I love to see God's amazing handiwork in nature. His creativity and beauty refresh my soul.  When we moved to the city, I thought I would have to travel miles to have the experience of reflecting on the majesty of God through nature, but He has so totally provided in wonderful ways.  We want to share about the nature in our neighborhood, and how God has caught us by surprise with his creation. 

Our Garden - I'm eclectic in my homeschooling curriculum, and I'm eclectic in my gardening as well.  We started with some veggies in the backyard last summer.  I am amazed by gardening in California. You plant in January!  My lettuce, beans, tomatoes all reseeded themselves from last year!.  (Of course, I did have to dig up some lettuce from the middle of the grass and transplant it back into the square foot garden where it was supposed to be residing.)  Also...my pepper plants from last year survived the winter and I have  2" peppers already. ( I did plant some new pepper plants as well, in case these don't make it until harvest.)

This year we added a flower and herb garden in the front.  I planted 2 climbing roses by the fence and some other flowers (whatever looked pretty and smelled good) and herbs (sage, rosemary, parsley, cilantro, thyme, oregano and basil.)  We are having a blast watching it grow and using the herbs.  We planted some bulbs too...which we were just sure would never come up, but sure enough they have. 

Roses

Snapdragons and parsley

Gerber Daisy and Rosemary

We also have some lantana growing like crazy in the bed in front of the house.  I had to plant something that didn't require watering.  When I water that bed it runs under my sink and onto the kitchen floor.  The lantana has grown so big there...we have to keep trimming it. 

Birds and Butterflies - Now our front yard is smelling and looking naturey...and God has sent us some new friends!  We've seen 3 different butterfly species and 2 different humming birds and many moths at night time.  They all love the Lantana.

The visiting butterflies inspired us to raise butterflies so here we are with our freshly arrived caterpillars and butterfly nurturing equipment. 

This was an amazing project.  The caterpillars were so tiny...but were so hungry and grew soooo fast. Eric Carle certainly nailed it on the head!  In just 10 days they were all hanging from the top of their jars in their chrysalis form.  We were worried about one last straggler who just kept wandering around the jar...but he finally hooked on and joined the crowd.

After just over a week they began to emerge. Wow!  We only got to see one pump up his wings. The rest emerged at night or when we were away from the house.  We figured they liked their privacy.  In this picture you can see him starting to pump his wings to get them ready for flight.  Beside him are the empty chrysalis "shells" from his buddies.  The red stain is not blood, it's meconium which is the left over dye in the chrysalis used to make the beautiful wing colors.

We fed them oranges and sugarwater for a few days. You can see his probiscis unfurling toward the orange, if you look closely.

We set them free after four days.  One or two hung around for awhile, before setting off on their journey.  How amazing to see the metamorphisis.  It was definitely a homeschool highlight.

Watching the butterfly explore his new environment.

Getting a close up view...it's pretty amazing to see the scales on the wings with the magnifying glass.

Painted Lady enjoying the sunshine...

Snacking on the lantana...

Trees Look how God decorated our tree!  I'm from the midwest and have seen some amazing trees...but never a Bottlebrush like this, until we came to the city. ( I actually think it could technically be a bush...but somebody trimmed it to have a trunk...so we are calling it a tree.)

Here is a close up of the "bottle brush."

The tiniest candle looks so very bright in the middle of a dark room.  I believe the same is true of nature in the city.  A flower seems so much brighter, a bloom smells so much sweeter, a butterfly so much more joyful against a backdrop of concrete, noise and  pollution.  God is so good!  We see His beauty everywhere.