A very accommodating butterfly!

I don't know what's going on with the Freds. All the small ones are disappearing off the large swan plants. I rescued 3 and put them onto my new tiny swan plants which I put in a huge pot on the deck and put them under cover to protect them from the wasps. Two of the eggs that were laid on them have hatched, but the caterpillars look very sluggish and not well. Would the garden centre have sprayed the plants? I wish I'd asked.

I'm becoming a bit demoralised with them :( All this nurturing and I don't seem to have one butterfly to hatch. The garden is full of Monarchs though so some must be hatching somewhere!

And they're still laying like crazy. This one hung around for ages, so I really should have got some better photographs.

 These are the flowers of the swan plant.

On a totally different topic, we have the lovely Matt and Elliott here ( who made our new deck)  doing some work in the 'laundry' ( which is, in reality, the corridor that leads to the bathroom!)  They're taking out the old laundry sink we never use and putting in shelves next to the washing machine. Then adding a workbench above the machine and the new shelves. I've already made a curtain that will go in front of everything to hide it all! I'm hoping it will look a lot prettier than it does now.

We went to a saw mill nearby and bought a huge slab of wood, which quite literally looked like a tree trunk ~ bark and all, which we then took to a cabinet maker up the road who has this huge sanding machine and he planed and sanded it. Now it just needs cutting to size and waxed, it'll then be the worktop. I'm pretty excited to see it all. Before and after pics will follow.