Central Park

We made a trip to Mishawaka to visit family this week.

It was a beautiful day full of sunshine.

We took the kids to the newly renovated Central Park.

When I was a kid this park was not the park to play at.

It was the park to avoid.

Now it's night and day from what it was.

I cannot say enough about how nice this park is now.

The best feature of this park is the splash pad.

The parents are forbidden to be in the play areas, unless it's absolutely necessary.

However, if you stand in the right spot, you can still get sprayed from the water cannons.

I may or may not have done this.

:) 

Connor enjoying some splash time.

This is one of those parks that has different play areas for different age groups.

This was the older side.

The giant red mountain looking thing was a rope tower.

It's quite high.

The view from the park.

It's one of the many parks that are along the river.

The trimmed tree trunks are scheduled to be turned into sculptures.

Should be interesting to see how they turn out.

We didn't walk much along the river.

We were tired and ready to head home.

Maybe next time.

The Monarch

This caterpillar was searching for a place to attach himself.

They have some sort of webbing that attaches from their back end to a hanging surface.

Once they find a suitable place, they hang upside down and make a "J".

It usually takes several hours before they shed their skin.

This one made his chrysalis late this morning.

This is another one of our caterpillars.

He did this last night.

This morning we caught him just as he was finishing.

They shed their skin quickly.

We almost missed it.

You can see another one in the background that is almost ready to hatch.

This one made its chrysalis on 7/20.

This picture was taken on 7/28.

You can almost make out the orange and black of the butterfly's wings.

As time goes on, the chrysalis will get more transparent.

This is how it looked this morning (7/29) around 7 AM.

It's very close to emerging.

I checked it an hour later and this is what I found.

It had emerged and I missed it!

He had just come out and was still dripping fluid.

It is so amazing that a creature like that is all folded up inside that little chrysalis.

He hung like this for about an hour.

Eventually he started pumping his wings.

When he gains his strength we'll free him outside.

We are all in awe of the process that God designed for these beautiful creatures.

We have two more to go.

Watching and Waiting

Pepper watch.

She's getting pretty good at alerting us to unwanted critters in the area.

Earlier this week she let us know a chicken got into the yard.

I was really impressed that she barked and not bit.

I suspect that would not have been the case had we not come out right away.

Yesterday she chased a deer through the pasture.

It was quite funny as the grass is taller than she is.

All you could see was her head when she jumped up to see where the deer was.

Pretty sure if the deer had hung around it would have been laughing too.

We watched the lake disappear.

This was taken on 7/23.

This was today, 7/27.

It's almost completely dry.

The blue herons and American bitterns have stopped visiting.

7/23

7/27.

There is an abundance of frogs and toads everywhere.

It's hard to walk through the yard or down the road and not see several.

Pepper thinks she needs to chase all of them.

I built a large butterfly cage over the weekend.

I used 1/2 inch PVC pipe.

I hot glued some tulle to the top, bottom, and sides.

One of the sides has velcro so we can easily gain access. 

I relocated our chrysalis.

Now we just sit and wait.

It has started to change color,

so hopefully it will hatch soon.

Baby Quilt

So I decided to make a baby quilt for some dear friends of ours.

It's a very simple quilt.

I found the pattern in a quilting magazine.

The original had dark dinosaur material and was for a boy.

This is for a precious little girl.

I needed flowers!

I'm not a flowery, frilly kind of person, but the quilt was not for me.

I had lots of fun picking out the material.

The yellow and green colors have small butterflies.

The pink and purple have flowers and larger butterflies.

I was able to cut all of the material in one afternoon.

The next afternoon I made all the squares.

I was chain piecing like a pro.

I'm still really new to this quilting thing.

Most of the time I feel like I have no clue what I'm doing. 

I was a little excited at my progress.

I really liked the way it turned out.

And I got my corners to match up!

Woo hoo!

All the layers are pin basted and ready for quilting!

This is the quilt re-basted.

Remember the part where I'm new at this and still learning?

I now know how to baste using a spray adhesive that's made for quilts.

I had never used it before.

I tried it because I had a pucker in my backing fabric after I sewed one line of quilting.

I figured that the more I quilted, the more puckers were going to show up.

So I ripped out the entire line.

I unpinned half the quilt at a time and peeled back the layers.

Then I spray basted it back together.

I must say that I don't think I will ever go back to pinning again!

The spray doesn't smell and it washes out.

I can manipulate the quilt and the layers stay put.

I'm surprised at how well it works.

I sewed the binding to the back in one evening.

It went rather quickly.

The next day I sewed the binding to the backside.

I've learned how to do this with the machine.

This is the second time I've done it.

It turned out much better this time around.

I had planned on trying to free motion quilt this.

I decided that I need a whole lot more practice!

In the meantime, I will continue to do straight line quilting.

I loved the backing fabric.

You can see the detail of it better in the binding photo.

It has delicate, but faint leaves and vines between the blue roses.

It looked cool with the stitching lined up.

The label.

It's quilt number two.

Hopefully there will be many more.

I follow several quilting blogs.

Almost all of them do photos of their quilts outside.

Now I know why.

The lighting is better and there is more space.

I ran into one problem though.

Pepper thought this was hers.

I had to play keep away from her nosy little snout!

Silly dog.

I guess I'll have to make her one someday.

I was so excited to work on this quilt.

It was a lot of fun and it only took me one week.

Wildlife

There's not much going on around here.

We're almost done with school.

Should be done this week. Woo hoo!

I wouldn't classify Pepper as wildlife, unless you get a leash or a toy.

Then she's a wild banshee.

We've never had a dog go crazy over seeing the leash.

She knows that means she's heading down the road for a walk.

It's adventure time. 

Last Friday we had some more rain.

Not much, just enough to say it rained.

Then we were treated with two beautiful rainbows. 

So cool to look like we have lake front property.

We have enjoyed having the lake behind the house.

There have been great blue herons and ducks here everyday.

This week we noticed another water bird, an American Bittern.

They are funny to watch.

They run upright similar to our Indian Runner ducks.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, the lake is drying up.

There are now entire rows of exposed mud reaching across the lake.

We're going to miss watching the birds and hearing the frogs.

For several nights we've had these frogs on our doors and windows.

Last night we had at least six of them on this door alone.

It might have something to do with someone leaving the porch light on.

The light attracted the extra bugs, which then attracted the frogs.

More robins.

I am always amazed at the engineering of the nests!

The boys were excited to find one of these guys munching on a milkweed plant.

It's the caterpillar for a monarch.

Of course he had to come home with us.

We found him just in time.

He attached himself to the top after one day.

They curl up like this right before they shed their skin.

I completely missed the shedding stage.

It happens fairly quickly.

Now we wait 10 - 14 days.

The chrysalis will change to opaque and almost transparent just before they emerge.

You can see the black and orange of the butterfly's wings.

It's really cool.

While I was writing this post Nolan found several more monarch larvae!

I guess I'll have to get a bigger butterfly cage.