The Children of Huong Shi

I hope I got that name right. I stumbled across this 2008 movie about the life of a young Oxford graduate that visited China during the Japanese take over of pre-WWII , saw a need and became a hero to a group of 60 Chinese orphans, leading them over mountain passes to safety near Mongolia.  It is quite an amazing story.  Researching the story, it touched my heart to see what just one person can do in spite in insurmountable odds. He was a "given" life. See the movie  if you get a chance.

Dare to be a butterfly!

We have had our Pentas and Mexican Milkweed for  a few years now. We went to a class at the nature center on butterfly gardens and the speakers gave us all free baby plants to start a garden. At  first Jason and Teri got sidetracked and dug a 3 foot deep hole in the back yard and filled it with water. They were going to do it right and start off with a Bog Garden. It was a mosquito nursery so we filled it in and  proceeded to simplify our project. We embarked on making our own  Butterfly Garden and were quite successful in that we did attract a herd, gaggle, flock????? of butterflies laying an "ocean" of eggs.  We have tried numerous efforts to observe the whole amazing process but this year we just tried the window sill in the kitchen and it worked out amazingly well. We have had butterflies emerging for the last 2 weeks. We just escort them outside and they fly off to other destinations- like Mexico! It has been fun. If you check out thte pictures closely, you will see a little red bug. He has been there the entire time, checking out the caterpillars, cocoon and the butterflies. Once 2 caterpillars met head on and appeared to actually fight for a bit and it certainly looked like the little red bug was intent helping settle the dispute. For lack of a better name, I will call him Speedy Red Bug.Tonight he is still there and still on guard. Anyone know if he is an offical companion?Well, this is just one of the many odd things we do at our house.