Compost

Thursday mornings we are up and out the door early. So last Thursday it was breakfast on the go. I packed up our stuff and ran out the door. I passed the food back as I was driving and everybody ate. After Ella was finished with her banana she turned to Isaac, who had just finished eating his banana, and told him to throw his peel in the compost. It was a very proud moment for me. You see I'm big on composting. When we got home I asked the kids to unload the breakfast trash and I asked for the banana peels. Ella told me "We put them in the compost." "How" I asked her, "we just got home." "Me and Isaac made a compost pile in the car." she told me. She was so proud of herself. She had the biggest smile on her pretty little face. So I just smiled and told her that I was very happy that she is composting but if she could do it in the back yard that would make me even more happy. So she quickly moved her compost pile to the back yard. I love that girl. These kids ROCK!

We have larvae

So this morning we went out to check for larvae and tada we have em!They are kinda ugly. So we'll have more "ladies" to help in the garden. It was cool this morning so I am kinda worried about my growing watermelons. They are getting bigger every day. This is the watermelon Ella was holding the other day.And look at what I found today!Another watermelon! I do have to move this puppy on the inside of the garden since its just hanging there. We picked one cantaloupe and several bell peppers.

Sayonara Aphids

So along with my bloomin garden and the hustle and bustle of cool bugs coming around, we encountered our first "bad" bug. Well not just one, but tons, of aphids! They are tiny green dots that eat your beautiful plants. I found them one morning and decided to wait and see what happened. Little did I know that these little things would quickly multiply to tons of little green dots on my plants. YUCK! They gave me the ebbie geebies!!After confirming with my hippie daughter, Alexis, that they were aphids we called all the local stores for lady bugs. She also informed me that aphids are asexual that's why there were so many. Home Depot, Lowes, and Callaways didn't have any! So I called the nursery I should have called called first.DUH! That place has everything and more! Of course they had my ladybugs. So I headed on down and bought a container full of them 1500 to be exact. I took em out of the refrigerator and put those little ladies to work. The kids were so excited! Isaac held the container and quickly put it down and told me his body was itchy. I think the lady bugs gave HIM the ebbie geebies. The hippie wanted them to crawl on her, surprise, surprise.Notice Isaac was no where to be found. Did you know that "the ladies" can eat up to 50 pests per day? Just look at them work.After a few days of feasting and drinking water the container said they would begin to lay eggs. WOOHOO! More ladies to help in the garden, how exciting. So one morning when hippie was checking on the ladies she ran in and told me they were all mating. Avery (8yo) said, "their what?" So I explained that in a couple of days we'll have more ladies! We all ran out to see em. After their mating party we saw that they stayed a couple more days.We're still checking daily to see if we spot any larvae which look like like alligators with orange spots that will turn into lady bugs 2 weeks later. I'll let you know if we spot any. Meantime we have said Sayonara to the aphids, and we couldn't be happier. By the way we couldn't miss a learning opportunity so we are now studying about the ladies that were so helpful. I'll post pictures later.