City Farm Girl

My family and I live in the Bay Area, which is located in the Northern part of California. We got lucky, because when we moved, we found a great place that has a nice size back yard. My husband and my daughters work together with our neighbor to create a cool garden in our back yard. When the garden is in full bloom, we get tons of great veggies - squash, zucchini, tomatoes, lettuce and more. We also have 5 chickens, and get fresh eggs every morning.

With this, comes our pets that stay in our home. We have a lot of pets. Right now, we have 2 cats, 8 fish, and we are taking care of a friends snake. There are also deer in our neighborhood, if you can imagine that! So its no surprise to wake up and find a deer in your yard, just chillin'. But I love it all. I never thought in a million years, that I would have a little farm. I am a city girl at heart. But I have to admit, that this farm life is kinda cool... :-)

New Life

Every Summer, my daughters will find 1 or 2 caterpillars, and care for them until they hatch into beautiful butterflies. This butterfly (in the picture above) was taken care of by my youngest daughter. It is a beautiful process to watch, to see them go from caterpillar, to cocoon, to a beautiful butterfly. Once the butterfly emerges from its cocoon, it takes about 6 to 7 hours or longer for its wings to fully dry. And then the butterfly will eventually try to fly until it is successful. It's a great experience to see the growth and then to be able to released it to the world. If you ever decide to give this a try, one of the plants they eat is fennel. If you look closely at a local fennel plant, you will probably see little caterpillars. When you pick up the caterpillar, grab lots of fennel. They love it and will eat a lot of it creating and entering their cocoon. To learn more, check out this butterfly cycle of life photo below, or go to this google search.