I managed to video a chrysalis transformation!

Amazing eh?

Not  totally farmy but if you check out 

at Verde Farm there will be lots more to read!

Monarch update

There are simply hundreds of caterpillars on the outside plants now, in fact so many that the plants are getting really eaten and I keep catching a few at a time and taking them to the prison, where there are still a lot of leaves. 

So far, in the prison, I've had 4 butterflies hatch and there are several more chrysalis hanging around.

Three of the butterflies were perfect and after a day of puffing out wings and drying off I let them go in the garden and it's just lovely!

However, one of them was very deformed. The chrysalis wasn't smooth like all the others, it was rough and sort of bulgy ( is that a word??) Now I've learned that this means it's more than likely the butterfly will be deformed if it even lives. I didn't know that before.

When it emerged it had holes in all of it's wings and seemed to have problems holding onto things. I fed it for 2 days with sugar water - it wasn't that interested, then it died. I was really sad but that's nature, I suppose.

I still haven't seen one emerging from it's chrysalis, so I hope I do before the end of the butterfly season. If I do I'll take photos, but if not this will be the last 'Fred' update!

It's been an amazing experience watching them, something I've never done before and will do again next year.

Thanks for all the comments and well wishes for the Freds, it's been lovely!

just before she flew off! Sometimes a butterfly will come right up to us in the garden and I like to think it's one of the ones that I let free, just popping back to say "Hi"

Success! A hatching!

He's resting now. I didn't see him hatch out which is a bit disappointing, he must have done it sometime between 10am and 2pm because I was down in the Big Smoke. When I came home he was there and his wings were all pumped out. It's a shockingly miserable day today, really rainy so I've left the mesh over the door of the prison, but I have made up a sugar solution for him. I read that if you put some on your finger they'll lick it off! I'll try this when he's a wee bit more awake!

He crawled around on my hand!

 I'm happy! Success ☺

He's Changing!

The first chrysalis is on the change! It's going much darker, I've even noticed a change since this morning and you can clearly see the wings though the shell. I reckon not too long now - maybe tomorrow? I really feel like a butterfly is going to hatch and we'll have success at last! Happy? You bet!

I've got another chrysalis now, outside on the balustrade round the deck - I'm going to shift it to the prison tomorrow once I'm sure it's hard, and a caterpillar in a J inside the prison! So once it turns I'll have 6.

A little Miracle

The day before yesterday, in the evening, one of the Freds went into his J shape, which means they're going to start forming their chrysalis. All the others that have done this did it in the evening as well and I've missed the transformation because it's happened at night and also it's really fast once it gets going!

I assumed the same thing would happen with this one, but when I got up he was still in his J. All day he stayed the same. It was taking so long I thought something was wrong. However last night, with perfect timing just as we were about to go out, he started wriggling around. I stayed to watch and it happened right in front of me!! His skin split, he shook around and within 5 minutes he was a chrysalis. I didn't want to leave and get my camera, but I did. As it was dark and I don't know how to use a flash properly, these are not the best photos by any means, but I was so excited!

 When I went to get the camera the skin was only as far as the large green bit, by the time I got back it had gone up this far!

Once the skin was off he twirled round and round and sort of inserted himself into the little web like bit you can see at the top. It was amazing how much he wriggled around.

And finally here he is this morning  - completely transformed

A wee miracle.

Fred - the next installment.

I have three chrysalis - whoo hoo! Very happy about it. They all look brilliant and healthy. So here's hoping they make it this time. I've also been rescuing the odd caterpillar from the outside swan plants - I just do one at a time so that these small plants don't run out of food and this has been working well.

Good luck Freds!

this was the one that formed first

Second

Third - he decided the roof of the greenhouse was a suitable place.

and this is the rescued caterpillar.

I'm rather excited!

Have a peek over at Verde Farm!

Success!

Ok, I know it's only one, but I have a chrysalis! Yesterday one of the Freds went into the J shape which means they're about to form a chrysalis. I watched him all day and all that happened was that his antenna shriveled up. But by this morning he was in a chrysalis. I so hope this one hatches.

One of the large caterpillars managed to get out of the prison and has gone somewhere, who knows where. I still have 2 other huge ones so I hope they stay to make their chrysalis here as well, but hey ho! I have one.

Yippee.

Success... so far.

We're off to Auckland this weekend to see Roxy Music.

A bit of Fred success!

I got some of the net/mesh I use for felting and I put it right under the pot then lifted it up so it goes round the base of the greenhouse thingy then I taped it on. I think I have an escape/insect/wasp proof prison now.

The huge one managed to creep off and make a chrysalis somewhere before I  made the prison and I can't find him. However I still have three simply gigantic ones and I rescued one teeny one from the outside swan plants, so there are 4 in Monarch Prison.

I've been watching them on and off all day and it's fascinating. You will never guess what I got a photo of one doing...

