Girlie Days

We have been growing....

Basil

Tomato

Sweetcorn

And some lettuce, carrots, peppers, chillis and courgette too!

Bujana has been keeping a garden journal where she draws the growing plants in detail at different intervals, recording the temperature and measuring the height of the plants that she has planted.

Chrysalis

The chrysalis are a beautiful natural shade of green with iridescent hues of silver and gold. They are very beautiful and would be perfectly camouflaged in their natural habitat.
Bujana is amazed at how they cling on so tightly with such a small strand. Every once in a while they will shake quite a bit which is quite normal as it is part of the process of metamorphosis.

Fun at the Farm

Emmy said this giant tortoise felt like an old toenail :0)










These birds were really tame, just popping themselves on peoples heads, arms, hands. They were so much fun and so pretty too.



Tilly loves the chickens and dosen't mind running after them but when they get a little confident and come running after her....... ;)



Feeding and grooming the baby kid goats...

Caterpillar progress

Here they are only a few days older. This morning one of them went to the lid and suspended himself into a cocoon shape. He hasn't moved since so I think that they will soon be at the stage where we can transfer them into their habitat!
Here a a couple of cool butterfly sites we found on our travels...
Bio Kids
Info on painted lady butterflies and more...
Butterfly Facts printable
Butterfly word search

Some new additions...

These new additions to our family are a real hit!!! They arrived a week ago tiny as anything and but have now grown into really fat little caterpillars. Most of the day they sleep in their silk nests but sometimes they get a little adventurous and have a nose around.
Their progress will be dilegently recorded on these pages :0) :0) ;0)
The only thing I won't be doing is releasing them (once they become butterflies) onto my brocolli plants!!! We'll find a nice little meadow for them instead I think.
If you are interested in raising your own painted lady butterflies just follow the link below to amazon :0)\0/
Live Butterfly Garden

A Perfect Spring Day

We started the day early.

The sky was bright and blue and it seemed to be calling us out for a walk by the river.

So after returning some library books and borrowing some new ones we headed out toward the park.

We strolled along the river bank.

The children pointing at darting trout, moor hens sitting upon their nests and the many different Spring flowers that they have learnt to identify recently.

Then we came across the most beautiful sight.

A Mother duck with what seemed like about 20 hatchings.

The baby ducks could only have been days old they were tiny!

I don't know if the mother duck had adopted a few, or was "duck sitting" or something or if indeed they were all hers, but she cared for them all really tenderly, nudging them against the shallows of the bank with her round bill.

The funny thing was that she was a white alesbury and half the ducklings with her were yellow but the other have were patterned like the bown wild ducks?

Well they were all loved by her.

Unfortunately I didn't take the camera with us.

After our walk we went to the park to play.

Then got some ice-cream, came home and had a picnic in the garden.

All in all it was a beautiful Spring day.