and I may have to wait until next spring. I also need to do a little more research to find out whether "he" is truly a "him" though. It's altogether possible that Rudy is a girl.

I'll also try and see if I can upload the video I took. Honestly, I haven't even seen it myself, and it's analog, so it's going to take some doing to get it on the web.

This was sure a neat experience. I feel very fortunate to have seen all the major changes close up and personal, and I'm for sure going to do it again next summer when the caterpillars come back.

Thanks for visiting!

Chrysalis Days (Rudy - part 3)

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 22:56:37 GMT

On the night of Rudy's change to chrysalis, I woke from a sound sleep to the distinct sound of a cat chewing on something crunchy. I looked across the dark room into the shadows and saw something crouched under Rudy's chrysalis. I dove out of bed and yelled, "No!" (forgive me, I was sound asleep three second before). I woke up my dear husband (which is remarkable in and of itself), and threw on the light as fast as I could. The creature was crouched just as I had seen in the darkness. The only difference in the light: the creature was a camera tripod. The kitty, however, was present. And, she was actually munching a piece of popcorn.

I apologized to my dearest, and promptly put Rudy (or whatever "his" name is now) into our walk-in closet where I knew he'd be safe from the cats (and from my overactive imagination).

The chrysalis stayed there for about a week. Then, I got an idea. I found a decorative bell-jar in storage, and sure enough, his perch fit perfectly! He spent his second week of chrysalis-hood near a window in our master bedroom, perfectly protected, and easily accessible for inspection and photographs.

Here's a picture of my setup.

I had printed out a series of shots to show some friends of mine, and my Sunshine found them and asked to keep them. He had a lot of fun lining them up in order (there are about ten) like a puzzle. It was nice to see some interest on his part, especially when he hadn't seemed to care much at all when Rudy first changed.

Soon after he acquired the series of pictures, my five-year-old informed me that the series was incomplete. "Don't worry, Honey," I said. "When the chrysalis opens, I'll be sure to get some pictures and we'll add them to the series."

"No, Mommy. You don't have any pictures of the chrysalis when it's green like this!" he said adamantly, pointing at Rudy.

He was right. I had taken a gajillion pictures of the chrysalis the day it changed, but none as it hung dry over the two weeks that followed. So, here is my multi-angular remedy for that!

The center shot does not reflect Rudy's color as well as I'd like. It does, however, give you an idea of his unusual shape and texture. If you click on the photographs, you can see some serious detail. There were quite a few remarkable things about this critter.

First was his color. The first and last shot best represent his colors. (His "back" was more a bright yellow than the center picture shows.) When we've had these same type chrysalides on our light blue house, they have been much more of a grayish color. We think he got his bright colors directly from the photograph behind him.

Also, if you look closely at the middle picture, you can see that the "ropes" holding him to his perch seem to wrap around the entire chrysalis. In the first pictures (and a bit in the third) you may be able to make out what look like seams in the "belly" of the chrysalis. They would prove to play an integral part in Rudy's next stage of development.

Out of sheer curiosity, I took this opportunity to gently touch the chrysalis. I wanted to know what it felt like, and whether the bottom end of it was attached to the stick or just resting upon it. The chrysalis felt a little like paper mache'. It didn't seem alive at all. That was, until I touch his backside (very gently!) to see if he was attached. He was attached. And he was ALIVE! Using what appeared to be muscles in the bottom part of his body, Rudy began wiggling back and forth on his perch, swinging on his ropes as if to say, "Get off me!"

I did.

I put the glass bell-jar back over him and left him alone. Based on prior "hatchings" around our house, I expected to see a butterfly after two weeks in this state. We had about one week to go. I hoped that I would be fortunate enough to see it happen.

To be continued...

Ch-ch-changes! (Rudy - part 2)

Sun, 23 Sep 2007 15:40:01 GMT

So! There was Rudy, hanging limply (and rather unattractively) by his spun ropes, his previously plump antennae hanging like sad dog ears by his side. (If this is your first visit to the site in a while, be sure to scroll down and read part one of this story first.) I was still in my pajamas watching intently for any sign of life or independent movement. For about a half hour (I'm guessing) nothing happened at all. If anything, Rudy just looked worse and worse. I found myself wondering if a dead caterpillar would degenerate so quickly, and actually drew a little optimism from that consideration because it just didn't seem possible.

