The Day Shelly Came To Visit

Just last week sweet Deb over at Paper Turtle posted a picture of her dear pet turtle, Rexy.  I thought he was adorable and just seeing him brought back memories of all the turtles of my childhood.  Where I grew up, Eastern Box Turtles were EVERYWHERE.  Once I learned to drive, I'd often stop the car to save them from the road.  You could say that I really like turtles.  So I emailed Deb to ask how Rexy had come into her family and we corresponded a bit over email.  It was so nice to find a fellow turtle lover!

You can imagine my surprise when I walked into my garage yesterday to find this.....

I am pretty sure I squealed when I saw her.

We've lived in our house over a decade and I've never seen a turtle in our yard.  Yet this one was in the garage!!!  I was home alone at the time because Alain had shuffled the girls off to the pool.  I knew Sophie & Clara had never seen a turtle up close so I put this sweet baby into our kiddie pool with some snacks and water. 

 

For the next hour, I spent time with her.  Played with her, let her walk around in the yard, took pictures of her, etc.  I was smitten!

Her shell was quite dirty with birdseed and other debris so I washed off her shell.  It was beautiful! 

It was quite sunny so she sought out any shaded area she could find.

When Sophie & Clara got home, they were deliriously excited about the turtle!  Sophie was a little scared to handle her so I taught her how.  After that, it was on.  Every time I looked out the window, Sophie was carrying her to a new place.  I started to feel bad for the sweet turtle. 

I loved watching her walk around in the yard....the way she'd lift her head up high to see above the grass!

I won't lie.....I wanted to keep her as a pet.  In my heart though, I didn't feel that it was right.

I did some research online.  This baby was definitely a female.  And I learned that the box turtles have now entered the first category of threatened species.  Because they're slow to mature and have so few offspring, they're quite susceptible to human activities. Many get hit by cars but mainly, in this area, we just destroy their habitats with our endless,greedy need to develop every square inch of land.  Also, when I read the section about the pet trade on this page, I felt really ashamed that I'd ever entertained the idea of keeping her.  I can hardly believe I'm writing it here.  But I am only human.

It made me sad to read all of this. I thought long and hard and decided that this baby needed to be in the "wild".  While there are a lot of dangers for her out there (roads, cars, lawn mowers, etc), she'd still have a chance to reproduce.  There's a pond area not far from our house with some woodland close by and we thought that would be a good place to "relocate" her. 

We knew she'd have a lot of friends there. (Yes, I've read way too many kids' books!)

We put her in a box (so as not to bite Soph while we were driving over in the car).....

.....and found a nice spot for the sweet turtle that Sophie had named Shelly.

Shelly.....because she has a shell.....and after the character "Shelly" from the kids' movie A Turtle's Tale.

Sophie was just as smitten with Shelly as I was.  It was hard to let her go out in the big, dangerous world!

Shelly checked out her new surroundings.

Even though she's a land turtle, we made sure she was close to the water.  We'd read that the box turtles do sometimes venture to water's edge. 

Sophie stayed to watch her for a long time.

Shelly seemed reticent to come out while Soph was standing there.

I insisted to Soph that we go to the other side of the pond to give Shelly some space.

So we watched the ducks....

.....and Sophie looked for fish.....

....until I couldn't take it any longer and we ventured back to sneak a peek.

Shelly's head was way out and she was looking all around.

And, in the next moment, she started walking......off on her next great adventure!

When I put Soph to bed last night, I asked her about her favorite part of the weekend.  I was SURE it would be the couple of hours she'd been at the pool with Daddy.  She's a pool fanatic.  Much to my surprise, she said, "Playing with and carrying around Shelly.  I loved her."  

Me too, Sophie, me too!

Bee Calm and Carry On!

I've mentioned many times how much I love bees!  When Sophie and I went out to check the mail yesterday, we passed by the Bee Balm to check out any visitors.  WOAH!  I saw bees unlike any that I've seen before (and I studied bees so I've seen a lot!).  They are MASSIVE in size.  I RAN to get the camera.

We have Carpenter bees around our home but these are definitely larger. Substantially larger.

Someone suggested they might be drones.  Not a chance!  I got really close and they have pointy abdomens, a sure sign of females.

They are not even remotely aggressive.  Thank goodness.

Their heads and abdomens are very black.....

......with a lot of dense yellow "fur" near the wings.

