Hello! I had a lovely summer vacation, but now that it’s October, it’s clearly over. Although in Florida, we’re only about two weeks into Fall. September is is still ridiculously hot, and I’ve only just started to venture back out into the garden.
So this week while my newly planted seeds are sprouting, I’ll be reposting some old blog posts—partly to ease back into regular blogging after quite the hiatus, but mostly because the Buddy Walk is this weekend. It’s my favorite part of October. I get to spend the day with family and friends, all while supporting an incredible local resource: Manasota BUDS (Bringing Up Down Syndrome).
My niece, Ella, is the reason I’m involved with Manasota BUDS and have never missed a Buddy Walk. She’s amazing, and she’s my buddy. So for the next week, I’m reposting The Best of Ella. Enjoy getting to know her.
For more information on Saturday’s Buddy Walk at Hunsader Farms, visit www.manasotabuds.org.
We added to our menagerie this weekend and welcomed Ella and Woody for a sleepover…but of course, not without incident. Just when it seems Lukey is becoming one of us, he goes all four-legged on me and gnaws off one of Woody’s fingers.
What an animal, right? Poor Woody has seen better days…but that is part of his appeal. Woody has a story to tell. He’s a world traveler and a trusted friend. Now he has one more adventure under his belt after grappeling with a dog ten times his size. Still, tell that to Ella…
Lukey learned his lesson, but the incident happened about three or four hours into a 24-hour visit. Every time I thought we had put it behind us, Ella would say, “I need to tell my mom that Luke bit off Woody’s finger.” And I’m not exaggerating on this. She said it on the way out of the Straz Center after seeing Mamma Mia. Uh-oh. But Mom took it well, and Woody never lost his smile.
Unexpected and unwelcomed amputation or not, we loved having them…especially during meals.
The sky was falling with french fries; even Oreo tried to get in on the action.
The Buddy Walk was the best yet! The weather couldn’t have been nicer, and there were so many walkers that they ran out of t-shirts. With 1,200 ordered and 100 leftover from last year, that is good news. And this year’s Grand Marshal?
Queen Ella
The girl who started it all, Queen Ella Quaid, and oh how she embraced her role! It’s unlike her to enjoy such attention, but she cruised the crowd like a true royal. A crown suits her.
Team Ella Bella Buddies
But even a queen can’t escape a bored little brother…
Great girl, great cause, great day.
Tomorrow marks the Manasota BUDS 10th Annual Buddy Walk, a charity and event I’ve supported since their inception. Like anyone else, I have my reasons to support this particular cause; their names are Ella and Stacy. Ella was born with Down syndrome, and Stacy is her amazing mom and one of the founders of Manasota BUDS. They are also my niece and sister.
Family is the root of why I never miss a Buddy Walk, but an ancillary and quite selfish reason has emerged over the past two years – Mariposa, my favorite nursery, donates to the silent auction. It’s definitely true when people say there’s no selfless deed. I’ll be circling that silent auction table like a shark tomorrow.
Prior to last year’s Buddy Walk, I had several butterfly plants scattered throughout the garden and even had plenty of butterfly visitors. But then I won the butterfly garden package from Mariposa. Now, I have a real butterfly garden; I just didn’t know the difference. You think you see a lot of butterflies until you start seeing three, four different types daily.
The package included a cassia tree, milkweed, porter weed, button sage, pentas, and passionvine. The combination is pure magic. Sulphur butterflies should have been listed along with the plants as an auction item. There were caterpillars on the tree and butterflies circling within days.
We get pop-ins, like the White Peacock and Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, and more than just Sulphurs are regulars. The Gulf Fritillary is the Norm of our garden right now, constantly sipping at either the porter weed or button sage.
Sleepy Orange on the Cassia Tree
White Peacock Butterfly
Gulf Fritillary on White Button Sage
It’s a small one, but it’s a dream fulfilled. When I started to really get into gardening, the goal quickly became butterflies. I got lucky with a few plants; my Mexican sunflowers attracted tons of Swallowtails, and anyone can plant a milkweed to get Monarchs, but it really just depended on the day if I’d see a butterfly or not…not anymore. Thanks BUDS!
For more information on Manasota BUDS, visit www.manasotabuds.org. To register for the Buddy Walk or to make a donation, click here.
Congratulations to Ubermommy; she’s now uber-executive-director too. In her first three months on the job she led her team to a successful Buddy Walk, raising over $65,000 for Manasota BUDS (Bringing Up Down Syndrome). And congratulations to me on winning the silent auction for a butterfly garden from Mariposa. John was still feeling guilty over the grapefruit tree, so he literally stood by the list for the last 15-20 minutes of bidding, adding my name the minute anyone else bid. No one was going home with that butterfly garden other than me. We mutually agreed afterwards that we felt bad about bullying Ubermommy with our eyes when she made an attempt to outbid me. To make up for it, she got a potted mini butterfly garden of yellow lantana, white button sage and milkweed.
The package was incredible, and the garden is already delivering butterflies. John’s diligence and devotion won me a cassia tree, passionflower vine, porterweed, two pentas, two milkweeds, three button sages, and three lantanas! Plus one other unidentified plant that also went to Ubermommy. There were 14 plants in total, and the cassia tree even came with a caterpillar!
I think it will turn into a sulphur butterfly, but then again it could be a moth. I couldn’t find confirmation in any of my field guides, and I really don’t care either way because the cassia is already attracting so many sulphurs. They’re an elusive group of butterflies, always flying through the garden but never landing. With all the different flowers planted over the years, there have been monarchs, fritillaries and swallowtails hanging around but never sulphurs. Now I have my missing piece – a cassia tree. It seems like every time I look out at it there’s a sulphur flitting around its flowers. The big win has greatly improved the view from our kitchen and Florida room windows. It was as if HGTV came in and gave us a mini-makeover. Here’s the before:
When we first planted the area, it was beautiful – two pink Perfume Delight roses surrounded by a bed of pink mums. It held up well for never changing out the mums and very rarely fertilizing the roses, but the weeds and grass took over and it was ready for an overhaul. Here’s the after:
The only thing it needs now is a little sign that says, “Ella’s Garden” because she’s the reason I walk every year. Go BUDS! Go Ella!
Pirate Ella ~ 2010 Buddy Walk
We visited Hunsader Farms yesterday for the 8th annual Manasota BUDS Buddy Walk. Go Team Ella Bella Buddies; we raised $1, 056! The last I checked, the Buddy Walk total was at $60,365! That’s a whole year’s worth of music therapy, scholarships, new parent kits, the list goes on! BUDS is the best non-profit I’ve ever worked with – not a dime goes to salaries. People are involved because it means something to them; it’s grass roots at its finest and Ubermommy’s best deed by far. She’ll probably roll her eyes at this in all of her modesty, but she’s leaving a legacy with BUDS. She started the support group in 2002 after her daughter, Ella, was born with Down syndrome. At the time, there were no local resources, no place and no one for her to reach out to. She changed that by creating BUDS. What started with two families now serves over a hundred families. I’m proud to be a part of it every year.
The bonus of the Buddy Walk is that you get to do a good deed and then enjoy the Hunsader Farms Pumpkin Festival. After eating snow cones, we get lost in the corn maze and checked out their produce.
We decided on some purple peppers and a carrot the size of Cooper’s arm!
