Home school, Moths and Butterflies, Hydroelectric power and Carol's crops

 I'm making a butterfly garden.  As you see below it is a work in progress, but there is limits to what I can plant in the middle of the summer in Phoenix.  I'm slowly getting rid of the grass in this area so I can sow butterfly friendly wildflower seeds in the Fall.  This is a extension of Jules and my Butterfly and Moth adventures.
We got a digital microscope which helped our studies considerably.  Below are pictures we took of our RIP Moth collection.  Pretty cool.  We learned the difference between moths and butterflies and could actually see the differences!

Moth Proboscus

Moth wing

Moth eye and hairy blond head

Beginning of the butterfly garden

 We made a water wheel to fit into our hydro power unit.  We visited Arizona Falls on the Grand Canal in Phoenix which was the first Hydroelectric plant in the Phoenix area.  This is where the canal takes a 20 foot drop creating a waterfall.

Now the falls are divided into 3.  This is the main one and behind the waterfall is a building that has the hydro electric generator

One of the side waterfalls

On the way to the falls, Jules was asking me questions from our Trivia game.  The question was, "What does chemistry study?"  I couldn't for the life of me remember the answer even though I wrote the question and answer!  Well, Jules gave me a clue, AMITU are the 1st letters of each word.  So I came up with, "A Might Interesting Toenail Union".  She says no Nana and we just laughed and laughed.  It stands for "All Matter In The Universe"!  She told me I should put this in my blog so we can laugh at it later on. 

This has a picture of the original water fall

This shows the hydroelectric power station which generates electricity to 150 homes still today!

 This was all leading up to making our own generator from a ScienceWiz kit.  Because  generator has a magnet, we reviewed the power of magnets.  We got the magnet box out again and Jules has more fun making a castle out of the iron filings and a magnet.  We started on the generator.  You connect a little light bulb up to a small motor and use a string as a hand crank to turn the shaft of the motor.  Well this was a failure because we couldn't get it to work!  This happens sometimes.  Jules just got the electric box out and tried to light the light with a battery. 

Water play in the back yard

We have 2 different sprinklers going here, fun, fun!

Ryan baked a pie with Grandma Coral's apples!

A baby Watermelon

Squash flowers

Fresh Peach pie

Peach Salsa

I know that I haven't even mentioned the pandemic compliments of the Communist Chinese Government but that's because I'm so ready for it to be over.  I stopped writing stats on my calendar on June 9, my birthday.  On that time we had 28,296 cases and 1,070 deaths in AZ.  Now we have 94,553 cases and 1,805 deaths.  Of these cases 47, 195 are in the 20-44 age group.  We have a population of a little over 7 million in AZ.  The only good thing is that many more 20-44 year olds have got it recently and they generally get mild symptoms unless they have other health problems.  Mom is even more home bound than I am, but seems to be doing just fine, thank you very much.  I was over at her house today.  I gave her peaches and she gave me apples so I can make an apple pie.  I offered to bring her to my house to hang out and she turned me down.  She's used to being alone as Dad died many years ago.  She says, "I'm my own best friend" and seems in good spirits.