30 Days wild - day 20

Today I bring you an update on the cinnabar caterpillars, they are now three days old and getting larger as you can see. The leaf they hatched on is now half gone.

They still haven't got their orange and black stripes yet, but we will keep you posted on their progress.

Caught this little bee feeding nearby just after the rain. We had seen hundreds of bees earlier at the allotment, there is a vacant plot near our plot and at the moment it is filled with poppies and bees. Wonderful to stand and watch!

At home later in the day, the children noticed that the rain had brought out many snails and decided to have a snail race. Snails are one of my daughter's garden favourites.

Quick July Update.

It has been so busy here lately, we have had three birthdays and an anniversary, I have had two assignments to do and my eldest daughter has spread her wings and moved away from home. On top of all this it has been two months now since my cat went missing and my blog had it's first anniversary, which I missed. So posts here have not been very frequent, just the odd celebration post but we have been doing things... honestly.

At the start of the summer we made the most wonderfully tasting elderflower cordial, it kept us going for a while and the children loved it so much. The taste of this will forever remind me of the start of summer, my daughter affectionately named it 'flower juice'. Details of how this was made is on my husband's blog. He has also started off some more wine, last year we made some amazing wines, I'm hoping he can recreate these again this year. He has written about the wine in the post after the one above in case you fancy a read.

The allotment and the vegetables that we grow in the garden have really taken off, in fact last year I thought I had a glut of courgettes but that was nothing compared to this year! Everything I have cooked has included courgette and I do mean everything... courgettes are coming out of our ears. Of course I have made more courgette relish as seen in the above photograph, only this time I made a double batch of the one from last year. This year the relish tastes even better which is good as I may be forced to make another batch.

Must introduce you to one of our newest family members, this is one of our giant African land snails, we have had them for a few weeks now and they have amazed us with their antics and have doubled in size. My daughter loves snails and is constantly watching them as they bury themselves and munch their food... very loudly. We also have some stick insect eggs, my son is avidly waiting for them to hatch so that he can study them, as well as the pupating caterpillars. We will keep you informed of progress in the mini zoo.

You may have noticed the two blog awards in the side bar, I was given these at the end of June and I still haven't got around to thanking those responsible and passing them on. Watch this space though I will get to them shortly and everything else I may have missed out.