Happy Butterflies

We have a little butterfly that really likes to hang around our house. We see it flitting everywhere, hanging out by the hundreds on the west wall of the house, or in the oak trees. It's very busy and flies very fast in crazy circles. We frequently see them chasing each other in butterfly battles. I had a laugh one day watching a Mocking Bird try to catch one (unsuccessfully.)

This morning I was attracted by the sight of a trail of ants going up my oak tree (I'll get back to the butterflies.) I needed to check this out and make sure the ants weren't chewing on my tree, or tending any aphids. I was busy trying to follow the trail of ants around the tree when my husband came out to say good-by in the morning.

 I said good-by distractedly, "Sorry, I'm following these ants."

Peach Butter

Its peach time! Our lovely peach tree blessed us with abundant peaches again this year, so I am on the look-out for ways to use and preserve all that wonderful bounty. My efforts to make peach jelly last year did not turn out too well, so instead this year I decided to make peach butter. I figure if they love apple butter, they will love peach butter too.

After picking some ripe peaches, we sorted them out into two piles. The perfect ones got put in a pretty bowl on the counter. The not so perfect ones - the ones the birds took one bite out of - filled up a colander. These were the ones destined for the peach butter.

Usually recipes for peach butter have you boil and peel the peaches, cut them up and sieve them. That is VERY messy and time consuming. We simply pitted the peaches cutting out any bad spots or bird pecks, and blended them skin and all (in a Vita Mix.)

 

Our Laundry to Landscape Greywater Project, Part 2

We have finished our Laundry to Landscape Greywater Project! It has been operational for a few weeks now and we are very happy with it. Click here to see part one of this post. Part one also has the link to the plans that we used.

Picture of the out-side part of the setup. You can see where the hole was drilled into the brick in the wall of our laundry room. This contraption allows air to escape the system, and has a back flow valve to keep dirty laundry water from going back into my washer. It also has a spot where you can hook in your regular garden hose into the system. (Part one shows the inside part of the system. The inside part has a valve that lets us direct the water into the sewer or out to the garden.)

The PVC pipe goes off to the left and meets up with a flexible water line at the fence line.

Mulch basin, empty. Garry is positioning an awl to drill a pilot hole in the water line. Once the water line is drilled, the white flower pot you see will have two large holes drilled into it to receive the water line. Water will drip out the small hole in the water line into the mulch basin - the whole thing will be covered over with mulch. The flower pot keeps the water line up out of the dirt and mulch, so that the hole does not get clogged.