Brigitte’s autumn hideaway

Little David is a busy boy…

… and always wants to help Daddy.
They made a storage for the fire wood today.

David was hammering hard and after finishing his work he did want to help Daddy with a real adults tool…

… but sorry David, you have to grow some more years until you can handle this…

Goodness me I am really far behind blogging on our family blog!

So much happened lately and I try to catch up…

As you know we have some cute baby bunnies.

We had a sad moment went we lost three of them on a weekend. Click here for a link to Benny’s post.

I am glad Aileen’s baby bunny Anna survived.

We take her inside as much as we can to make her a lovely pet.

Not all night visitors are that bad like the one who killed our three bunnies…

… Christoph called us out one night and showed us a hedgehog wandering around in our garden

And Jonas found our first possum on a tree! It was high up on our poplar

For the first time of their young life our kids could watch a monarch caterpillar turn into a chrysalis!
We had two fat caterpillars in the garden.

To save the beauties from enemies like wasps we took them inside because one was in it’s typical position before the big change into a chrysalis.

Christoph turned on his computer camera and filmed the whole magical event which happened during the night!

Here you can see the amazing process on our first video

Today the kids watched the change of the other caterpillar which was ready in the morning.

And here the magic starts…

… after a few minutes it was nearly finished.

Aileen took the caterpillar skin…

… and had a closer look with the magnifying glass

Just amazing how this monarch caterpillar went out of his skin…

In two or three weeks we will hopefully keep the camera rolling to observer when the butterflies show off

Our poplar is so beautiful with her golden leaves!
Oftentimes we enjoy to sit outside and just watch them fall like golden snowflakes.
Of course the children enjoy the rustling of the dry leaves and even our rabbits seem to like to chase each other around in the heaps of leaves

This weekend we did harvest our few pumpkins, paprika and other veggies.
Then Aileen was helping me to peel out the kidney beans…

… of course she loved the pink ones the most (they are big and pink before they change to a dark colour while shrinking due drying)

Christoph also called me out into the garden because he saw something moving while he was mowing the lawn.
It was a praying mantis

The first time I was able to make a picture from a mantis’ belly

Unfortunately the picture where you can see her blue pretend eyes on the arms is blurry but here is another from the side.

Last Thursday Emy gave birth to some cute baby rabbits.
They are snuggled in under a big layer of Emy’s hair to keep warm.

On the second day they were still pretty pink…

… but now they are already developing a fine fluffy fur. I keep you updated on Benny’s blog

You might remember my post about the Emperor gum moth not long ago (click here if interested)

Yesterday when Christoph was outside working, something fall onto his head and when he looked around he saw it was a huge caterpillar of the Emperor gum moth

He brought her inside…

… and we gave her into the jar were we already keep 2 cocoons of the same family.

She was quite acrobatic by checking out the whole jar…

… and she even looked out of the top!

But then she found a place she liked. We gave her some Eucalyptus into the jar just to be sure she had something to munch.

Then at night she started to make silky threads!
Unfortunately it was so late and we couldn’t watch (it takes her 8 hours to complete her cocoon)

So in the morning she had finished her work and now we have three cocoons

I wonder when they will be transformed since this special caterpillars can stay in their cocoons for months to many years…

To say from the size of the cocoons we have two females and one male which is a bit smaller then the others.