Africanaussie

Once again the ulysses butterfly visits my garden - I hope she lays some eggs and we will have some baby ulysses on the way. Once again my hubby is the one who took these awesome photos.  He has infinite patience - I suppose he has to - he puts up with me. The same silly cyclone that bothered us last week has turned around and is heading back our way again!  I had a lovely dinner planned with friends, I am just hoping it is all a scam and the dinner will go ahead. 

As we were clearing up debris after the cyclone, my hubby called me over to see a Ulysses butterfly.  Now as you know they normally flutter about so quickly that it is very hard to capture good photos of them.  This one was showing some distress, flopping about, and other butterflies would flutter down to check on it.  I took the rare opportunity to capture some awesome photos. I am so blessed to live here where these colorful butterflies flit around my garden regularly. Recently my dear Mom passed away and I have noticed little things that give me comfort.  Butterflies live short lives and it is sad to see one die, but that is the nature of the world.  I don't know if the cyclone cut its life short, or if it had just reached its allotted time. We need to catch our beauty where we can, and stop and live in the moment, and tell our loved ones we love them. This quote from Ecclesiastes 3:1 sums it up for me.         ...

Wow! today there was a bit of sunshine.  I felt a change in my spirit as I drove to work (camera-less) chasing a beautiful colourful rainbow that always seemed illusively just ahead of me.  Could all this dreary rainy weather be coming to an end?  Gosh I hope so! Then my hubby sent me some photos of the butterfly activity going on in my garden.  Ulysses butterflies are SO hard to photograph as they tend to close their  wings when they feed.  Maybe these were drunk on sunshine after all the rain.  Spreading open their wings to catch every last drop of it!  Here there is just a glimpse of the iridescent blue.  There was a whole colony of them in these bushes alongside the pool. Greedily sucking up the nectar.  Showing off their lovely colours.  Look at the dangly ends to the wings - so beautiful :) Gosh I sure hope they have found my Uodia tree t...

Over the weekend the veggie garden was just alive with buzzing, swooping and darting.  Do those butterflies know that the mosaic butterfly/birdbath is busy curing, waiting to be filled with sparkling water?  I hope they like it.  I feel as though I have a present waiting - wrapped and ready to be opened and admired, and used.  I wonder if this little sweetie thought we couldn't see her - what  a match! The sun was bright, but it didn't keep them away - zinnias and the basil are also flowering, but cosmos seems to be the big draw card.  Even ONE  in Malaysia has commented on that in her garden.  I was doing the backbreaking work of re-doing the edges of the vegetable beds with stone (more user friendly in the tropics than wood )  Every time I would stretch to relieve my aching back my hubby would say - stay still, don't move..... so I feel I had something to do with these lovely pho...

I just love cosmos, and a couple of years ago I had the pink cosmos.  This year I sowed a packet of orange cosmos and it certainly is a great butterfly attractant.   I like cosmos in the vegetable garden as it grows so high and feathery, and even though it is a huge plant with lots of flowers, it really isn't taking up much space as the vegetables can grow around the base and still get lots of sunlight. You can see my very healthy zucchini in the background here. I love the dangly bits on this Ulysses -  they are the lower part of its wings, which give its species the name swallowtail..  This is another type of butterfly we often see in the garden, called the Common Eggfly.  I have yet to find out where they lay their eggs.  This is a male and they are evidently very territorial and will chase away other males.  They look the same on the underside, but  the female has these same bl...

I have these cosmos that have taken over in the vegetable garden - they are bright and cheery and  oh my! - they attract my favorite butterflies - I missed this display - it happened while I was at work so once again the praise goes to my hubby's photographing efforts. ( I told him he needs his own blog!)  all the talk about how they only like red flowers....  this one seems very happy with orange. Look at the proboscis sucking out the nectar - normally it is rolled up in a tight little coil.  Can you find the cross where this ones legs intersect?  I wonder who sent us this beauty? Look at the torn wing - I think they lead a hard life.  I think blue and orange go so well together. Don't you?  they flit around so fast that you only get a glimpse of that iridescent blue.  - welcome to my garden  you pretty little things.  I wonder if one of these (there were two) is the same one that hatched out of its c...

