Santa Visited Cochrane.m4v

To view click on this link;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FeqvgmJkXQ&list=WL

Christmas in Cochrane

Where does the time go? It seems like it was just summer and I was rearing butterflies, tagging butterflies and releasing butterflies and now Christmas is over and New Years is almost here.

Wedding

Ken and Shavon's wedding was wonderful!
We arrived in Norway House, Tuesday evening. It rained every day before the wedding, Friday morning arrived and the rain had stopped. The sun came out about 1/2 hour before the wedding, just in time to heat up the church. LOL

Ken and Shavon's wedding was the event of the decade, more people in the church than ever before (ran out of chairs for the first time) and the social had more people at it than the York Boat Day's socials for both 2009 and 2010.

Hurray! I have a daughter now! Thanks to Nora for sharing her with us.

Mystery Solved

My beautiful spiky caterpillar is an American Lady. It is a true Bush-footed Butterfly. The American Lady is not in any danger at this time. Probably because the caterpillars eat a species of plants that are readily available. The caterpillars eat plants in the sunflower family and burdock is one of those plants. I think my little one started off on my Black-eyed Susan flowers as they are right beside the Pussy-toes. Both of those plants are in the family of plants that they use for food. However now that it has been eating a steady diet of Pussy-toes it doesn't want anything else so I had to put some more pussy-toes into a pot for him as most of the ones in the first pot are all eaten. I hope it becomes a chrysalis soon as I don't think I can keep potting up my pussy-toes. A great website for butterfly information is http://www.butterfliesandmoths.org

A New Caterpillar and a Mystery

I found this little guy eating my pussy toes so I collected some pussy toes in a pot and will rear him to see what he is. I thought at first he was a Painted Lady but he doesn't match the pictures.

Summer Holidays Have Begun

Hurrah!
Yesterday was my last day of work until September!
Now the serious countdown to Wedding begins. Just 15 days! So much to do!

This chrysalis formed Monday, June 19 and will be a Monarch Butterfly any day now!

In the picture on the right you see the caterpillar is hanging in a J. It will soon be changing into a chrysalis.

Ken is in town!

Ken is in town!

Only 25 days till his wedding! (17 hours, 55 minutes and some seconds). He says even more importantly 29 days to the honeymoon in Jamaica. 187 days to Christmas.

June is almost gone!

May is a blur and June is almost gone!
Monarch Butterflies arrived in good numbers and I have a caterpillar at 2 of my schools as well as eggs at one school. I have also given eggs to several neighbours, of which 3 have already hatched.
The black dot on the leaf to the right is a Monarch egg that is about to hatch. This egg hatched on Tuesday June 8th. The caterpillar beside the penny is the one from the June 8th egg when it was 5 days old, and the other picture was taken today. This little guy is growing slowly due to the air conditioning in my house.

Amazing Spring

It is April 18 and we have been getting temperatures in the double digits. Usually our weekends are very quiet. Take Ballou for a walk or two, go to church with Aunt E, do some chores and relax at home. So of course when one has a weekend to do something it seems like that is when everything happens. Ken and Shavon came down to take care of some wedding preparations, Bruce was in town from BC and I had a party light party to go to. Oh and part of our fence blew down during the week so Len and the neighbor who shares that fence were working on it.
Ballou doesn't mind that the fence is down... she gets to play with Max.

End of the Break

Well my holidays are almost over, it has been busy and would have been nice to have an even longer break as I didn't get everything done.
Ah well there is always the summer break.
We had amazing weather at the beginning with temperatures in the teens. Last night we had snow but it has all melted now.

Spring is truly here!

March 26 I saw my first Robin of the season. While the return of the geese is one of the signs of spring for me it isn't really here until I hear or see my first robin.
This male was fun, as when I first heard him I said to Len, "That is a robin!" and immediately a chickadee chirped, to which Len said "no, it is a chickadee." Two more times that happened before Len finally heard the robin and then we saw him at the top of a spruce tree.

The Closing

Wow! What an Olympics! Today's mens Hockey game was intense! Yay Canada!

Gotta love the closing!
Michael J. Fox loved your rant!

Well Tamarea, I hope you enjoyed it and Magnus as a volunteer, I know you had a grand time!

Sochi 2014! Can we do it again!
I Believe!

The Olympics

Well, they are here! Yesterday was quite the day, first the death of the Georgian Luger, so sad and tragic! I am glad he was honoured at the opening ceremonies.
The opening ceremonies, WOW!
I hope Magnus has a great time volunteering, I'm sure he will.
John, Deb and Tamarea, have fun! We are thinking of you all.

Go Canada! I Believe!