Garden Dam Exploring

This is my newest garden.

I really like cordylines at the moment.  I got most of these from a grower up near Noosa for a good price a couple of months ago, they are doing really well. 

I also got a couple of Brom's as well, I think this one was $10, its big and so glossy and green.  You can just see my shell collection amongst the leaves.  Thats where  we dump all the shells that do not have a hole in them and we sit and fossick through them for something to do.

This weekend the kids explored the dam (thats the dam you can see, we drained it and are now in the long process of cleaning it up and filling again).  It has a little bit of water in it with water lilly's and reeds and grasses and a few stray fish and other insects.

That you can catch with a basket with rope tied to it!

They caught about 10 little guppies, 1 or 2 very important Dragonfly babies (nymphs) including one that was shedding its shell, and some very interesting water dwelling beetles.

Here we are with the catch.  The dragonfly nymph was taken to school, since that is exactly what they are studying at the moment in grade 2- the lifecycle of the dragonfly.  And the beetles and guppies got released back to the dam today after a day of study in this container!

UPDATE: Munchie the Monarch Caterpillar is powering along and has doubled in size!  There are 2 more tiny caterpillar's now in view as well and  no more eggs that we can see left on the branch.

Monarch Butterfly's

Lately we have been on a complete tangent. It all started at Kindy where we had some caterpillars that were brought in by another family. Well Joey and I had to get some for ourself and after a bit of research, library work and googling we found out all about the Monarch Butterfly.

We learnt that they eat milkweed as caterpillars and if you open your eyes and look around you see it is growing everywhere. We found a massive patch nearby to our house and spent many hours wandering around just looking, finding caterpillars, butterfly's everywhere- how come we've never noticed these beautiful orange and black things before right here on the road we drive down everyday?) We took some home and had our own caterpillars. They ate and ate and ate, and grew very fat. Meanwhile we noticed more tiny caterpillars appearing, the milkweed we had picked had lots of eggs on it.

Eventually the caterpillars have eaten enough and hang upside down in what is known as the "J" shape, they spin a tiny silken pad to hang from. We noted they stayed in this position for 12hours before they magically shed their skin to reveal the Chrysalis!
The "J" shape ready to pupate. In the 'wild' the Monarch Caterpillar gets off the host plant and pupates elsewhere, but here in our house they have no choice but to hang from the plant they have been eating.

This is a newly formed Chrysalis, you can see the discarded skin below (a black crumpled piece).

After a few minutes a beautiful gold line appears along with some gold dots on the green Chrysalis. It is so beautiful. The Chrysalis hangs for roughly 10 to 14 days and changes occur.

Eventually the Chrysalis turns brownish and black in patches then magically, orange sections are seen as the Chrysalis case turns clear.

Here are my two trusty observers- observing at a very close range!

Not long later, a beautiful Monarch Butterfly emerged.

It hung from the empty Chrysalis for a few hours breathing in deeply to pump up its wings, then to uncrumple and dry them and then slowly take a few practice flaps to test them out.

Finally with a few wonky flaps and flight attempts it flew away. Off to find nectar to eat and milkweed to lay more eggs on after it finds a mate. There is no shortage of milkweed around here. The plan for our yard is a small milkweed patch and lots of colourful flowers to attract the Monarch to our garden. But look a little further at our place and we find things way more exciting than this: Eastern Dwarf Tree Frog, Blue Triangle Butterfly, Orchard Swallowtail Butterfly and another frog yet to be identified.

After our fun with the Monarch's we put the remaining milkweed plants that we had picked back at the patch so that the other tiny caterpillars could live on, the life cycle would never end in our house, because the more milk weed fresh shoots we picked to feed the growing caterpillars, the more new eggs we were bringing back home!

So this discovery led on to a small fascination with butterfly's. Everywhere we went we saw them, we carried our books and were able to identify most. We even found one outside our local bakery, on the smallest Oleander plant with all stages of the Common Crow Butterfly happening (these maybe only a boring black butterfly but the Chrysalis is by far the most beautiful I've seen and we had one hatch here this am).

