I have been thinking about this entire financial meltdown of late, thinking alot about it to be honest and I am thinking perhaps that there could be a silver lining to the entire thing. Lets face it Americans have become a nation of consumers, mostly on credit. The average American family has credit card debt of $30,000.00. They have that debt because they bought what? Groceries? Nope, while some people use their credit cards for groceries the majority do not. Fuel? Yes, perhaps. With gas prices being what they are it could be accepted that people are using their credit cards to fill up their vehicles, but probably not. But remember this 30,000 in credit card debt occurred and was accumulated PRIOR to the current financial crisis so chances are (and I would guess the odds are really good) that the 30,000 is as a result of people going out shopping, as a hobby, as opposed to a necessity, and buying stuff they neither need, probably don't want, and ultimately have no place to store. I have a simple equation, if you live in a standard three bed two bath home and you have to rent a storage unit to store stuff, then guess what, you have too much stuff. Perhaps this entire financial meltdown will make people stop and think, shopping is NOT a hobby, it is a chore, you go shopping when you need something, like food, or a new pair of shoes cause your old ones have worn out, you don't go out shopping because your current pair of shoes are blue and this year everyone is wearing green. Perhaps it is time to darn socks instead of throwing them away. Perhaps it is time to get that appliance or TV repaired when it breaks down as opposed to throwing it in the landfill and buying a new one. Perhaps it is time to get that car repaired and regularly serviced as opposed to going and buying a new one. Perhaps it is time to indulge in the ultimate recycling, buying clothes from thrift stores. Perhaps it is time for more people to grow more of their own food, and therefore cutting down on pesticides and additives that go into their food. Perhaps it is time to insulate homes so they use less power, use the fireplace for what it was created to heat the home, time to reuse sour cream cartons for food storage instead of buying food storage containers from the store. Time to reuse grocery bags as opposed to collecting more every time you go to the store. Time to join Freecycle.org and offer your unwanted stuff to people who could probably use it, or even find something that someone has that you could use. You might be surprised to know that people would actually want your piles of leaves from your lawn, or even your lawn cuttings, people who have compost piles LOVE those things. Time to stop throwing things in the trash that someone out there can find a use for. Time to change all your lightbulbs from the regular type to the new energy efficient type. Time to use old t-shirts as rags as opposed to using paper towels. Time to donate all of that stuff you have accumulated and that you have no use for to a local homeless shelter or to a local thrift store. How many coats do you have in your closet? How many do you wear? How many have you not worn for a year or more? This financial fiasco is going to mean that alot more people are out on the streets, and are going cold. Donate your unused coats to the local homeless shelter, and while you are at it, donate some food too.

If this situation can change people's mindset and turns them into a nation of savers, a nation of recyclers, a nation of givers, instead of a nation of mindless consumers then perhaps there is hope.

Itis amazing to me how much we rely on our computers and the internet and we kind of take them for granted, until they are no longer there. Such is my life right now. My puter died, I have been trying to fix it for months, and yet no joy. I feel quite bereft that I have not been able to blog, but I now have a temporary lap top to get me on line until the beast is fixed, hopefully the surgery will not cost an arm and a leg.

There is one thing that I am constantly reminded of, and that is that mother nature has a sense of humour. I am almost convinced that she indulged in her own "recreational plants" *ahem* once in a while when she was doing the inventing. The Tussock Moth caterpillar is a case in point, I can just imagine Mother Nature with her various helpers (are they elves, or dwarfs or fairies I don't know) after having imbibed some substance or another saying "ha ha ha, yeah give it two horns up front, but you know give it another one on its butt!, and make it really fuzzy, with some blobs on its back ha ha" I can then imagine her waking up the next morning with a serious headache saying "what the hell was I thinking?"

