LIFE: Photo an Hour March 2016

If you didn't think the year was flying by already, well it's rolled around to another Photo an Hour Link up, to remind you just how quickly the months are passing us by. Sundays are typically our lazy days, we may pretend to be adults and get dressed, poke some DIY, do the weekly shop. This week we were enchanted by the blue skies and headed to the zoo for a wander and then flopped back on the sofa and went back to being lazy.

Sunday began with a late start to the day (10am) the usual coffee, cereals and catching up on a couple of pages of my new read - The Witches, which as you probably might have guessed is all about the Salem Witch Trails of 1692. Then I finally got around to opening up the Easter package from the homeland - some yummy looking Harry Hopalot chocolate figures from Thorntons.

I lost track of time when we were actually at the Detroit Zoo when it came to live updating, but hey I was having too much fun. With blue skies and warm temp, it was a perfect day to visit, loads of animals were up and playing around, especially fun to watch the young Chimpanzee's climbing and jumping off rocks and rolling down hills.

Fun for hobby time - cross stitching a Michael Powell design titled Garden Shed that will eventually end up upon a birthday card, and of course coloring in one of my favorite books - Unicorns Are Jerks. Because Unicorns fart in elevators, on purpose, if you didn't know.

5pm was time for tea! Some yummy homemade egg fried rice with lots of veg and crab. Then watching Windows decide it wanted to update. Had I know this earlier, this would probably have been achieved hours earlier. Yawn.

Then we ended the day, well more like 7pm (because my phone was dying) at failing to do our workout. Failing because we were still too knackered and achy from doing two cardio/core workouts on Saturday. We tried. That's the important thing right?!

So that was pretty much our Sunday. If you like random stuff like this, tag along on Instagram, where I try and post more of the same, random shit! 

How was your Sunday?

Rachael

LIFE: The Butterfly House

One of the many advantages of having zoo membership is that we can pop in whenever we fancy and not have the pressure of having to see everything, every time. After hearing that the three newest penguins editions had been released into the penguin habit we thought we'd try and spy them. We couldn't, baby penguins kinda look too much like adult penguins. But anyway, on the same trip we took a walk though the butterfly house.

With bright sunshine, 90F heat outside the Labor Day weekend happened to be great time to visit and the butterflies were in their element. For whatever reason, even if my camera wasn't on it's last legs, it's always struggled a little in the butterfly house, but the photos didn't turn out too bad if you don't look too closely that is. 

The Detroit Zoo have a great balance between butterflies as an exhibit and helping the native butterflies. Not only do the zoo offer guides on identifying species found in Michigan but also on how to encourage butterflies into your garden. With the zoo landscaped in such a way that butterfly gardens and especially the Monarch Way Stations decorating the borders, it really does make it all seem to very possible to create in your own space.

LIFE: Among the Wetlands and Tigers

Perhaps it's because of how colourful the zoo is at the moment, or how the trees are just starting to turn that burnt orange on the tips of it's leaves against the deep blue skies. Maybe it's from seeing the animals a little more attractive as the days turn cooler, but popping to the zoo for a long walk, breathing some fresh air and hiding away from the suburban world - the freeways, the honking cars, the endless rows of houses, that surround it, the zoo has become a favorite place of mine of late. 

I guess going so often as we do, we have the time and the chances to explore and take in everything other than the animals - the flowers, the landscaping, the wetlands, the wild birds that make the zoo their home.

Without a [working] netbook it's hard to find the time aside from working to be on the [desk] computer and type away for blog posts, it's nice just to have photographs from wanders and adventures from life on my doorstep to just stop and share.

Where's your favorite place to escape?

LIFE: Small Things

As much as I love summer, and as much as this Brit is getting more and more use to the heat that Michigan summers like to throw at me (okay, okay I'm still a bit of a whimp when it gets over 32C/90F) I'm looking forward to the cooler (I say cooler being in the 20's) days ahead. Cooler days get me feeling a little bit more crafty (if that's even possible), TV shows are about to restart for the season and my birthday is at the end of the month. Lots of doing and planning ahead!

Also other happy happy things!

