outdoors

A photo of a black and yellow caterpillar with black tufts.

Instant Flashback

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On Sunday, I was writing/drawing/doing yoga on my patio and suddenly noticed this fella on the edge of my mat.

A photo of a black and yellow caterpillar with black tufts.
A photo of a black and yellow caterpillar (is it still a caterpillar when it is going to turn into a moth?) with lots of black tufts crawling along the edge of my blue yoga mat on my patio.

I haven’t seen one of these guys in YEARS.

In fact, the last time I remember seeing them was when I was a kid. My friends and I collected them in glass jars with holes in the lids so the caterpillars could be pets.

I don’t remember them dying in the jars so either we included enough grass and leaves as food or we let them out in time.

They were all over the place when I was young but where have they been in the meantime?

I guess I must not have noticed them after a certain point but it’s kind of weird that I didn’t notice them again when my kids were small.

Perhaps they were hiding from me all this time? 😉

PS – On an opposite note, I remember there being way more slugs than snails when I was a kid. Were the snails just avoiding me?

Fluffy caterpillar

A caterpillar on green grass
Image description: A fat, kind of fluffy caterpillar with a black body with light yellow markings and tufts of white hair is slightly curled on some green grass.

We used to keep these in jars as “pets” when I was young.

I feel like we saw more of them then but perhaps I just spent more time crawling around in the grass where I’d have a better chance of seeing them.

This one was on my swing yesterday and I got him to climb on a stick so I could return him to the grass.

I didn’t name him nor did ai put him in a jar.

One of my favourite views

I love the way the ‘gateway’ to my yard from my patio looks.

I feel relaxed just looking at this photo.

A photo of a backyard as seen through the opening in a patio rail. There are flowers in pots on the patio.
Image description: a photo of part of my yard and patio. Near the centre of the photo is one side of the opening in my patio rail where the steps come up. On the right is the patio rail and post with some sunflowers in a pot with a beam of sunlight on them. On the left side of the photo is a green pot with purple flowers growing in it. Through the opening is the sun-dappled grass in my yard, in the middle distance an orange lawn chair and my square fire pit, and in the far background is a wooden fence with a small shelf, raised a little from the ground, with three flowerpots on it.

Ducks!

My sister and I went swimming this morning, in the rain, at a local pond.

Some ducklings had the same plan.

Small ducks swimming in a pond with another duck walking towards the water.
Image description: a photo of some ducks swimming and walking up to get in the water at the shoreline of a pond with a pebbly beach on the right, the water on the left, some trees and greenery at the top of the photo.