Yesterday I noticed that the Ulysses chrysalis was turning brown, and I thought either the butterfly was going to emerge or that it had died. It was dark when I got up this morning, grabbed the flashlight and peered into the bush to see ......... the butterfly hanging there alongside the chrysalis!  It was way too dark to take photos and I stayed as long as I could before I had to leave for work.  Gosh I wanted to stay there so badly. My hubby had strict instructions to take lots of photos and this is what he took..... Isn't he a great photographer?   Just look at the detail. The inside of the wings is a brilliant iridescent blue, but as soon as it opened its wings a gust of wind came and it fell to the ground.  Then it took off and flew away - high up into the tree.  I hope it is all right - it needs someplace out of the wind to build up its strength. So my thoughts of you actually getting to see the irides...

Coming to the end of a five day weekend  (yes I do love the fact we get so many holidays in Australia) we had a brunch out in the garden this morning and I realised just how special it is to live here in the tropics. This is my favourite time of the year when the humidity and temperature drop.  We have had a lot of wind and two days ago I mulched up every single leaf and now the back garden is full of fallen leaves again.  There is nothing I would rather be doing though than messing about in the garden.  There are deep depressions in the vegetable garden where I cleared away the sugar cane mulch and planted out my little parsley seedlings.  I suspect that horrible can toads have gone and sat on the seedlings, wiggling their ugly bums into the earth and squashing the seedlings flat.  I am going to have to find a way to get rid of them. the cane toads, not the seedlings! My Ulysses caterpillar curled himself up against the branch and has now...

By now you probably think I am a caterpillar fanatic and I must admit I do seem to be turning into one. About two years ago at the local markets I bought this little straggly tree/bush and the lady said that it would host Ulysses butterflies.  I have moved it around a few times and it is still a very straggly tree/ bush... but....... we were sitting on the swing enjoying a avocado sandwich when I suddenly looked at a spot on the straggly tree/bush.  Wow!  that is exactly what a Ulysses butterfly caterpillar looks like - big smile - I rushed to get the camera.  This one seems to be gathering the leaves together and there is some sort of web on the leaves. Oh now this plant is paying its way!

Everytime it stops raining and the sun comes out, so do the butterflies!  The bright sunlight is a bit rare these days so the colour is a bit off, but I wanted you to see the little dangly bits hanging from the lower wings.  arent they cute?  Butterflies love the geisha girl flowers, and this time there was a ulysses butterfly that I thought I might be able to capture on film.  It is very hard to get them to sit still long enough to catch them, and maybe the essence is the flitting bits of irridescent blue that you catch darting from flower to flower.  I think you have to be there to see it, but I will continue to dash out with a camera everytime there are butterflies in the garden.....  Here I caught one just closing the top section of his wings. I also got lots of shots of flowers - where the butterfly had just been :)

My hubby took this photo while I was at work.  They are normally so flighty and  difficult to capture on film.  Doesnt the iridescent blue of the wings look wonderful against the purple geisha girl flowers? This is what I think is lurking inside the chrysalis on my front verandah. I hope it emerges over the weekend when I can take some photos.  One of my neighbours chrysalis has hatched, and she didnt see it emerge, so everyone is carefully watching with bated breath so we dont miss the next one. 

A chrysalis has formed - it looks just like a leaf that has folded over, and the caterpillar must  fold a leaf over itself to form the top of the chrysalis.  I would never have found it if I wasn't looking.... From the underside it doesn't look as though there is anything inside the leaf. It looks like a jellylike substance - and I have heard that during the metamorphosis, that that is what the chrysalis contains.  Just a jelly, and from that emerges a beautiful butterfly!  amazing! Just after my divorce I read a great book that compared troubled times to that time in the chrysalis, where you are just a blob of jelly, but time heals, and  Gods hands re-create, and you will eventually emerge better and stronger  just as a butterfly will emerge from its chrysalis!  What a wonderful thought that was to hold onto.  We don't have to do anything, just wait, and see what beauty will emerge.   and the plain brow...

Coming home from work yesterday I noticed that something had been nibbling on my new lime tree!  Well, this is not good, as it is just a very small lime - but what to do!  Very interesting looking catterpillars, and there were two of them.  I picked  a few branches of my neighbours kaffir lime tree and put them into a vase.  Then carefully transferred the catterpillars to their new home. Another one was moved...  You can clearly see the shape of the kaffir lime - like two leaves stuck together. They seem to like their new home and settled right in for a meal, funnily enough there were some of the same catterpillar on my neighbours tree, so at least I know that this is  also a plant they would have chosen.  She thinks it is a ulysses butterfly - how lovely!  Funnily enough I have another plant in the back that was specially chosen as a ulysses catterpillar host,  but figured these might have a preference for the c...