Bits and Bobs

We have Matt and Liz from Frolics from Scratch staying just now and they're lovely! Have a look at Liz's blog and it'll tell you about their travels around New Zealand.
 We all went out fishing last night and as is usual for us we caught nada! We did have lots of bites though and caught several too small snapper that had to go back. Big thanks to Lloyd for fixing up all the rods and feeding us the most lovely egg and bacon rolls!

Matt has been brushing Sheba's winter coat out and she's looking amazing and so much cooler. Think we need to put a wee bit of sunblock on her nose, though.

 It's still incredibly hot here, we've had around a week of temperatures in the 30's and like I mentioned before, this is hot for us, and the humidity is a bit of a killer - it's up at 90% most days. However it's incredibly good for the veggies! The tomatoes are a glorious sight ( with apologies to everyone who still has green tomatoes!)

The bean pyramid is now absolutely laden - so beans for tea tonight, I think.

And the broad beans have grown about 6 inches since I last took a photo of them!

Now finally, Fred. I have no clue if he's ok or not - any experts out there?

He's been like this for days now. I put him outside on the deck to see if more light was required. I've done thousands of internet searches - some say that their chrysalis went black but did hatch and others say theirs died.  The chrysalis is still hard but it's not going clear. So what do people reckon?

 I did buy a couple more swan plants, though as my huge ones are back to being covered in  mini Freds. These ones I'm going to put in very large pots and keep them on the deck. If the big plants get too eaten I'll transfer some Freds to these and perhaps cover them so that no more eggs can be laid. We have so many monarch butterflies in the garden this year, it's beautiful.