Adventures in Caterpillar Care (4)

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July 2 – July 9 with a lot of bigger and bigger luna moth caterpillars and a few cecropia moth caterpillars… an ongoing adventure.

I graduated to two large bins for the 40 or so luna moth caterpillars on 7/2 because the caterpillars seemed too crowded in one.

I moved the cecropia moth caterpillars to are larger bin too. They were still small but were beginning to look colorful…growing well on the sweet gum leaves.

I appreciated my neighbor with the sweet gum tree even more as the caterpillars got bigger. I made almost daily trips to get a bag of leaves! Pretty soon I graduated from my long-handled pruners to a pole saw because all the leaves were higher in the tree. The cecropias were eating well (I could find them more easily once they were in their own bin) and were still small enough to keep up with their food requirements.

One morning I thought I heard noises coming from one of the big luna bins. I made a movie to capture the sound of caterpillars eating (not loud….but I was pleased to capture the sound of caterpillars munching)!

The same day that I heard munching, I started to see some cocoons and noticing how big many of luna moth caterpillars had become.

The next morning I saw one that had changed color…as they sometimes do before building their cocoon.

I thought I left plenty of leaves in the bins for overnight….but when I came downstairs the next morning there was not a leaf left in either bin. It was a caterpillar emergency. I texted my neighbor and cleaned out the bins (put cocoons in a separate bin) and then went to get leaves. Fortunately, most caterpillars survived.

As I was cleaning out the bins, I found another caterpillar that had changed colors and put it in a small bin with violet leaves, and it immediately made a cocoon!

After the caterpillar emergency was dealt with, I had a shift in the Butterfly House. I took two larger caterpillars for the caterpillar display table and 4 cocoons for the display case. The cocoons contrasted nicely with the older cocoons already in the case because the leaf part was still green!

I got a collapsible case to put my other cocoons in so I can watch them emerge….and hopefully share the experience with the family that provided the leaves for the caterpillars.

The cecropia caterpillars will probably go to the Butterfly House at some point and maybe some of the luna moths when they emerge.

It’s been an exciting week…probably the peak sweet gum consumption of this adventure.

Previous Adventures in Caterpillar Care posts

Remains of a Bird

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I found the remains of a bird on our patio. It must have been there for a while – through several recent rains. It has been picked clean except for the more substantial wing feathers. It is about the size of a barn swallow; they nested under our deck again this year. The cause of death is not obvious, and I was relieved that it was unlikely caused by the bird flying into the glass of a window since there is not one nearby.

 My first thought was about how fossils of archeopteryx look because of how flattened it is except for the skull. I didn’t try to move it because it is out of the way and appeared to be glued to the pavement. The most nutritious part of the bird is already gone and I will let nature complete the process.

Adventures in Caterpillar Care (3)

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This post is about my adventures in caterpillar care from June 25 to July 1.

The cecropia moth caterpillars (4 of them) were moved to their own bin. They are slower developing than the luna moth caterpillars and started out still having lots of block bristles but had progressed to more colorful instars a few days later. They are still quite small.

My daughter sent me a picture of a ‘wild’ cecropia moth caterpillar on elderberry. Mine are eating sweet gum.  

There are 40+ luna moth caterpillars. They are bigger and go through sweet gum leaves faster. I replenish leaves twice a day in the big bin.

The big bin with a cooling rack to support the leaves works well. I take out the denuded twigs and put in new – using the rack to support the leaves well above the frass level. With 40 caterpillars – a lot of frass accumulates in just 24 hours!

To refresh the bin, I put a layer of paper towel in the bottom of a fresh bin, then move the cooling rack from the old bin to the new. There are always 3 or 4 caterpillars among the frass; if they will crawl onto a leaf, I use that to move them but otherwise, I cut the paper towel around the caterpillar and move it on the paper towel.

With the caterpillars eating so much more, I got some leaves from another sweet gum and also went to the Botanical Garden after a storm and found a branch that had be ripped off a sweet gum….lots of caterpillar food! I am saving the neighborhood tree for when I need a quick food source for the caterpillars. Sweet gum has the advantage of staying fresh for days in a closed bin….although it doesn’t last that long if there are 40 caterpillars in the bin!

