Yesterday, a couple of bicyclists stopped in front of my house and smiled at the flowers. I'm proud of that.

The vegetable garden is coming along nicely. Seeds that have been planted are coming up. I am puzzled by the caterpillar on my onions. He is about 3/4" long, rather skinny, black with orange spots. He is not fuzzy and has no spines. I can't find a matching caterpillar on the Internet, and onions aren't supposed to really have much in the way of pests. There was a black swallowtail butterfly of some sort that came to rest on the garden dirt a few times, and seemed to excrete a white substance into the dirt, which also seems strange. Was it laying eggs, or was it butterfly poop? How could one little butterfly have that much poop, and yet, why would any butterfly lay eggs in dirt? Did it read the seed packages and know what I was planting? Am I just a helpless tool of the butterfly cabal?

Well, I'm trying to keep an eye on the little fellow to see what he turns into, if anything.

I'm getting pipevine and milkweed off ebay, and the hyssop seeds have sprouted and are growing, but they're taking their good old time about it. The anise and lavender seeds have still not sprouted. Lavender seeds never sprout. About half the tuberose bulbs seem to have sprouted.