Madam Butterfly

The season has started!

I have five or six first-instar monarch caterpillars.

Aren’t they hairy little beasts!

I also collected about 40-50 monarch eggs off swan plants in my garden. There are aphids already too… now what did I do last year about them? Snails are eating the new growth on the swan plants, so that’s another challenge to address.

Over at the Blockhouse Bay Recreational Reserve Butterfly Habitat it’s much the same, although I haven’t been looking for eggs. I put used coffee grinds around the swan plants as the new growth was getting eaten by snails/slugs. Those plants will have to look after themselves!

It’s 20 August 2016 and it’s been a strange winter. the weather gurus say it’s been the warmest yet. July and August it just rained and rained (or so it seemed). I was up north and it was impossible to stay un-muddy. If that’s a word.

I’m writing this briefly – have pots of things to do (a magazine to get out, a calendar to finish… and then whatever comes next). However, I’ve just been around my garden and found eggs on swan plants so thought I should document when I get the first eggs of the new season – so here it is.

Some of the swan plants are looking very sorry for themselves so I’ve pruned a few of them where the snails (and slugs) are eating them. And put down slug bait.

I collected five or six eggs and realise that there is another just about to hatch. I’ve taken photos of it with a macro lens – hope it’s worth keeping (the photo).

There is at least one small black caterpillar on a cineraria at the door to the deck. I presume it’s a magpie moth.

I also weeded the stinging nettle today. There were old dried stems that needed trimming back, and the plants are all beginning to sprout again. So it got some sheep manure and water and that should get that part of the garden going. There are yellow admiral pupae on the wall of the house although quite a few of them have flown.

Spring is about to come!