The Incubator

All summer my glorious swan plant has yielded only 3 monarch butterflies :(

Plenty of butterflies have visited, mated, laid eggs by the dozen. Heaps of babies have hatched and begun to grow, as the partially eaten leaves show, (can you spot the baby here?) but none grow to full size... I believe the blame lies with wasps.

Last week the wind blew two heavy branches off the 'mother plant'. I painstakingly transferred all the babies to this fledgling plant in the other garden.

And most of them have survived and flourished on the little incubator plant!

Today I counted eleven little dudes hanging; in there, and I suspect there are a few more lurking.

The odds might be stacked against them though - the food supply is dwindling and there's a 'weather bomb' on the way...

But I am hoping if I keep visiting them, and watching over them, some will make it! Grow caterpillars, grow!