I had to do some research and find out what they were.

My best guess is the Giant Resin Bee.  A bee not native to this area but one that was likely introduced from somewhere in Asia in the mid 90's.  North Carolina was the first state to notice their presence.  Fascinating!  I discovered a brand new bee in our yard.  I feel like such a scientist!!!!  

(Someone named that plant Bee Balm for a reason!!!  It's a bee fest at all times of the day.  I love it!)

In other stinging insect news.....

Alain ran in the house this morning and asked me to grab my camera.  He'd found a hornet (?) with a massive green glob in its mouth.  This was the best picture I could get because I only had my small lens with me.  I wish I knew what that green glob was....

I always have a ton of bees on my basil plant so I snapped a quick shot while I was there.  I think this might be that Giant Resin Bee again!

If by chance there's anyone still reading.....thanks for indulging my love of bees!

New Favorite Photo / Instagram

In case you don't follow my Instagram feed, I wanted to post my new favorite photo.  I love everything about it.....



I am an Instagram addict and I post there a lot.  Alain wanted me to mention it because he says noone knows about it (even though the icon has been here in the right column for AGES!).  I don't have much time to blog but posting a photo to Instagram only takes a few seconds.  If you don't use it already, you should!!!

Capturing Motherhood In a Photo

 You never know what you'll find in our laundry/dryer.

One thing is for sure.

Attempting to do laundry with Clara around never gets boring!

Summer Project ~ New Crayons!

  One of my Summer Bucket List items was to make new crayons from all of our old, broken ones.  I'd been saving the broken crayon pieces for at least a year.  I also used the cheap waxy crayons that you get for free at restaurants (see photo of red crayons below).  I found the hardest part of this project to be taking the paper off the old crayons.  Luckily I had Sophie's help.  NOT.  She peeled one or two crayons and I peeled about 300.  It took a while. Whew.  

Putting down some plastic or paper is a very good idea ~ this was also messy.

I purchased a silicone mold from Michael's (about $6 with a 40% off coupon) and we filled them up.  There are tons of tutorials for this project online and, while I like the mixed, rainbow crayons, the Type A in me HAD to separate the colors.  Thank goodness Sophie agreed!!

We put them in a 230 degree oven for about 30 minutes and WALA....

Melted wax.  We let them cool on the counter for an hour or two (who can keep track of time when you're losing your mind having so much fun!).

The girls love the new crayons.  Clara has been asking to use them every day.  The star shape is actually ideal for her baby chub hands and it's pretty clear she prefers these over the regular crayons.

I've been wanting to do this project for a long time ~ I'm happy it turned out so well!

Music To My Eyes....

The past few weeks have been insanely busy (which included a week with Alain away).  Not all of the past few weeks has been happiness, chilled white wine and roses but I don't feel like typing about that today.  Instead, I'll share some of my favorite photos I've taken when I was inspired to pick up my camera.....

Do you remember the SuperMoon?  Wow, it was bright and insanely beautiful.

We made our very first trip to Overlook Park at the Charlotte Airport.  That was kind of fun! 

While my parents were here visiting, I also invited my cousin and her boyfriend over for dinner.  Since Alain was gone, I actually cooked.

I'd checked out Meatless, the vegetarian cookbook from Martha Stewart and decided to try out a few recipes.  I had tons of zucchini and eggplant from the garden so my choices included those.

The dishes just looked pretty and I wanted to take some photos to prove that I really do cook sometimes!

My Bee Balm plant is such a show-off.  I can't stop taking pictures of it!!!

My homegrown cucumbers always make me happy!

This year I bought a flower plant called WhirlyBird.  I love the flowers but, even more so, I love the leaves.

We took this photo to show just how large our zucchini leaves are!  Massive.  We call them elephant ears!

One night Alain and Sophie played Quirkle.  While it's a fun game, I just really love the game tiles!

The first blueberries from my garden.  One of my happiest gardening moments, for sure!

Alain made stuffed peppers/zucchini one night for dinner.  Who wouldn't be inspired to take a photo with all of these gorgeous colors???

More "Whirly" flowers.

These Marigolds are HUGE!

Sungold Tomatoes.  One of my favorite things to grow, for sure!

Turn baby, turn!!!

I took this one a recent nature walk.  Mother Nature's perseverance is always an inspiration to me!

One day's harvest.  There is nothing quite like summer gardening, is there?