I haven’t written in this blog for a couple of weeks. My kids came to visit for my brother-in-law’s celebration of life. Then I had a week of downtime; I finished one book and read two more. Now we are at the end of July, and in August I begin updating, revising, and creating curriculum for teaching. I start August 31st! I had to think about a theme for this blog, and nature is my religion seemed right. I have a vegetable garden, a lot of flower gardens, and I walk at Rolling Hills Park several times a week with my little Yorkie/havanese, Miss Annie. I have taken a lot of photos of her on all of the different paths we walk. I also take a lot of photos of flora and trees, so it just made sense.

Yesterday, on our walk, I took photos of the pine trees and thought about all the different shades of green in nature. Amazing!

At the beginning of our walk today, Annie and I saw a tiny white flower, Hoary Alyssum, so I took a photo. Then a Black Swallowtail butterfly appeared, so I took a video, and that became the theme for the day: tiny flowers and butterflies. I could not upload the video, so I added a screenshot.

As we walked to the first bench, we saw 16 butterflies; 8 were small, yellow & black, 4 grasshoppers, and one dragonfly. While we were sitting on the bench drinking a little water, a large bug landed on the bench next to me. I found out it was a tiger bee fly. I’d never seen one before.

As we walked to the second bench on this path that has seven curves, I took photos of three more tiny flowers: hairy vetch, cinquefoil, and white sweet clover. We saw six more butterflies and one grasshopper. Walking in nature always relaxes me.

On the last part of this path to the car, we saw four more butterflies.

I took one more photo of a tiny flower that looks like a daisy, but it’s called Bellis.

When we got home, Annie and I had lunch on the canopyed deck that is now an outdoor living room. This is where I’m writing this blog. I love being outside. My backyard is my sanctuary.

This morning, while sitting on my deck, a Carolina Wren sings to me as I finish this blog post. The photo above is my potager, a small garden outside my back door. In the six raised garden boxes, starting with the boxes on the left, are summer squash, zucchini, and the biggest sunflower. In the next box are three kinds of tomatoes, one Hungarian pepper plant, and three eggplants. In front of them is another box with lavender, rhubarb, and three green pepper plants. On the right side are three more garden boxes with strawberries, cucumbers, yellow onions, garlic, and the green bean tower with a sunflower, which was a volunteer from last year. In front of that box are green onions, carrots, garlic chives, and beets. There are also herb boxes on either side of the wisteria arbor, which have thyme, savory, chives, parsley, oregano, and sage.

I have harvested two zucchini, a dozen grape tomatoes, a handful of green beans, and green onions that were planted last year. I need to pull some rhubarb today and make a sauce I like on vanilla ice cream. The day before yesterday, for dinner, I made ratatouille with zucchini from my garden and green beans from my neighbor’s garden, with corn on the cob and fried chicken thighs a perfect summer meal.

Walking in the park and having a garden is how I worship nature.