Category: Rosemary Thyme Kitchen Garden

🌿 In the Garden: Not Every Caterpillar Is the Enemy 🦋🍅

This morning while taking Candy outside, I made an interesting discovery in my Vego garden.

First, I found a caterpillar happily chewing on one of my green tomatoes. It had bored a hole into the fruit and left little black droppings behind. This is a tomato fruitworm, and unfortunately, it’s one garden visitor that has to go. It damages tomatoes and can quickly ruin your harvest.

Just a few minutes later, I found another caterpillar…but this one was on my parsley.

At first glance, you might think, “Oh no…another pest!”

But this one is completely different.

The beautiful green, black, and yellow striped caterpillar is a Black Swallowtail butterfly caterpillar. These caterpillars feed on parsley, dill, fennel, and other members of the carrot family before transforming into one of our most beautiful butterflies.

So today my garden reminded me of an important lesson:

🐛 Not every caterpillar is the enemy.

Some belong in the compost pile…

…and some deserve a little parsley all their own.

I’m happy to sacrifice a few parsley leaves to help support butterflies in my garden while protecting my tomatoes from hungry fruitworms.

Gardening isn’t about eliminating every insect. It’s about learning which ones are helping, which ones are simply passing through, and which ones need a gentle eviction notice.

Nature always has something new to teach us.

Have you found any interesting visitors in your garden this summer?

🌿❤️ Happy gardening,

Helene

Rosemary Thyme

🍅🌿 The Harvest Begins!

This week marked a little summertime milestone at our house — the last week for buying tomatoes from the grocery store!

Our first garden tomatoes are coming in, and we’ve been picking them just as they begin to blush and bringing them inside to finish ripening. Now the kitchen is filling with tomatoes in every shade from pale green to golden orange to beautiful garden red.

There’s something so satisfying about growing even a little bit of the food that finds its way to your table. Soon these will be sliced for sandwiches and burgers, tossed into salads, and tucked into some of our favorite summer recipes.

For now, I’m simply enjoying watching them ripen. 🍅💛

Sometimes the simplest pleasures of home are the sweetest ones.

🌿 The Rosemary Thyme Table
Fall in Love with Home Again.

🦋 The Rosemary Thyme Butterfly Nursery — A New Generation 🌿

Today, a beautiful female black swallowtail came fluttering into the Rosemary Thyme garden.

I watched her moving quickly from plant to plant and wondered if she might be looking for a place to lay her eggs.

So after she flew away, I went looking.

And there they were. 💛

One tiny pearl-like egg…then another…and another.

Four so far! 🦋

Earlier this summer, we watched black swallowtail caterpillars make their home among the herbs. They ate, grew, and eventually disappeared to begin their remarkable transformation.

Could today’s visitor have been one of those little caterpillars returning to the garden where her own story began? There’s no way to know for certain.

But I like to think it’s possible. 💛

And now, tucked among the green leaves, another generation is beginning.

I’ll be watching these four tiny eggs closely and sharing their journey as they hatch, grow, and — hopefully — someday spread their own wings.

There is something even more remarkable about watching these black swallowtails when you realize how quickly their little lives unfold. 🐛🌿🦋 After hatching from a tiny egg, a black swallowtail spends roughly two to four weeks as a caterpillar, eating, growing, and shedding its skin several times along the way. Then, when it is finally ready, it does something that had me wondering where all of my caterpillars had gone—it simply wanders away from the parsley and herbs in search of a safe, sheltered place to form its chrysalis.

Me: “Where are you going?”
 Caterpillar: “I’d rather not say.” 😂🐛
 And then… 🦋

In warm summer weather, it will usually remain tucked inside that chrysalis for about 10 to 20 days before emerging as a beautiful butterfly. And perhaps the most bittersweet part is that the adult butterfly generally has only two to four weeks to flutter among the flowers, drink nectar, find a mate, and begin the whole cycle again. Knowing that makes those few minutes when one visits the garden feel even more precious. What looked like a simple butterfly stopping by was actually one small chapter in an extraordinary transformation I was lucky enough to witness right here at home. 🌿🦋💛

The Rosemary Thyme Butterfly Nursery is officially open again. 🦋🌿💛

Rosemary Thyme Table – Fall in Love with Home Again.

One black swallowtail egg looks like it’s getting close to hatching. While two baby black swallowtail caterpillars are happily dining on my parsley.