Then he moved!

I called my husband into the room. "He's alive! He's alive!" (If you know me, you know that my happiness over the life and death of a bug is not my natural state, but I had grown attached.) We watched in amazement as Rudy's body began to straighten out. Then it started to undulate. It was as if he were trying to move the insides of his bottom half up into his top half, and in fact, we began to see that there was something under his skin that was moving. Occasionally, something yellowish would press up against his darkened skin and show through. It was very "Alien" and fascinating to watch. Sunshine (our son) came to take a look, but was still not nearly so impressed as his parents.

The folds in his lower body began to stretch out like an accordian. And, as you can see from the picture to the right, his color changed dramatically over the next fifteen minutes or so. (Next time I'm going to pay more attention to the clock!)

I still had no idea how the change was ultimately going to occur, and it was for that reason that I missed how he got from the picture on the right to the picture on the left. (It happened in a split second when I was looking at the lower part of his body.)

Although it is pretty clear in the picture (and later confirmed by some online research), I did not realize at the time that the horn of the chrysalis had actually broken through his caterpillar skin. Up close and in person, it looked as if the new shell were simply building itself over the old skin like something from a science fiction movie. I called Sunshine in to see. He was slightly more intrigued this time.

Over the next ten (or so) minutes, Rudy wriggled and writhed, pressing down the old skin to allow the new to take its place. His movements were almost violent, and I hoped that his "ropes" would hold through the process. I knew there was nothing I could do to help though; this was Rudy's show, and nobody knew what to do better than he did. So I just snapped the shutter on my camera as fast as I could so as not to miss anything important. Here is a short series of photos recording what we witnessed:

Notice that his legs, and then his head come off in the process! That little bunch of brown stuff at the bottom of the final shot is a collection of all of those things. In a follow-up post, I'll show you where that finally landed before it fell off entirely.

Rudy writhed (especially his bottom half) quite heavily for several minutes as he brought himself into his new form. I decided that the next time I do this, I will be prepared with a video camera, because it really is quite an extraordinary sight to see. In fact, from my seat, it looked like nothing less than God at work. I still get goosebumps just thinking about it.

As of now, Rudy (is he still Rudy?) is quietly residing in his chrysalis state under a glass dome. I expect a butterfly within the next few days. When that happens, I'll hopefully get off a few shots with the camera before he is ready to fly.

Until then, here is a link to an animated gif I made (just under 300k in size) to help illustrate the change in a slightly different way. I hope you enjoy it.

Rudy's Last Stand

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 22:19:11 GMT

In an attempt to teach my son some things about the wonders of nature, I went out in my front yard and collected a little red and black caterpillar. These little guys are all over the place, and they love to eat a particular type of weed in our yard. Due to the fact that this started out as an introduction to nature for my son, and a very informal one at that, I didn't think to take any pictures of the young caterpillar.

He (though I have no idea if caterpillars even have genders, I began to think of him as "Rudy") was about an inch long when I captured him, and he spent a few days living in a glass jar with a water-soaked cotton ball and as many of his favorite weeds as I could find around the yard. (Hubby's weed-whacking adventures made my searches more challenging.) Rudy ate an amazing amount of leaves, grew at an incredible rate, and pooped like you wouldn't believe. Happily, I only had to clean out the jar once before he arrived at the stage of change. It was at this point that it occurred to me that taking some pictures might be the thing to do.

After the first jar-cleaning, I collected a little stick and added it to his little apartment. On Monday (September 10), I found that he had climbed that stick and, although he had not attached himself to it yet, he seemed to be getting ready to do just that. I carefully took the stick out of the jar and stuck the bottom end into a big thick piece of styrofoam so I could take some pictures without the reflected light from the glass jar. I put some silk flowers behind him and had snapped a few (poorly lighted and inadequately lensed) shots, when Rudy unexpectedly woke from his nap. After I shot this picture, he did a u-turn on the stick and headed downward to inspect the flowers. I put Rudy and his stick back in his jar and went out to collect some more leaves.

As it turned out, he was close to the change. (Perhaps my set dressing and photo taking disturbed his process.) He ate very little of the leaves I found for him, and later that afternoon, I found him tethered to his stick with two tiny "ropes" of silk on either side of his body. (See the thin white line near the top of his body?) Now, I knew for sure he was where he was going to stay for the next couple of weeks. I took the stick out again, and this time, I set up a more effective lighting system and set my DSLR up with a more appropriate lens for macro shots. I also printed out a photograph I had taken some years back in Yosemite and taped it to the styrofoam so that my pictures would look more natural.