Volunteering at the Library

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I helped set up the used book sale at one of our county libraries last Friday. It was different than last year because the room was in use until 5 PM so our set up was delayed until after that. In addition, it was raining all afternoon. I wondered if there were going to be a lot of wet boxes.

I got there about 10 minutes before the allotted time and there were indeed people in the room, so I worked on a jigsaw puzzle that the library had set up near a window while I waited. Other volunteers were arriving too – some with a load of book boxes in their cars (since it was raining – enclosed vehicles were required…the usual pickups could not be used).

After helping stack chairs and move tables to the periphery of the room, I got started on the children’s books like what I did last year. There was a table and a cart. The differences from last year were 1) more helpers and 2) less books (we estimated what we needed for the sale based on what happened last year). I had two helpers that loaded the bottom shelf of the cart, so I didn’t have any backache from this set up! We were done in less than an hour.

Ten Little Celebrations – June 2025

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Butterflies and birds…visiting a prairie and the place I spent some formative years….lot to celebrate in June.

Butterfly Festival. I volunteered at the Master Naturalist booth for the Butterfly Festival at the Springfield Botanical Garden. It was very well attended, and people seemed to be enjoying filling in the butterfly passport; I began to feel like a recording talking about the spicebush swallowtail as I handed out stickers…but kept going because the children’s excitement was contagious!

1st graders in the Caterpillar Café. 80 first graders and chaperones. I was glad the cabbages had caterpillars on them! The big message of the game I played with them was that most caterpillars don’t survive (i.e. they get eaten…baby birds need them!). I was glad I had prepared well enough that none of them cried!

Morning in the Butterfly House. I always choose the 10 AM to 12:30 PM shift in the butterfly house because it is the coolest time of the day…and, so far, every shift has been something to celebrate…and there are lots of aspects to celebrate: quiet time with butterflies/moths, watching caterpillars munching on leaves (or deciding to go walkabout), the development of fruit on the pawpaw trees, people (local and from around the world) enjoying the place.  

Luna moth caterpillars. This celebration is ongoing because the caterpillars are still growing. I celebrate every time I count and realize that the numbers munching is staying about the same (i.e. not much mortality). Every time they shed their skin and are noticeably bigger, I celebrate their survival and realize that I will have to ramp up the amount of leaves I provide.

Magnolia petals as seasoning. I celebrated my daughter’s introducing me to magnolia petals. I tried slivers in salad and a stir fry. I liked them best in the stir fry (a little strong raw). My son-in-law made kombucha with them…and I am looking forward to trying it.

Schuette prairie. My fourth prairie walk…and probably my last until it begins to cool down. I celebrated that I could identify some of the plants I’d seen on other prairies and saw bunchflower for the first time.

River Bend Nature Center. I visited Wichita Falls – where I attended grades K-10 in the 1960s - and celebrated the new-to-me River Bend Nature Center that is just the kind of place I would like to volunteer. There are aspects of our formative years that we seek to replicate in our lives….but this was an instance where I felt the place was still attuned to what I need now more than 50 years later.

Juvenile robins. I celebrated that the robins seem to spend more time in our yard…and the juvenile robins seemed to congregate in my shade garden. Maybe not using chemicals on the yard and leaving the leaves on the backyard through the winter has made a positive difference!

Missouri evening primrose. I celebrated the large yellow flowers of the native evening primrose I bought last month. It started blooming soon after I planted it and kept getting new buds.  

Hummingbird at our feeder. There is a female hummingbird that comes to the feeder on my office window multiple times a day. She gets a good long drink and seems to look at me before she flies way! I wonder if she is raising young birds nearby. Celebrating a relationship with a bird!

Zooming – June 2025

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The images I selected for this month’s Zooming post reflect the places I have been recently: the Butterfly House as the Springfield Botanical Gardens, my neighborhood and my home, the Ed Clark Museum of Missouri Geology in Rolla, the Dickerson Park Zoo, the Schuette Prairie, and the River Bend Nature Center in Wichita Falls TX. That’s quite a lot of variety during a single month! Enjoy the June 2025 slideshow!

Adventures in Caterpillar Care (2)

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My husband handled the feedings while I was in Dallas and Wichita Falls for 3 days; I left him plenty of sweet gum leaves (in the bin and in a vase to be added as needed). He managed although at one point they seemed so hungry that he thought they would run out food. The caterpillars were noticeably bigger with I returned home! I went to get fresh food the next morning…and that is when I started making some changes.

