Face on with the swallow tail. |
Meet Me Outdoors
It is time to leave the indoor life and go explore the outdoors. Let's have an adventure.
Sunday, July 11, 2021
Butterflies and Other Backyard Finds
Monday, June 7, 2021
Cicada 2021
Cicada shell |
I went for a walk along a parking that was surrounded by many trees. And on the ground I found cicadas crawling about, and not crawling. I went off to go chat with friends and noticed something odd sitting on a rock. It wasn't moving, and looked like an insect of sorts. So me being me I snapped a picture thinking I will identify it later. After getting home on closer inspection of the picture, I figured out what I found, a cicada shell, the exoskeleton. It is the skin left behind from a molting larva into adult cicada form. Look closely and you will see a slit along the middle back and counting legs there are only four and not six. It also has a translucent quality to it. It's pretty cool when you think about.
Monday, February 1, 2021
Indoor Garden - First harvest!
It is nice that even while it is snowing outside I can still have my own bit of green and fresh produce. This is a great way to let kids see where food comes from, and grow their own salads and other veggies. Even if you don't get a fancy kit to create your own indoor garden there are other ways to start one. You can take empty food containers and fill with soil and plant seeds, get some small pots, or other recyclable containers, even toilet paper tubes can work for starting seeds. Take the tube, cut four slits on one end to fold over creating a cup, fill it with soil stand them up inside a cleaned food container, getting 4-6 of them in the container depending on size, and place by a window to watch the seeds grow. Remember to water them each day as needed. Enjoy your own indoor garden grow, Meet Me Outdoors.
Sunday, January 24, 2021
Indoor Gardening 2021
My indoor gardening over the years has typically been some version of volunteer garden. Or basically whatever mysteriously grows out of my compost is what gets to be watered and nurtured and let grow until it is finished its season. I have gotten squash plants and tomato plants out of it in the past. Not the best of produce but worked well enough. Last spring I did do some planting of basil seeds that I got and the result was quite nice. Fresh basil has been a great addition to my meals. Other seeds I tried planting a month ago didn't grow because I wasn't keeping up on my watering. That has been something I have forgotten to do even when I do walk by my window garden entering my kitchen all the time.
So this year I am trying something different. A garden system that will tell me when it needs water if I forget, and when to add nutrients, too. An AeroGarden. I am not one for brands or anything, but this is something I have wanted to try for many years. And now I have! It has been two weeks since I planted and four of the six pods have made some great progress. The other two I am giving another week before calling it, and the company has a guarantee if any of their pods don't grow by sending replacements.
I started this as a project for one of my classes, was hoping to do weekly check ins with my students to see how the plants progress over the semester. Then for fun I decided to do daily growth check ins in between the class time since the first sprouts were super exciting for me not to share. I took a couple pictures two to three times a day depending on when I was home or out. The resulting video was made with a stop motion app with eight frames per second timing.
I have yet to try any of the lettuce leaves, I am waiting until they get a bit bigger. For harvesting they say to just pluck the leaves and eat. Right now they are small so maybe next week or a week after that I will try one. I also have a plant your own seeds kit so I might add those in the spots where the plants didn't grow and see what may come out of it. I have some more basil seeds and some other herbs I can plant. It is early for planting outside, but this has been a fun way to bring the outside in. Looking forward to watch this continue to grow. Try some new ways to plant your own indoor garden or start some seeds for an outdoor garden and watch it grow, Meet Me Outdoors.