• Three baby pengys at the Detroit Zoo - too cute and I URGE you to check out the video if you ever need a pick me up, or even if you don't. Because penguins.
• Decorating cheap notebooks with cross stitching, just because
• Talking of cross stitching - working on a Pusheen design, starting two new projects, framing up Dinobot and completing another self designs cross stitch piece - home sweet home design for friends buying their first house. More on the last two to come - once I get around to it. 
• Reading Station Eleven - what a great page turner
• Finally getting around to watching The Mindy Project - what a great show
• Pretty sushi presented on a boat as a treat for Joe getting a pay rise and a bonus. Yey. 
• Drawing up an endless shopping list of bulbs to buy for next spring
• Spending all of yesterday morning (Thursday) pulling out the longest flower bed back to the main sturdy plants (the Iris's, the poppies and day lilies) to just build it back up from scratch next year. 
• Two zoo trips in two weeks!
• Cooking (and eating) with tofu for the first time, still a little bit on the fence and it'll never replace chicken in my curries completely, but it's okay ... kinda
• Baking lots of mini zucchini breads in the toaster oven because of the still broken oven. Wasn't sure they'd turn out edible but they did, yey! 
• Pretending to be very adult (well Joe was) and pretty much paying off a very large debt on a credit card
• Waterproofing the basement aka giving my arms a work out with a roller and 5 gallon tub of latex paint
• The thought of cooler days ahead, of being able to work in the garden without melting, throwing windows wide open and the changing fall colours 
• Going on a Detroit haul at the library - noir, food, fiction, biographies I grabbed them all
• Finding the most amazingly quirky vintage wallpaper (here and here) hanging in a basement at an estate sale down in Detroit 

So that has pretty much been my life in the last couple of weeks. Who else is ready for cooler times ahead?

LIFE: Butterfly Gardens Around the Detroit Zoo

Scattered around the Detroit Zoo you'll come across a number of Monarch Waystations between and around the animal exhibits. Certified by Monarch Watch, such waystations provide food and shelter for the monarch butterflies through their metamorphosis and during their migration to and from Mexico. On our latest visit to the zoo, the waystations were crammed and bursting with blooms and colour. 

With a backdrop of autumnal shades creeping into the trees, the dusty pinks of sedums, sunshine yellow daisies to grasses and milkweed the gardens are as pretty as they are essential to wildlife. Additionally for me, they give me so much inspiration for working on that butterfly garden I would love to have in my back yard. 

LIFE: A Day of Wolves and Warthogs

In recent weeks the Detroit Zoo opened their new wolf two acre enclosure. The two grey wolves - Waziyata and Kaskapahtew have been making themselves at home, but of course on our visit they were busy napping and keeping cool in the bushes. Luckily though we managed to spot the fives baby Warthogs - all of which are named after Games of Thrones characters, Daenerys, Sansa, Cersei, Tyrion and Hodor. A little over two months old they were delightfully rooting around in the soil and being terribly cute when we visited at the weekend. 

Visiting the summer months, the zoo at this time of year is filled with all the baby animals making an appearance and everyone else trying to cool off. Whether it was the adorable Prairie Dog families to the Grizzly Bears cooling themselves in the pool. 

I'm looking forward to seeing the wolves a bit better next time!

LIFE: Blossom Filled Zoo Trips

Like I mentioned last week, part of Joe's birthday weekend involved a trip back to our local Detroit Zoo. A year late and we finally got our Detroit Zoo membership renewed. Better late then never they say. It's a pretty exciting time to be members again - construction of the new $29.5 million penguin exhibit is well under way (set up to open next year), work is also under way building a biodigestor turning 400 tonnes of manure into a methane rich gas. Not to mention the born of a giraffe last September and the Polar Bear exhibit was voted the second best zoo exhibit in the country by USA Today.

With the Red Panda hiding away in the trees, the big cats sunbathing to the tree kangaroo (second photograph) finally making an appearance it was nice able to walk around the zoo, see all the wildlife, the crowds, all the blossom of the trees to wildflowers. I noticed they even have a butterfly garden I need to poke the next time.

I'm looking forward to getting back into the swing of our regular zoo visits that's for sure.