I opted to move the caterpillars to a slightly larger bin with a ruler added to hold the leaves above the coffee filters (and frass that accumulates very quickly). The fresh leaves that the old container held did not last 24 hours! I counted 40+ luna moth caterpillars and at least 3 cecropia moth caterpillars as I moved them on leaves to their new bin. It turned out that the larger bin was not big enough either since the leaves were almost all gone in 24 hours. The bigger caterpillars eat more than the newly hatched ones.

As they passed their 2-week-old mark, I moved the luna moth caterpillars to a large been with a cookie cooling rack to keep the leaves off the bottom. I have a paper towel layer there rather than coffee filters. Sometimes I can stick the twig through the metal grid so that the leaves stand up for easy caterpillar access. When I moved the luna mother caterpillars to the big bin, I counted 50 before I got sidetracked and lost the count! I’ll try to count each time I move them to a clean bin (probably every other day); they like to be under leaves so it is impossible to see most of them just looking down into the bin.

The luna moth caterpillars are now mostly green – which also makes them harder to see! How many do you see in the two pictures below?

When I moved the luna moth caterpillars to the big bin, I gave the cecropia moth caterpillars their own. There are 4 of them. They don’t grow as fast as the luna moths; they seem to like the sweet gum leaves (I tried maple leaves since some references list them as a popular food plant, but these caterpillars were already imprinted on sweet gum so they will continue to get it. The cecropia caterpillars are in the bin that I only used once for the whole group. It should work very well for them until they get very large.

Stay tuned for next week’s post about the continuing adventure.

Wichita Falls, Texas

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Instead of driving directly back home after visiting my dad in Dallas, I drove to a friend’s house near Decatur, TX. We’d been exchanging Christmas cards/notes for over 55 years but hadn’t seen each other since she moved away from Wichita Falls while we were in Junior High. We discovered there was a lot to share that hadn’t made it into the annual exchange! We had been communicating via text messages for more than a year and a half trying to find a time to meet in person…and we finally did. What a joy to reconnect like this! We are already planning a next visit…in Decatur again since she has family obligations that keep her at home.

After the visit, I continued to Wichita Falls. I spent some formative years there in the 1960s (grades K-10 for me) but had not been back for a long time. I opted to stay in a hotel near downtown. The blue clad building – the most distinctive of the skyline – was the bank where I had my first savings account (in elementary school); I was pleased that I could see it from my hotel room window. I was also impressed with the plantings around the hotel…lots of plants that thrive in higher heat and less water.

I drove by the house my parents built in the early 1960’s. It is well maintained except for some missing (decorative) shutters. The elementary school that I attended for grades 3-6 is still an elementary school. One difference that is noticeable from the outside is that the windows no longer open and some have been blocked rather than just covered with blinds; when I went to school there, it was not air conditioned, so the windows opened, and fans were in every classroom.  I’m glad that the students today have air conditioning!

I had done some research about Wichita Falls and opted to see the River Bend Nature Center – something that was built after I moved away. The conservatory was being renovated and not open…maybe I’ll have to visit again to see that.

Some of the animals normally in the conservatory were in the large classroom/store area of the nature center.

I decided to spend most of my time walking around the paved trail (there is also a rustic trail but I was wearing sandals and opted to stick to paved this time). What a wonderful place! Lots of trees, some benches (an Eagle Scout project), an area for outdoor gatherings (including a nature play space), native plantings. If I still lived in Wichita Falls, this would probably be the primary place I would volunteer!

It was good that I was at the nature center the first hour they were open since the day was going to be a hot one. I headed toward home – 6 hours….I-44 the whole way!

Road Trip to Dallas in June 2025

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The first three hours of my drive to Texas in June was very different than I expected – it was foggy. I left shortly before sunrise and kept thinking the fog was burning off, but it wasn’t totally gone until about 9 AM and well into Oklahoma. There were two accidents that had happened along my route. The first was a semi that had driven off into the median leaving deep ruts. The truck was just sitting there with its lights on…no emergency vehicles yet. It occurred to me that even though I could see cars in front of me, the distance ahead I could see was shorter than usual and required more concentration because the reaction time was not as great. At least the truck did not cross the median into oncoming traffic. I saw the second accident being cleaned up just as the fog seemed to be clearing; maybe when it happened the fog was one of the factors. There were at least two very badly damaged cars and lots of emergency vehicles.

