Invaded

Last year we purchased 2 swan plants, 1 each for the boys. Thought it might be fun to hatch a few monarch butterflies in the garden.

Unfortunately it looked like a bug had got at the plants and they didn't seem to developed into much at all. However we left them where they were and ignored them for a while.
Well both plants grew and grew and still no monarchs came anywhere near our garden.
Then this summer, whilst the swan plants are now both over 1.5m high (!) we suddenly have butterflies for Africa!

A few have successfully laid eggs and we have had a few caterpillars, unfortunately the wasps have been out in force and not many have survived to growing to full stage to be able to turn into butterflies.
Several however have for some reason took to hanging off the garage wall rather than the plant itself, so we have had full view of the chrysalis doing its thing.

2 of the butterflies appeared on the same day. 1 minute they were in chrysalis and the next we looked...all of 10 mins later, the butterfly had appeared and the chrysalis was empty.

The boys have enjoyed having something happening in the garden and we have had lots of monarchs fluttering around all summer.

However with the summer weather comes other bugs and sadly we have managed, without trying I may add, to grow a nice amount of pantry moth in funnily enough of all places ..... the pantry!! Yes we have weevils in all the rice, oats, seeds etc
I can tell you, not what I wanted to do on a weekend...empty the whole pantry, throw away all dried food that is riddled with bugs web etc and start again with dried food in the pantry.
Last night we had chicken curry for dinner, I didn't realise at the time that they had successfully invaded the rice bucket as well and when it was finally cooked I found 2 dead maggots in amongst the cooked rice. Let's just say I had chicken curry without rice last night as for some strange reason I had gone off rice last night!!

Sunflowers

I mentioned in a previous post about having to sort out the sunflowers that needed tying up so they didn't fall over in the wind and rain we have been having.
I also mentioned that I would show you a picture of the 1 or 2 that have been successful in growing...

Growing in Odd Places

We have a little bit down the side of our garage that is really useless.

The space down there is not big, it needs a new fence put up to seperate us from the driveway of the units next door.

The hedge only goes along so far before you come to nothing. There was a peach tree tucked back there but Steve had to attack it last year as it was rotten.

We would be able to walk along there if we fixed eveything up but of course the usual thing comes into play....money, plus also the fact that if we started on that side of the garage then we would have to extend the fence all the way round the back as well and probably sort out the fence down the side of the driveway so it was all done in one go not several attempts!

So you can guess that it is not getting done anytime soon!

However, we do have weeds etc growing along there and that is fine.

Apart from the weeds are now trying to find somewhere else to grow and have decided to come through the gaps at the bottom of the garage wall.

No worries about that because then you manage to get cute picture like this....

The ivy looked so cute growing up the rake handle

Vegetable Time

Along with doing the sunflowers the other day, we also put in a whole heap of vegetables.
Steve likes to grow tomatoes, he is the only one in the house who eats them raw but he enjoys growing them.



Tomato plants



We have always thought about growing some corn as well, so we put in a very small amount to see what it will do.



Althought we have noticed already in the first week that it is growing very quickly!



Last year we grew courgette for the first time and it was fun, so have put in 2 different types this time. 1 green and 1 yellow.

Yellow sunshine Corgette

Green courgette

  Although we were not quick enough at getting the snail bait out the first evening and we lost one of the courgette plants overnight! We replaced it this weekend and added heaps of bait!!
Which meant that yesterday morning when I checked we had 17 dead snails around the veggies!

 Steve has decided that this year he is going to grow eggplant and peppers. Never grown them before so we will see how they turn out.



The pepper growing strongly



The start of the eggplants



Will keep you up to date occassionally as to how our plants are growing.

Growing Your Own

We are still majorly in the throws of redoing the garden, well more the point, actually doing something with the garden. It hasn't been landscaped and we have been in the house for nearly a year. Not that we planned on landscaping in that time, we actually wanted to live here a while and get the feel of the place to see what we wanted to do with it and when.

Anyway, Steve decided we would at least attempt to grow something.

So he planted tomatoes and pumpkin.

Well it is a little late, because this actually happened a while ago, but here is the picture of the first tomato that turned red for us...

We eventually got a lot of them off the plant, we ate loads of them at the BBQ we held on Feb 14 for our family and friends. They went down real nice.

So maybe we are able to grow something, more tomatoes next year I guess!