#lifereflections — Public Fediverse posts

A butterfly morning 🦋

Our little caterpillar completed her metamorphosis and became a beautiful Swallowtail butterfly!

It felt like Christmas morning, as I came down the stairs and saw her perched upside down on the tulle in the habitat box the kids had made for her.

What a wonderful surprise!The chrysalis

When we found the caterpillar in our garden, the kids decided to “raise” her in a diy caterpillar habitat. Then, they named the caterpillar Cali.

Of course, we weren’t really sure if the caterpillar was male or female, but the kids decided it was definitely a girl. Lol

We waited a little bit before releasing Cali because her wings were still damp and needed time dry off.

Once we felt it was the right time, we brought the butterfly box to the front porch and slowly opened the tulle we had placed on top of the container.

Cali didn’t fly out of the box right away, though. Her wings weren’t ready just yet. So, we spent some time ohhing and ahhing over her. 🥹🦋

Two of our neighbors walked by wanting to know why we were huddled together and the kids were squealing with delight.

We showed them Cali calmly resting on Travis’ hand, and one of the neighbors said she thought the butterfly was beautiful. 😊

And then all of a sudden, the butterfly fluttered her wings and flew off of Travis’ hand and onto Zephaniah’s chest.

The kids squealed again, and Zephaniah froze. But he had the biggest smile on his face.

A few minutes later, the butterfly flew up into the air and fluttered away.

💜 XO

#Butterfly #DailyBlog #DailyLife #Family #garden #LifeReflections #nature #SimpleLiving #SlowLiving #SwallowtailButterfly #SwallowtailCaterpillar

Broken sunflowers still bloom 🌻

In the springtime, Travis and I discovered volunteer sunflower sprouts growing in between the sidewalk.

I’m pretty sure the sunflower seeds were left behind in the wintertime by the birds and squirrels when I put up bird feeders.

So, we gently moved the sunflower sprouts to our garden bed.

Photo of one of the sunflower sprouts growing in between the sidewalk. 🌱

We managed to “rescue” six of the eight sunflower sprouts we found in the sidewalk. All six of the sprouts recovered from transplant shock and grew strong and tall.

But as many gardeners know, sunflower stems can still be fragile, especially during storms or when pesky squirrels are rummaging through your garden. 😏🐿

A squirrel broke the stem of one of our sunflowers. 😭🌻Another broken sunflower stem. 😫 This time the squirrel was stealing some of my cherry tomatoes, which is planted next to a sunflower.

The beautiful thing about sunflowers, though, is that they are resilient plants.

Despite nature’s challenges, sunflowers will try very hard to keep growing, even when broken. Sometimes they just need a little help.

This is something I have learned this gardening season.

She’s a fighter!

I was able to save one broken sunflower plant by trimming down the stem and placing it in a vase of water.

The sunflower still bloomed, and the bees loved it!

Another sunflower plant with a broken stem (thanks squirrel! 🐿😏) Travis was able to make a stick-based cast for it.

And the other day, that sunflower bud still bloomed!

Little Zaya (5) admiring our new sunflower bloom. 🥰🌻

It makes me happy that even though a couple of our sunflowers experienced hardships, we were still able to give the flowers a chance to complete their life cycle. 🌻😍

Despite being broken, the sunflowers served a great purpose by attracting the bees to our garden to pollinate our food plants (like our peppers 🫑 and tomatoes 🍅).

And perhaps there’s a lesson to be learned from broken sunflowers that keep blooming anyway. 😉🌻🙏🏽

💜 XO

#DailyBlog #DailyLife #encouragement #garden #Inspiration #lifeAdvice #LifeReflections #plants #SimpleLiving #SlowLiving #Sunflower

6-7 chicken nuggets

I don’t even remember how this whole “6-7” trend started, but it has certainly become part of our everyday life, hasn’t it? 😆

The latest addition to the trend? Six- and seven-shaped chicken nuggets. I’m not even joking. Lol!

The new 6-7 chicken nuggets sold at Aldi.

The kids spotted them while we were grocery shopping at Aldi, and of course they immediately wanted us to buy a bag so they could try them. 🤣

And the price of the nuggets?

Why, $6.70, of course.

This reminds me of when Domino’s featured their 6-7 pizza sale last —buy a large pizza for $6.70 using their promo code “67.”

Zhen (13) and Zechariah (11) checking out the new 6-7 chicken nuggets. 😆

The kids were so excited when they found out about it, that they asked us to please buy them the new Domino’s 6-7 pizza for our family Pizza Friday. 🍕🤣

And so we did, and nope, the pizza wasn’t shaped like the numbers six and seven. Didn’t taste any different, either.

But the kids thought it was funny, and it made us all laugh. Totally worth it, imo! 😂

💜 XO

#67 #Aldi #ChickenNuggets #DailyBlog #DailyLife #Family #Food #foodie #groceryShopping #LifeReflections #PopCulture #trends