I still made it to my dad’s assisted living residence at the usual time – even though I felt a little more stressed because of the morning driving conditions. He had finished lunch, and we went outside to water the plants my sisters are maintaining in the backyard of the home. Many are the same as my parents had in their last house. Now that the temperature in Dallas in in the 90s most days, the plants need watering every day.

Back indoors we did some PT, made some loops around the largest room and worked on a puzzle.

The next morning, I was back early enough that he hadn’t eaten breakfast yet. We went outside to water the plants again – and enjoyed sitting out on the patio until it was almost time for breakfast. I worked on the puzzle while he ate….and we finished the puzzle after he joined me to work on it! He is always thrilled when we finish one. He doesn’t see well enough now that he does as much with the puzzles, but he seems very pleased to feel the completed puzzle…confirming that all the ‘holes’ have been filled.

Adventures in Caterpillar Care (1)

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On the Saturday of the Butterfly Festival at the Springfield Botanical Garden, I got a small bin of caterpillars: mostly luna moth…but a few cecropia in their too. The were tiny. The luna caterpillars had white tuffs of bristles and black stripes. The cecropia were all black and were a little bigger. They had hatched the Tuesday before. There were some sweet gum trees in the garden, so I left after adding a few fresh leaves to the bin.

I had found a sweet gum tree in my neighborhood and the family that owned it had agreed to provide leaves. The caterpillars needed more leaves the day after I got them (even though they were very small there were a lot of them and they were hungry)! I put the bin in my daughter’s old wagon (over 30 years old) and took the caterpillars with me to introduce them to the family with their favorite food tree. We moved them to a new bin with additional fresh leaves that the children of the family retrieved by climbing the sweet gum! The caterpillars began to move off the older leaves to the new ones almost immediately.

A few days later, the caterpillars were noticeably bigger. The luna caterpillars looked greener, less bristles. The cecropia caterpillars were still black. I was glad I had some extra leaves in water ready to feed them. I had gotten better at moving them to a clean bin (coffee filters in the bottom…leaves leaned again the sides to make them easier for the caterpillars to eat).

Stay tuned as the adventure continues in the coming weeks…

Southern Magnolia Petals as Seasoning

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I was surprised when my daughter told me that southern magnolia petals were edible. My son-in-law has started a batch of kombucha using the petals for the flavoring. She brought two freshly picked petals from their tree for me to try. She and I ate one of the petals raw. They are very spicy…gingery with a hint of other flavors…pleasant. I put the second one in the refrigerator and used half of it to season a veggie stir-fry side for lunch the next day.

The flavor worked well with the mushrooms, carrots, and celery. The only other seasoning I used was onion flakes and a little salt. The flavor in the stir fry was milder than eating the petal raw…I enjoyed it because it was quite different than my usual stir fry seasoning. I slivered the other half of the petal and put it in a small container in the freezer to use later.

Most of the flowers are too high in the tree to harvest – but it is thrilling to utilize a plant for food that I always assumed was only ornamental. This seems to be the year for discovering edible plants well established around our homes (the earlier one was violets…they are much easier to harvest)!

Missouri Evening Primrose

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One of the native plants I added to my yard this past spring was Missouri Evening Primrose (Oenothera macrocarpa). It’s growing well near my mailbox – becoming established in an area that was mostly weeds previously.

The first flower opened after a lot of rain and looked a little bedraggled. The flowers are quite large and the petals not strong enough to hold a lot of water droplets.

The second flower was better – more the shape I expected. The plant probably is happier without quite as much rain as we’ve been getting recently. And the old flower had collapsed – added swirls and some orange along the veins…a beautiful last hurrah for the petals.

I hope that the plant produces seeds at some point because I have some other sunny places I would like to plant it!

Goldfinches

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The shady space between the pine and the hollies has become a more welcoming place for birds and insects since I replaced the grass with pine needles, hostas, lamb’s ear, violets and American Spikenard. The insects active on the flower stalks of the lamb’s ear are big enough to see from my office window. I know there are critters in the pine needles because I see the juvenile robins find them.