No, that is not his face, and Yes, he is doing a poo! 

munch, munch, munch!

I also took a wee video - steady cam it's not, but it gives an idea of how they eat and move around. You can see the tiny one on the left side on the same leaf as one of the big ones, it shows how much they grow.

The New Freds

The old Fred is still in his chrysalis, and is obviously not going to hatch, so that was sad after all the nurturing. The Fred caterpillars on the big swan plants are getting eaten by the wasps who are feeding their young. So I decided I needed to intervene if I was to see some butterflies hatch anytime soon. ( I should say that our garden is still absolutely full of Monarch butterflies so they are obviously faring better elsewhere.)

My intervention was to go to the garden centre and buy three of the biggest swan plants I could find, put them in a huge pot, let some butterflies lay their eggs then put them under cover to protect them as best I could.

This cunning plan is working to a certain extent. I'm using my seedling greenhouse as the cover and it's actually a little too narrow for the pot so it's not quite touching the ground. I started off with 10 caterpillars that hatched. I now seem to have only 6, but those 6 are big and strong looking  ~ in fact one of them is pretty much the size of my pinky finger so I have high hopes for him.

But it just seems every morning when I get up to check on them I have one less caterpillar so something must be getting in.

This is my Monarch Nursery!

And a few of the Freds

 This is the huge one

As they get bigger they can certainly strip a branch. The huge one has completely eaten the top 10 leaves off one of the branches since last night!

I think I'll have enough food here for them, but if not I can take branches off the outside ones as they are still huge.

I also wanted to say thank you to everyone who commented yesterday. I think the whole of New Zealand is just very sad right now and it means a lot to know people are thinking of everyone down  in Christchurch.

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.

Ducks resting

It's much cooler today and in fact it rained yesterday which was lovely, actually.

The ducks are making the most of the cooler weather and have ventured out of the river and are lazing around under the palm tree.

Got to love those ducks!

Still no sign of Fred doing anything. I did, however, spot a monarch butterfly laying eggs on my new small swan plants on the deck - yippee!

Must plant them (carefully) in a large planter later this afternoon. 

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.

out and about

Still very hot for Northland. Our sort of usual summer temperatures are around the 23-27 degrees C mark but this summer has been much hotter, up around 30C for days, add to this intense humidity and it feels incredibly hot. A bit too hot for gardening, but with the heavy rain of Cyclone Wilma everything is growing so fast that I have to get out there and weed otherwise I'll have a garden full of triffids! 

I am so pleased with the tomatoes this year. I reckon that weight for weight we'll have around the same as last year, only this year because of the size of them and the types I've grown it's taking about quarter of the time to pick them.

And you can't have tomatoes without basil. I grew all our basil from seed this year and they were slow to start, but wow they are gigantic plants now with lovely huge leaves and a gorgeous taste. Will definitely do this again next year.

The broad beans have grown really quickly - in their neat regimented rows! These do well over late summer into autumn, I actually grew them over winter last year and got a great crop. We love broad beans!

My one and only cucumber! Not a success at all. I've tried for the last 4 years to grow cucumbers, different varieties and everything and each year they've been absolutely rubbish. This was their last chance. Next year I'll give them a miss.

Now for a different area of the garden ~ The Freds. There are new ones! Finally. These are teeny tiny and if you look at the left bottom corner of the photo you can see an egg. I know why there haven't been many appearing, even though I've watched the butterflies lay eggs  - the paper wasps are using them to feed their young, supposedly once the feeding time is over they'll stop and the caterpillars should thrive. 

I'm still concerned for Fred the Original, though. The chrysalis is nice and solid but is  really dark and he hasn't hatched yet. I'm still thinking it's diseased and won't hatch, but the red wings are visible through it so I'm keeping fingers and toes crossed.

Oh and the ducks are so amusing right now! We have a lot of windfall apples and plums after the storm last weekend and they love them! It smells rather alcoholy in the orchard so it wouldn't surprise me if they were a wee bit drunk! Plums are their favourite, they chase eachother around if one of them has a nice bit of plum! It's hysterical as they eat the whole thing, seed and all then spit the seed out! There are plum seeds all over the place just now.

...and finally!

Baby chicks.

They were having their first ever dust bath today - well first one I've noticed them having and they were absolutely filthy! This is the wee boy one who is now gigantic! Shame they're not all this big because I would let them out into the big run if they were, but the others are still awfully little. You can really tell he's a light sussex now - see the black feathers coming in round his neck. I think/hope the other LS is a girl.

This is one of the wee araucanas. Totally looking like a dinosaur. Supposedly they're very difficult to tell what sex they are so I really haven't got much of a clue. But I think one of them might be a boy as well, not sure about the rest of them.

 Looking rather ostrich like here, I reckon.

I'm linking up with Amy at Farm Friend Friday at Verde farm. Go and check out the other's.