(a week ago)

Fly away, little lady, and start the process over again.

And then the cocoon hatched!

So it turned itself into a cocoon…

And eventually, it decided it was being sick of being a caterpillar…

So, one of those fennel thieves escaped my eye and wandered over to my dill, where it grew and grew. I decided to put it in a jar and watch it grow some more…

My cilantro has gone to seed! That means time for coriander, some of which will be planted for more cilantro. Yum yum yum.

This was on a porch post and I did a little excited WTF-Are-You squee and dance and tripped over the doorframe running back in to grab my camera.
It remained unimpressed.

Fennel Thieves, originally uploaded by Dr. Meow Mix.

These are black swallowtail caterpillars (first instar). Or, rather, were.  If they had made it without being noticed awhile longer I might have said “well done,” and picked them off and tossed them elsewhere.  But they didn’t.

So, once, there was a barrel. In that barrel there was dirt, and some other stuff. Some of that other stuff sprouted, and this sprouting was not expected, but that’s how my garden tends to grow.
I assumed the sprout was cucumber, because, well, it sort of looked like it might be and I wanted cucumber but hadn’t planted any.
And then one day I saw a blossom. A squash-y kind of blossom. And so I assumed that the cucumber was actually a pumpkin.
And THEN one day I saw fruit where that blossom had been. And it was a butternut squash.
And so I went to take a picture but it was so freaking hot outside and I had just watered things and then brought the camera from the air conditioned house into the hellscape of the outdoors, and the lens fogged up and I got this sort of dreamy effect that I kinda liked, but not as much as I liked the idea of getting the eff back inside before I passed out and roasted like a pig (sans spit).
The moral of the story is: THERE WILL BE SOUP.
This is often the moral of my garden stories. Maybe I should look into that.