I had been considering trimming the low branches from the pine since there are so many plants growing under it. The juvenile robins I saw a few weeks ago tended be in the higher branches before they dropped to the pine needles.

I changed my mind after I observed some American goldfinches using the lowest branches to survey the shade garden. One of them perched long enough for me to get pictures through my office window.

My small Canon Powershot SX730 HS is going to stay near my mousepad….ready to photograph birds enjoying the shade garden!

Clover Cushions

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One of the experiments in my backyard is not mowing areas that seem to have more clover growing in them. They look like ‘cushions’ in the otherwise mowed yard….an artsy look that doesn’t challenge the neighborhood yard police (as long as it is in the backyard…I’m not trying it in the front).

The idea is to let the plants grow, bloom, and produce seed…only mowing them infrequently…or maybe not at all.

Clover is a nitrogen fixing plant and its roots are generally deeper than grasses in the lawn – both positives from my perspective. It is a good way to improve the soil and stabilize the slope. Maybe eventually the whole west side of the backyard will be clover with some prairie plants mixed in.

Our Missouri Neighborhood – June 2025

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I walked around our neighborhood in early June and noticed juvenile robins and territorial male red-winged blackbirds. The grackles were making the most noise; there seem to be more of them around this year.

The moss on the side of the channel down to our storm water ponds is thicker than I remembered; May was much wetter than average this year and the moss is probably responding to that increase in moisture.

The turtles were sunning on the edge of the pond. I photographed them from across the water. By the time I was on the same side, there was only one left on the shore. They are very quick to slip into the water at the slightest disturbance.

I didn’t see any ducks or geese or herons. There were quite a few people out already, so perhaps they had left for more remote ponds if they had been around earlier.  

Moving to Missouri Anniversary

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We moved to Missouri in June of 2022, so this is our third anniversary of being in the state and our house. I’m thinking about how much I have settled in.

There are boxes that were not unpacked in the first 6 months after we moved that are still unpacked. They are obviously things we shouldn’t have moved from Maryland. It’s not a lot but I am now thinking more seriously about how to convince my husband that we can get rid of them!

The yard is trending toward more native vegetation and less grass. It is slow going but I enjoy the process. It seems like the changes are beginning to snowball in terms of more birds visiting out yard in recent months. ‘Leaving the leaves,’ ‘no mow’ areas, and no fertilizers/herbicides/insecticides in combination is better than each one alone! I let Virginia creeper become the ground cover in my front flowerbeds, and they look very lush; the vines extend toward the front porch and have covered a bit of the steps up to our front porch making the entry look inviting rather than sterile concrete/brick.

Over the past year I have taken classes at the local university – something I hadn’t done in Maryland – and become a Missouri Master Naturalist so that I could do the type of volunteering that I did in Maryland. I am on track to volunteer at about the same level as pre-Covid this year. I am not as confident yet that I know as much about Missouri as I did Maryland – but I know enough to be comfortable with the naturalist activities I am choosing.

I’ve seen quite a bit more of the state with either my husband or daughter over the past year as well but am realizing there is a lot more to see. It easier to learn the physical aspects of the state than the social nuances, but maybe that was true occasionally in Maryland too. Over the course of this past year, the classes and volunteer gigs have provided opportunities for me to interact with more people…and that’s a good thing.

Our motivation for moving to Missouri was to be closer to where our daughter lives…and it is a nice bonus that we like our house and Missouri too!

My Missouri Yard – May 2025

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There is always something happening in my yard this time of year. I often notice the mushrooms when I mow. There are several different kinds…most often near the place in our front yard where a tree was cut down sometime before we bought the house. There is still a lot underground that the fungi are decomposing.

I noticed a crane fly in the white pine as I was mowing….right at eye level.

The common saxifrage (Saxifraga stolonifera) was growing in a protected corner flowerbed on the east side of our house when we bought it. The plant has overflowed the bed and bloomed profusely this spring….a benefit of not mowing an area that is very shady and was beginning to be mossy. It is not a native plant, but it has deeper roots….will hold the soil on the slope better than moss…and better than grass too!

The rose bushes are blooming…recovered again from dying back during the winter. The wildflower patch I planted the first year is doing well…although I am realizing that not all the flowers are natives. I am letting it continue this year but will have to begin taking out the non-natives next year.

