Stem (from Wiktionary) – A slender supporting member of an individual part of a plant such as a flower or a leaf.
See these little cute guys? They’re in my parsley and will eat it down until all that’s left is a stem or two. But if we wait a few more weeks, we get the prettiest butterflies around.
I am careful to not fertilize the parsley as eventually kills the caterpillars. Inevitably there are more caterpillars than food to support them and they die off until the parsley grows back. Every summer I look for the tiny pieces of brown rice with a stripe in the center, and I know the butterflies have found my house again. And a few days later, those little pieces of brown rice start eating the parsley down again.
To see how others might interpret today’s randomly selected word, check out KittyHere or There, Anywhere; hugmamma’s MIND, BODY and SOUL; and ThreeSixFive, TwoZeroOneOne. It is amazing how differently we each respond in our posts.
Word for tomorrow – CHUCK. If you prefer to work ahead, see the list for the week under “A Word A Day”.
For more information on participating in the challenge, click the tab marked “challenge invitation”.
A Daily Life 
March 25, 2011 at 4:57 pm
Cool post. Didn’t know fertilizer kills butterfly larvae. Is that true of everything, i.e. that I shouldn’t fertilize or I’ll cut down on butterflies? Didn’t know that. I love butterflies.
thanks for the photo challenge mention…hugmamma. :)
March 25, 2011 at 6:04 pm
If you have a plant that you know the caterpillars are eating, you have to be very careful to not fertilize or use anything else on it. The tomato hornworm turns into those beautiful sphinx moths – unfortunately, I do not like hornworms eating my tomatoes to nothing, so I fertilizer away.