The picture you see to your right is a good representation of how Rudy looked for the rest of Monday night. I stayed up until four in the morning because I wanted so much to see the process of his change from caterpillar to chrysalis. As I've mentioned, we have lots of these little guys all over our house, and many of them use our porch supports as docking spaces to do their thing, but in the six years we've lived here, I've never seen how they get from caterpillar to chrysalis. I really had no idea what to look for in regards to his changing. Would he secrete some sort of substance that would later harden into the skin of the chrysalis? Would his current skin simply change? Because of my ignorance on the matter, I kept my eyes peeled for any change at all. As it happened, though, I could not stay up past four in the morning, and Rudy showed no discernable signs of change. (I have about fifty picture just like this one to try and catch any progression over time. To my eye, there was none.)

I woke up Tuesday morning and immediately checked on Rudy. He looked slightly different - maybe a little less red - in the morning light, but I couldn't be sure. I tried to compare pictures, but since they were still all in my camera, that was difficult. Seeing the higher resolution shots now, I can see clear changes, though. Can you? (To see these pictures in much more detail, just click on them.)

I went and got a bite for breakfast; was only away for about a half hour, maybe forty-five minutes. When I got back to my set-up, my heart sank. The picture on the right is what I found. (I almost didn't even take that picture, so sure was I that Rudy had died.) I put my face right up to him, looking for any indication that he still lived. I thought I saw movement, but it turned out to be his lifeless antennae blowing in the breeze of my breath. I hoped that this was just part of the change to chrysalis, but having never even seen pictures of the process, I just didn't know. And none of my imagined scenarios looked like this!

So, I decided to wait. Of course, by this time, my five-year-old son had completely lost interest in the whole project. I was, for the most part, on my own. I did have some moral support from my dear husband, but at this point, neither of us were certain this was going to turn out well. Still, I kept my camera and lights set up, and parked myself in front of the little guy for the long haul. If this was the change, I wasn't going to miss it this time.

(To Be Continued)

Sight for My Friends

Tue, 14 Aug 2007 21:10:38 GMT

That lightning show last night was AWESOME. Hubby and I went out on the porch and couldn't resist playing with the camera a bit. None of the shots came out that great except for this one, and I'm happy enough with it that all those "wasted" pixels were worth it. ;)

Crunchy's COOL green house lightning shot (Go see!) inspired me to share.

Fire (Alarm & Agate)

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 11:43:33 GMT

Well, we had quite the blessing (and heart pumper) this morning.

About five minutes before I usually wake up (6:30AM) the fire alarm went off in our house. Boy, that thing is loud! I popped out of bed, instantly wide awake. There was no smell of smoke, and I had a feeling everything was okay pretty much from the start. Still, I handled it like it was real until I could be sure.

I went straight to Sunshine's room. He was sitting up in bed, his eyes as big as plates. I told him to come to me and we went downstairs and straight to the porch. By this time, I knew it was okay, but Hubby was inspecting the house. I took the opportunity to tell Sunshine that, had there been a real fire, we'd have left all the doors open so that the kitties could escape. One thing I didn't do, that I made a mental note for next time, was grab the car keys on the way out. We stood outside in the nice morning air while Hubby finished the inspection. When we got the all-clear, we went back in. Very exciting way to start the day.

It was a blessing in many ways. First of all, it happened a 6:30 rather than 2:30!! Also, it was a great opportunity to have a fire drill. We've talked to Sunshine about what to do if the alarm goes off, but this time we got to practice it. Plus, we found that one of the alarms (we think it was the culprit alarm; they are all connected) had dust in it. Lastly, I got to think about things like getting the car keys when leaving the house like this. (It also didn't hurt to see Sunshine handling this whole thing very calmly and thoughtfully. He even mentioned that we should let the cats out.)

We changed the batteries in two of the alarms, and Hubby's going to get another three batteries to finish the job tonight. All in all, it was a good experience.

And I am oh, so awake!

And here's a little haiku for a special lady who had a birthday last week.

Seeker, Mother, Friend
Logical, open, and fun
Just four decades young

Thank you for being in my life.