Further on I investigated what Butterfly's were native to Australia, since Monarch's aren't, but interestingly are listed as potentially vulnerable in our Going, Going, Gone book. And after this, came to find out about the Richmond Birdwing Butterfly which is indeed very vulnerable and is a native butterfly to our very own region with a Recovery Program to boot and the expert Ray Seddon living just kilometres away at the ready to teach us all about them! Which is a whole new story in itself, stay tuned for our adventures with the Richmond Birdwing Butterfly and planting of the vines as they are far more important than the Monarch.

Richmond Birdwing Butterfly image from saveourwaterwaysnow

Part 2 Mon Repos

Remember this post...

Well we made our return visit (back at the end of Feb, slack blogger). It was fantastic.

We saw hatchlings, got to very gently touch one and say a quick goodluck little loggerhead turtle, be safe on your journey!

Unfortunately for us the nest we saw hatch was a 'priority' nest so that meant all the hatchlings were being taken back to the research centre to be photographed, measured and weighed and then released later on. I desperately needed my kids to see these little miracles enter the ocean, so they knew what really happened. So we asked if we could wait till all the groups had been down on the beach and then go again. Lucky for us, 3 hours or so later at about 10.45pm, our family- the only standing children around were taken back to the beach and we saw hatchlings enter the water!

They ran through the kids feet, we met Ranger John (in picture above) and we learnt heaps!


Since we have been home, we have learnt alot more about the sea turtles that nest on our very own beaches here and the programs in place to help protect them. I have registered with this group to be a volunteer next breeding season!

Christmas Time 2008 Overview - this is long!

Me and my kids at Carols by Candlelight wearing our homemade goodness.
Lilly's singlet said 'nice' and Joe boy's said 'merry'.

My excited little kids on Christmas morning.

Santa had brought them exactly what they asked for- real baby chickens hatched by Mrs Claus in the North Pole for Lilly and a 'water feature' for Joe boy! Both items chirping and spurting water in the bedrooms when they woke, don't ask!!!!!!

Been a bit slack with blogging lately! Well, I've been busy. We had a great christmas followed by a little holiday to Bargara where we saw the most amazing spectacle of nature that has been occuring since the Dinosaurs. Of course I am talking about the nesting and hatching Sea Turtles that come back to their birthplace at Mon Repos to lay their eggs but not before they reach breeding age of about 30 years of age, so for every 1000 hatchlings only ONE makes it to breeding age. Loggerheads and Leatherbacks (I think) are critically endangered but thanks to the work and research that started over 30 years ago, hopefully the future will improve and we are doing our part by making a resolution for no more plastic! I was thinking, when I get some spare time, to make some more of these (I've done one), or at least form a group to make alot and do my part for our world. If anyone is interested, please let me know.

The amazing Loggerhead we saw laying her eggs, what a priviledge to witness this!
In front of the stats for the night so far with their turtle shirts I made them.
Mon Repos beach in the morning, we could see the tracks from about 5 turtles from the night before, but there was many more.
I'll have more on the turtles in another post as we are going back to see some hatchlings in a few weeks.

...Back to Christmas!
This year I made something I have been thinking about for a few Christmases but have never gotten around to doing---a Rocky Road Christmas Tree. It was delicious and so easy, yet looked a million bucks!
I also made a baked ham using a treasured secret recipe from my old friend Renee's Dad. It was delicious as well.

And when I returned from our holiday I had some very lovely mail! Elissa from Kelani had sent me some Sandi Henderson Farmer's Market Apple Dot in Spring, which she completely didn't have to and I am so touched at her generosity. So there are no pics of that, but when I make it into something or other I will blog it and send it into her inspiration gallery for all to see. If you haven't checked out Kelani Fabric Obsession for the best range of designer fabrics around with free postage then you just must! Thankyou so much Elissa, I am yet to spend my latest gift voucher from you, but I am feeling some of this is in order!

So for this year, I am hoping to continue sewing, helping in some way continue renovating our house, send Joe boy off to Kindy, start Miss Lilly in Grade 1 and keep enjoying life and my family.

The next sewing projects are a couple of UFO's, including appliqued singlets to go with some sets and them get them on Etsy or MadeIt, a glam green bag for a gift (1/2 done) and a whole lot of those fantastic Burda shorts for Joe boy for kindy and of course kindy sheet sets.