Where the Wild Things Are

The Weather is warmer (notice I did not say it's actually WARM.....but it is warmer, which is good considering it's summer here in England; however, you won't see me putting my warm sweaters away anytime soon.

This means more time outdoors for us Bailey's.  We do venture outdoors during all the seasons but just tend to get more adventurous in the summer.

Yesterday we found a ragwort field near our home, that was filled with these beautiful yellow-and-black caterpillars.  My children asked if we could 'try butterflies' again, so after shaking the gruesome images from my head of the last time we tried this (*), we toted the ragwort caterpillars home.  

We brought home the ragwort
it came with 7 caterpillars!

one of our guests

Indigo painted the experience

They now enjoy their days in the comfort of a tattered aquarium being observed quite inquisitively by my offspring. We did look up what sort of butterfly we are to expect fluttering about after metamorphosis is complete, and learned we have some beautiful cinnabar moths in our care.  Will keep you posted!

their new home
notice the large plastic green caterpillar peering in at them?
that is my children's sense-o-humour

Today was more of a 'playground' yearning, so after a full days work, we ventured off to find one of our faves romps.  Unfortunately, we do need to drive a quick 5 minutes to get there, because the playground where we live is eensy-weensy and pathetic, not to mention this time of year it's brimming with foul mouthed teenagers who have no where to hang out. 

Our playground trip was even more eventful by the discovery of red and yellow wild plums covering the ground.  LOADS of them everywhere, and, as usual, no one bothered with them.  Free Food!!  I filled my backpack up (which required a good washing down later.....thanks to lots of squishy plums).

We brought these AND a backpack full of plums home

And yes, we shall be enjoying a wild plum tart later this evening (yum!)

(*) Okay, now to explain the 'gruesome images' from last time we tried to 'do butterflies'.  We basically had found a cute little caterpillar, brought it home, put it in a nice home full of sticks/leaves/water droplets.

Watched it grow, and grow.......then it just stopped doing anything.  Then, it started showing these strange squiggly outgrowths that multiplied. Over time, it began to look absolutely frightening. I later found out that the poor little thing had been injected with a parasitic wasp before we ever found it. What we witnessed was the poor little caterpillar being overtaken by the wasp larvae......ewwww.  here, take a peak if you want to see what it looks like.  Parasitic Wasp Larvae Emerging From Caterpillar