A Video of Our Butterfly Garden!
Earlier this year towards the end of winter, we finished up our major indoor renovations in our sunroom and turned our attention to the outdoor plants!
The owner before us had kept the place really pristine, with sharply trimmed hedge bushes and all, but we wanted to add a bit more wildlife and flowers to our backyard.
If you haven't noticed by now, I'm pretty enthusiastic about wildlife. One of my/our goals for our backyard was to be a place that supported local wildlife and pollinators and try to incorporate this using as many native/non-invasive plants as possible. We'd actually in the not-so-distant future like to try raising Mason Bees (solitary bees which are much more appropriate to raise and keep if you live in the suburbs)
I'll share some more in-depth stories about our butterfly garden later, but here's a few pics so you can appreciate what we started with:
^ Our garden has grown SIGNIFICANTLY since then... if we could go back in time, I'd say we'd need an area twice as big for all our flowers with how much they've grown, but Jamie says he likes the chaotic look of all the flowers intermingled.
What's amusing about all this is not even a year ago we could barely keep a house plant alive (several perished in the beginning). But we started making frequent (weekly) visits to our local nursery, TLC Gardens, and they were so patient and taught us SO MUCH about plants. Now whenever Jamie wants to be romantic he skips buying $30 cut flowers that will last a week (less so in a house with cats) and instead brings home an $8 house plant, and it's my favorite thing ever!
So it's been a really fun journey watching our plant-killer hands evolve into green(ish) thumbs, and to watch our little backyard butterfly garden grow!
So that brings me to today's project that I'm sharing!
I've gotten pretty familiar with the photography aspect of my DSLR camera and have been practicing frequently on the wildlife in our backyard, but I've never explored the video-side of it. So the other day, on a not-so-terrible summer afternoon, I decided to get into our butterfly garden and attempt taking some video of the critters that visit our butterfly garden!
We usually get a few visits each day from the more well-known butterflies like Monarchs or Swallowtails (and our garden has raised several dozen of those caterpillars), but our butterfly garden is always busy with smaller lesser-known Oklahoma butterflies and other pollinators. It's really fun (and relaxing!) to watch.
Part of my idea for this is I LOVE ambient background sounds... when I'm trying to focus or read, one of my favorite things to do is play a video like this in the background for some white noise. And I know my attempt is a long shot from being Ambient-chill quality, but who knows, maybe someday I'll have my own little atmospheric channel on Youtube!
Capturing video is definitely a new realm for me, as I was not prepared for blocking the wind from the microphone, so forgive me as there's a few times where the sound in the video is less relaxing and more annoying... oops!
But I really had fun with making this, so as soon as my new wind-muffling device for the microphone comes in, I might take another another go at this!
And feel free to skip throughout the video, I've thrown in a few different angles and shots... my personal favorite is at the very end where you see special visitor on a little daisy!
And hey, if anybody here has any experience with recording nature sounds and the like, let's chat please! I'd love to learn some tricks to mastering this kind of video!
Please enjoy!
NOTE: It will only play in a lower resolution embedded in this post, but if you click on the title it'll take you to Youtube where you can watch it in glorious high-def 1080P!
NOTE: If you're interested in more garden updates and other things plant and DIY-related, You should follow @thefixerruckers on Instagram!
