I mentioned yesterday that I recently acquired a Venus flytrap. Ron, my coworker who has grown them extensively, sent me the "how to care for a flytrap" illustrations he's been developing and very graciously allowed me to post them here so that I can have an easy way to refer to the care for them. These illustrations go along with the article he wrote here. If you're interested in owning a flytrap, please read his article and look through these illustrations first!
NOTE: All illustrations in this post are copyright Ron Dudek and cannot be used without his express permission.
So much for blogging every day, eh? And so much for blogging even once a week! So, it's been a busy few weeks but things may be calming down just a bit for awhile, so, since you missed me so much (what? you didn't notice?), or maybe just because I enjoy writing, I'll try to jump back onto the blogging wagon.
A coworker at the museum I work with gives workshops on carnivorous plants (from a biblical perspective). He's a carnivorous plant enthusiast and has scores of different types of them in his own greenhouse.
Having a carnivorous plant has been on my "someday list of things to acquire" because I think they're interesting and because I thought they might be helpful in cutting down on the fly and gnat population in our house. And I'm in awe of their amazing design by our Creator. So when Ron advertised that he was selling off some of his premium plants to make room in his greenhouse, I jumped at the chance to buy one (or six). My friend Chris facilitated the exchange, and on Friday he delivered Red Dragon Venus Flytraps to me.
According to Ron's directions (check out his article here), I'm supposed to keep it sitting in one inch of distilled water and give it six hours of sun daily (if I want the leaves to stay purple). So I put it in my kitchen window, and it is now making friends with the succulent and the green onions that were already residing there.
When I checked it today, I was excited to see that it had caught its first fly! It is already earning its keep. It can stay.
A long time ago, when I was a teenager, I made a batch of whoopie pies for some friends for Easter. Whoopie pies were considered a delicacy where we lived at the time, and I still enjoy them (Seth has made them a time or two). Whoopie pies have a chocolate (or other) cookie part and in between the two cookies is a bit of frosting. As I made the sugary frosting, I kept the blender going, wondering why the texture stayed grainy and wasn't smooth like the other whoopie pies I'd had. Finally, after many minutes of blending with no change to the texture, I added a bit of food coloring to the white frosting (in celebration of Easter) and blended some more. I never did get the smooth consistency I was looking for, and since it was time to go, I put the whoopie pies together and went to my friend's house. After I displayed my creations and mentioned that they had turned out a bit different than I thought, my friend Patti let me in on a secret -- the sugar I was supposed to use was confectioner's sugar, not regular granulated sugar. Needless to say most of that batch of whoopie pies went uneaten. Who knew there was such a big difference between 10x sugar and granulated sugar (besides all the people who have ever baked anything with them before)?
I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was anxious to get my garden started. We planted the seeds, generously watered, and then sat the seed box beside our window and waited for the plants to grow. I'd read the back of the packages that talked about watering the seeds, which we did, and about putting them in a "warm" place. I figured beside a sunny window in a 69-degree house constituted "warm."
Apparently, I was wrong. Even though most had a germination time of 7-10 days, by the 10th day, nothing had grown. I was about to give up on our seeds and toss the whole thing out.
And then we got the new chicks. And to keep the chicks warm, we put up a red heat lamp. Figuring that maybe the instructions on the seed packets perhaps knew what they were talking about after all, and that our seed did need more warmth that what we were currently providing them with, I finagled both the chick cage and the seed starter bin together under the heat lamp.
And, voila! The seeds have started to grow. Who knew warmth was such a key ingredient to seed growth (nevermind everyone who has ever read a seed packet and grown seeds themselves)?
Of course, now that the seeds are growing, Cael is anxious to pick them. I've had to remind him several times not to touch them and that it would be many months before we can harvest anything.
"Grrr," he says. "I've been waiting years for this already!"
Today was a gorgeous spring day -- the sky was blue, the air was warm, the breeze was a reminder that outdoor weather is on its way.
We spent the afternoon working on cleaning up another flower bed--this one is in front of the house.
Because I wouldn't let them use my clippers, they got their own scissors to snip at flower heads and grass.
While we were clearing away last year's overgrowth, we found an (abandoned?) bird nest in the middle of one of the rose bushes. We left it there in case the mama bird wanted to return.
My sporadic helpers did other things while I worked.
And finally it was finished and the sidewalk was given a good sweeping by Cael. We are slowly but surely building a good burn pile and will be ready for a bonfire in a few weeks.
After supper, we took a walk down to the creek. One of the benefits (?) of the new road construction is that there is now somewhat of a new path from the creek to the road, which Seth and Cael have discovered. Kieran decided he also wanted to try it (walking on the uneven rocks and climbing is excellent therapy for his gross motor skills).
Today, we continued to celebrate the arrival of Spring with Cael's spring break from school (shortened to just a week because of the snow days we've had previously) and with a little spring cleaning.
A bit of a chill has settled back into our area, but today was still sunny, so we went outside for a bit this afternoon. I decided that the time had come to clean up the dead leaves and branches from last year's flowers along the side of the barn. The spring bulbs have been asserting themselves lately, and I thought it might be good to give them a showcase for their beauty by getting rid of the junk that was laying on top of them.
So, I got out my rake and clippers and went to work. Kieran decided he wanted to use the clippers. When I told him "no, they were too dangerous, he needed to be a little older to use them," he said, "Mom, you need to learn to share the clippers. You need to learn to share."
Even without sharing them with him, I got that area mostly cleaned up and we called it a day.
Later in the evening, after supper, Seth decided to pull out some of the things we're using to help Kieran learn spatial relationships, like this Peek-A-Boo Bunny set that my parents got him for Christmas. He took turns having the boys follow the pattern on the card and placing the pieces in the correct order.
Kieran needed a bit of redirection but he does like doing those sets and it's encouraging to see he's getting better at following the pattern.
Seth has been working in earnest on rehabbing his knee, which was operated on last October due to a torn meniscus. His knee had been bothering him for years, making it difficult for him to run and play well with the boys outside, and taking a walk wasn't something he enjoyed because of the pain. So, this afternoon, it made my heart happy to hear him suggest that we all go for a walk down the lane.
On our way, I stopped to smile at the beautiful faces of the flowers that were greeting us.
We went down to the creek for a bit so that Seth could check out the repair process of the lane.
This is a photo from last week. While the snow was melting, we received several days of rain, making our creek quite turbulent. So much so, that part of the road by the creek had fallen in.
This lane is the only access to our house, so if it had caved in all the way, we would have been stuck in -- or out of, depending on when it caved -- the Holler.
Our neighbor notified the county of the impending doom, and on Monday, a work crew showed up to start fixing the road.
They brought several loads of larger rocks in and dumped them into the cavity.
And then this thing, whatever it is,
moved the rocks around and made a nice pile of them.
The little front loader (?) scraped and pushed the rocks off the road and into the pile.
And this was the result at the end of Monday.
Tuesday morning, we watched out the window as the cement truck came
And dumped a load of cement over the rock pile.
And this was the result at the end of Tuesday.
This is what we saw from the creek today.
Apparently, they didn't care about this section right next to it that is also eroding.
I'm sure you can imagine that Seth and the neighbors aren't very thrilled with the current "fix" (what happens when water gets into the rock pile, freezes, and cracks it all?). We're waiting to see if they come back to finish resurfacing the road or doing anything else to it.
And then we continued down the lane, collecting trash . . . again.
And ended up with another bag of trash to deposit in our trash can.
It was a nice way to celebrate the advent of spring -- and the gradual healing of Seth's knee.
