Giant millipedes mating in the path. Get a room, you guys! A daddy-long-legs orygy? Where are the mama-long-legs? This little guy looks up to no good…. This past week I did a presentation on Sustainable Agriculture for my mom’s college class. Just like last time, it made me lose hope for humanity a little…
Author: toadstoolsfairyrings
Roselle, Early Cassava, and Eggplants
I am feeling a little overwhelmed by the roselle this year. Despite the serious neglect this year, there wasn’t the usual mortality rate on the transplants, and we ended up with six enormous bushes. They are all flowering at once. I picked the whole gallon pail full off of only one side of the row. …
Spontaneous Sack Race
A spontaneous feed-sack race was going on yesterday afternoon. These things are surprisingly fun to play with. There’s so much you can do with it. Stuff like this gets so many more play-miles on it than anything you can buy. Clothilde realized you can go WAY faster if the sack goes on the other…
The Tower
Mrs. Gophy, our neighbor Gopher Tortoise, had a little one hatch out this year. Last year there were three, this year there was only one that we saw. Newborn tortoises are so unbelievably small! Clothilde named it Sandy before it crawled away. An interesting thing happened to me last week. It all started Thursday evening…
Mabon/Michaelmas
This week is Michaelmas, the equinox, the start of autumn. It’s still hot, but not like some years. In the evenings, the wind sweeps over the east hill at the farm, and blows cool. It blows colored, dying leaves down, too, and twists the yellowing bramble bushes. Some years we really celebrated this holy time,…
Fall begins with Leaves
I used to laugh sarcastically when anyone mentioned September being autumn here in Florida. It always seemed to me that we never quite had anything but autumn, starting in November, and ending in February. Some years there are a few weeks of actual “winter” in January, but autumn certainly didn’t start in September. I remember…
Perfect Gardening Days
Ferocious squash vine Saddleback caterpillar on the old hammock I’ve been having writer’s block. Everything seems so rainy and boring – hardly worth writing about. I get my kids fed, and chores done, and then I escape into a Diana Wynn Jones book. I am in the middle of The Dark Lord of Derkholm,…
Rain, Rain, Rain
A gorgeous Imperial moth that was in the barn Really the only one word sums up the past few days – sopping. Buckets of rain. Three inches in one afternoon (in the space of a couple of hours). That was the day I felt like I was walking through a sprinkler. The afternoon sun was…
Changes in the Air
May got half of a poke bush stuck on her head! In-town it is still very hot and muggy, with clouds of mosquitoes. But at the farm there are hints of fall. It’s still hot, and it’s still humid, but there’s something about the air. The smells are different, and in the eveinings cool breezes…
Early Morning Sun and South Florida
On Saturday Ethan went out to do the chores very early so we could drive to South Florida to visit Ethan’s Grandmother for her birthday (she’s 97 this year!).It’s amazing how different it looks out there in the morning. We are usually there in the evening for the late afternoon/sunset. The shadows, light, and wildlife…
Quote 1
Not much to say today, but I wanted to share a short quote from Louis Bromfield’s The Farm, which I think is especially poignant for these times. (Published in 1932, it is too bad that this is largely a forgotten book. Incidentally, Ethan picked up this book at a Starbucks while he was travelling for…
Toadstools And Fairy Rings 