Saturday, May 18, 2013

A last hurrah for summer

One beautiful Sunday afternoon we decided to go down to the beach and check out the rock pools. It was awesome.

Some Neptune's Necklace

Sea anemone

View of the fishing boats with Marine Education Centre at left

sea kelp, with TLM for size reference

sea slugs

And then there was one...

In memory of Munchy the caterpillar
About two months ago, monarch caterpillars finally started to appear on TLM's swan plant (which she's had since Christmas).

First one, then another, and so on until there were five caterpillars of varying size, chomping their way through the swan plant leaves. We were so excited to be part of the monarch butterfly life cycle!

TLM named them Munchy, Crunchy, Punchy, Lunchy and Yawny. They munched and crunched (as you'd expect) until there were very few intact leaves left.

And then they started disappearing. Punchy was the first to go, and then Lunchy, until....there was only one left on the plant. The birds must have been picking them off once they got big enough to be noticed.

Then we found one dangling from the top of our wooden fence. Hooray, we thought. It's about to become a chrysalis!

But he didn't turn into one. He uncurled, and then just hung there until we realised that the life had gone out of the poor creature. We were down to just one caterpillar after all.

Every day we go and check on Yawny, hoping he gets to complete his life cycle and become a chrysalis and then a butterfly. Hoping that he doesn't become a bird's dinner.



Knitting round-up

A peaked cap for me...

...using two buttons I bought at the Underground Market

A slightly chunky-fying funnel neck top...

with an abstract design on the back which I made up as I went

A beanie for my mum, for Mother's Day

And a wool/mohair/angora tunic for TLM, who wins as this post's cutest model.