Our Garden After the Weekend.

The black chrysalis has not hatched yet. It seems to be taking its time and we are wondering if it might have died. We will wait and see what happens.

The two chrysalises on the tape holding the olive tree to its stake are still going well.

What happens to a swan plant when all the caterpillars have gone - even though it was eaten down to a leafless stalk?

The apples are looking almost ready to eat. The gladioli bulbs have died back and the weeds are growing - but too many chrysalises could be lost if we start pruning and weeding the garden at the moment.

The two chrysalises under the thick leaves of the succulent plant seem to be doing OK still. One may have a bot of a dent or scar on it. Time will tell. The other has an unusual way of attaching itself to the leaf. Instead of attaching its cremaster to a silk button, it has almost made a silk web for itself.

We still have aphids - although there was no sign of ants this afternoon .

If you look very, very closely, you might see one ant - and some little white things. I'm not sure what they are yet. This will need further investigation.

Some of the last of our transplanted caterpillars on our newly planted swan plant. It's taking them a while to eat and they don't seem nearly as enthusiastic as our first lot of caterpillars. This may be diseased as some of the caterpillars on this plant fell off and died - or oozed green fluid, and then died.

Look at this kind of caterpillar that has arrived on one of our flowering plants! Is it a 'goody' or a 'baddy' for our garden?

One of the last of our caterpillars. Can you tell which end is which?

One of our three new swan plants has been completely stripped by the transplanted caterpillars - even though they seemed a bit slow last week. This is where the twitching caterpillars were. There's no sign of any caterpillars or chrysalises.

No caterpillars appear to have found the third of our new swan plants. It's still uninhabited - and it's less than three metres form the other plants.

This is one 'ward' of our chrysalis hospital.


Here are two more 'wards' of our chrysalis hospital. Note the curved chrysalis on the left .

Last week, instead of buddy reading with Tui1 we did buddy writing with Tui1.

One day there were two brothers named Jet and Winter . Jet had just turned into a chrysalis and Winter was not far away from turning into a chrysalis.

Winter was watching Jet transform into a chrysalis. When he finally transformed, Winter had a strange look on his face. Along came his friend, Poppa Smurf.

Poppa Smurf said, "Why are you so down, Winter?"

Winter said, "Because of the shape of Jet's chrysalis. Poppa Smurf said that Jet may have a disease." Winter then said, "I am going to call Nurse Shayla!"

In that time, Jet fell to the ground. When nurse Shayla arrived, she said that there is not much we can do besides taking him back to the hospital. There we can tie him to a piece of thread and peg him to a container with a soft tissue in the base, and wait and see what happens.

By Shayla and Daniel Tui1