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Time for more garden visitor pictures 😃🌱 The count so far is 36 different species of insects photographed and identified this year, and I've also seen quite a lot that were too fast or too tiny to photograph well enough.

I finally 'caught' a peacock butterfly! 🌱😀 (A reasonable picture of one, no butterflies were harmed). I've seen these flying around in my yard all week, sometimes three at a time, and all earlier attempts failed: flew away, wings closed, the light hitting wrong so looking almost entirely black...

I found even more insects in my garden. Hunting them down for pictures is fun! 🌱 And these are only the ones I could get pictures of. There's at least 2 kinds of butterfly, another kind of moth, another kind of ladybug and a cricket I haven't managed to capture on camera yet. 😊

The garden is good these days! 🌱 Ants have started farming aphids again, so there are a lot of marmalade hoverflies too: Their larvae feed on aphids. There was a red admiral, I finally managed to take an image of and identify the mint moth, and I found an insect having a drink. 🌞

My sincere apologies to these two, who got caught up in my attempts to water my plants. The butterfly got hit with the spray from the hose more than once and the spider had its web destroyed. I didn't see it before aiming a watering can right through it to water the potted plant it was inhabiting. 🌱

Gardening post! 🌱 Backyard: Coreopsis blooming, Coleus is pretty orange/red, the first blueberries are almost pink+ripe! Front yard: Armeria, another creeping thyme, and Buddlejas started blooming. The California poppies are still going, insects are chilling out, and the sunflowers are making buds.

I went with a flamingo as my next cross stitch project. I want something bright after all the muted blue and grey tones from the penguins, though I will probably regret it once I reach the sea of pink in this one 🫣. First 21 bright orange stitches done, only 37615 stitches to go! 🧵 🪡 🧶

While the penguins cross stitch is soaking in water, I'm trying to choose a next project. Finish the dinosaur forest (from owlforest)? One of three other owlforest patterns I have patterns+supplies for? One of the four stamped kits? I'm leaning towards flamingo, just because it's so summer-y.🧵 🪡 🧶

Heat wave incoming. 🔥🌞 Those always destroy my appetite for regular meals, so I made a big bowl of pasta salad to snack on instead. This is officially four servings but it will probably last me a whole week. 🍽️ 🍜

There's so much color in the front yard again😀 🌱 Especially happy to see the california poppies pop up again after sowing some seeds last year, and seeing the white puncushion flower bloom, as that one didn't bloom at all when I planted it last year!

Spent time restocking the freezer today. Four different meals, 19 portions. Three of them are stock favorites, the fourth is a new dish, with radishes, chicken and potatoes from the oven. To be served chilled with an orange juice and mustard dressing. 🍽️ 🍜

Did a whole bunch of 'baking' over the past three days. It was good to spend some time in the kitchen again ☺️. The result: two sorts of no-bake cream cheese cakes for Mother's Day last Sunday, and a small pound cake + no-bake lemon curd cakes as a treat for coworkers tomorrow. 🍽️🍜

I really almost chickened out when I saw how much this was, afraid of wouldn't fit in the freezer🫣... But it seems 20kg of chicken fits just fiiine, with room to spare. Ready for a few rounds of meal prepping to come now. 🍽️ 🍜

Well, this was a disappointment! Tried baking bread using one of my cast iron pots as a "shape". Changed nothing else, followed the instructions on the box mix just like usual... But the bread just isn't "done". Tried to cut it and the crust is rock hard but raw dough just stuck to the knife 😞🍜🍽️