The mock strawberry (Potentilla indica) seems to be in several places in my yard. It is invasive but I am not doing anything to get rid of it at this point.

I have a hummingbird feeder on my office window for the first time this year….we don’t have a lot of ruby throated hummingbirds, but enough of them come by to make it worthwhile to keep it clean and full of sugar water!

Zooming – May 2025

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May was full of blooms both in my yard and places I visited close to home: Springfield Botanical Garden, Springfield Nature Conservation Center, road cuts along US 65, Harold Prairie, Noah Brown’s Prairie, and Linden’s Prairie. I am realizing that the work I did to create a new shade garden (with American Spikenard and hostas growing in pine needle mulch) is a magnate for fledgling/juvenile robins….such a joy to see them from my office window. The month was a great one for being outdoors – even if it meant dodging thunderstorms!

In a Waiting Room

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Last week my husband was scheduled of out-patient surgery. The situation had changed significantly from my January 2022 outpatient surgery experience when Covid-19 protocols closed waiting rooms. The expectation now is that patients have a person, usually a family member, that stays at the waiting room during the surgery. We left for the hospital at 5 AM and were home by a little after 11 AM.

We went to the lobby registration desk for initial sign in…and were given a buzzer like restaurants sometimes use. Within a few minutes of sitting down, the buzzer went off and we went with an administrative person to make sure all the payment information was correct. Back in the waiting room for a few minutes…and we were called again by a person to take us back to the pre/post op area. I helped my husband into the hospital gown and socks….put all his clothes in a bag that I would keep (that was the expectation…and I found myself wishing his clothes were not as bulky). The anesthesiologist and surgeon came to talk to us. By 7:15 AM he was prepped and on his way to the OR and I was on my way to the waiting room. I had been given a number so I could track his status on the screens there. I checked in at the desk …in anticipation of the surgeon coming out after the surgery was complete to talk with me.

I filled the time between 7:15 AM and 9:35 AM in that waiting room. Getting a pastry from the bakery/café for breakfast was my first activity. I had loaded some novels on my phone for reading material. I made 3 Zentangle tiles. The time passed relatively quickly. The area was not crowded but it was clear that there were quite a few morning surgeries. One man lay down on one of the longer bench chairs and napped. Most people were reading on their phones; I didn’t hear a single phone ‘ring’ so people must have followed direction to silence them. The green plastic bags with patient’s clothes were near every person in the waiting room! I kept my daughter apprised of the everything via texts.

Everyone must have been a little anxious…most seemed hyper alert (except for the one person that slept) but at the same time relatively calm and appreciative of the quiet, calm demeanor of people at the reception desk in the room….they set the tone.  

The waiting room had small rooms at each end where the conversations with the surgeon could happen in private. There was a picture of a dogwood in bloom on the wall in the room I was assigned. The surgeon came in…reported positive results…talked about the recovery instructions which would be printed and provided to us by the nurse. I was back in the waiting room for a few minutes before they gave me a post op room number where my husband was.

He was groggy still from the anesthesia. He seemed to be very challenged to rank the amount of pain he was feeling. It took about an hour for him to eat a snack and get dressed…meet the criteria for being released.

I called my daughter to meet us at our house since I wasn’t sure how mobile he really was. When we got home, I held onto his arm to go into the house…and used the path with the fewest steps. It was slow going but we managed, and he immediately took a nap. The pain med he was given just before he left the hospital had taken effect!

Fledging Robins

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The first brood of robins in our yard has fledged! I’m not sure where the nest was but I have been seeing the fledglings looking and finding food in the area between our eastern white pine and hollies…among the pine needles, hostas, wild strawberries and violets.

They are smaller than the adults and transitioning to adult plumage. They still have a few white marks on their head and back…and their breast is not all red yet. At first, they are clumsy fliers too; one grabbed onto the screen of my office window and held on for a few seconds before fluttering down to the flower bed below.

I am celebrating that my work to transition the area from grass over the past two years (i.e. adding pine needles collected elsewhere in the yard to those already there from the white pine, transplanting hostas, letting the wild strawberries/violets/lambs ear encroach, and adding an American Spikenard) has resulted in a place the young robins found…and found food!