[[http://www.richard-seaman.com/Arthropods/Usa/Caterpillars/NorthernIllinois/WhiteMarkedTussockMothCaterpillar.jpg]]

The same premise applies when it comes to the Golden Tortoise Beetle. The Golden Tortoise Beetle eats morning glory plants, and their relatives (which is why my sweet potato vines look like lace doilies right now), so one would assume that they would be green, or brown, or even in a moment of madness be pink to match the flowers. But no, mother nature decided to make the little dudes Gold, and I don't mean gold as in a nice yellow, or some such thing, I mean that they actually look like tiny blobs of liquid, molten gold. It baffles me, it really does, why would they be gold? And if you don't believe me here is a photo I took today.


Now granted they spend their entire life on the underside of leaves so they don't get seen but why make them gold? Like I said, sense of humour. There are other colours of tortoise beetles, one for instance looks like a ladybug with a see-through crash helmet on, as in here



There are also black ones with the same see through crash helmet on. Mother nature has a sense of humour, I just hope we all get the joke.

This morning I slept late, not like me, but for a moment it was just a joy to wake up, look at the clock, and then turn over and go back to sleep. When I finally roused myself I let the dogs out and we all went out to the patio. Through my sleepy eyes I noticed a flash of black on the fennel, a sure sign that a butterfly had hatched that morning (the second one to hatch to my knowledge and the second one I have missed this year), still busily pumping blood from her abdomen into her wings she was hanging on to the fennel for dear life.



I watched her for a while, as she caught her breath, and just gloried in the fact that she had wings, and I smiled, until off she went, on her new wings, and took a little bit of me with her. I just so love being me sometimes, in the moments when the things I have done result in something like this, in a moment, when a butterfly comes into being because of something that I did, when a butterfly flies off with my stamp on it, goes into the world and for whatever brief moment beautifies it, I just so love being me. I can't change the world, but I can change it one butterfly at a time. Damn, it is good to be me.

It is a very exciting time in the garden for me, particularly on the caterpillar front. The two earliest black swallowtail caterpillars on my bronze fennel heard their internal alarm clock go off and realized that it was time for them to become butterflies. As they do (under my watchful eye) they set out to find a sturdy stalk on which to attach themselves to become a chrysalis. This is a painstaking process, involving alot of forehead rubbing and cheek rubbing and sniffing, all of which, I am assuming is attempting to discover if the stalk which they are scoping out is going to be long lasting and strong enough to support their purposes. I watched one last weekend, (thankfully for me he chose the butterfly weed stalk that was fairly accessible, sometimes they choose an almost impossible location). So I sat on my patio chair and watched, sweat pouring down my face, but too fascinated to go indoors. After said stalk had been thoroughly inspected and found suitable for the purpose the cheek rubbing began, this is a process (it is hard to see with the naked eye) whereupon the silk required to anchor the chrysalis to the stalk is laid down.



and of course the entire stalk has to be anchored with silk, seeing as it has to support the weight of a fat butterfly at some point.



As I was watching this I noticed quite a commotion on the bronze fennel, it would appear that little dude was really annoying big dude as little dude insisted on following big dude around (I suppose it is akin to a five year old following his 15 year old brother around saying "watcha doin?")



Big dude twitched a few times to let little dude know he was not impressed but when little dude didn't get the message what followed was the funniest thing I have seen in my garden for a long time. A caterpillar beating up on another caterpillar. He literally turned around and started smacking little dude with his head.



Eventually little dude got the message and went to another piece of the fennel. Interestingly enough, the little dudes you see in the photograph are now, just one short week later, the size of the big dude you see in the photograph, it really is incredible how fast they grow.

Eventually the caterpillar I was monitoring turned for the last time and sat motionless. I knew that by the following morning he would be attached to the stalk by just his head and his rear end with his center section arched out to form a "c" and after he had shed his skin he would be a chrysalis, which he is as we speak. I will monitor them now of course, hoping to catch one hatching. Three others have since set out on their journey from the fennel to the surrounding plants, one other is on another butterfly weed stalk and two are on grass stalks. Luckily all are in places that I can monitor them. In a worrying development many, many more eggs have been laid on the fennel, and I am not sure it will be sufficient to sustain the soon-to-be caterpillars, looks like an emergency run to pender pines is in order.

So as I said last year, and as Hermione said in "Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban" so now we wait.