Wild weather. Resilient butterflies.

January 2026

It has been - and still is - a horrible week for weather. Or simply a horrible week. It feels like the aftermath of Gabrielle, with Aotearoa New Zealand punched in the gut once again with weather-related deaths. It feels flippant to write about plants and butterflies, but some people associate butterflies with the moving on of souls. In at least one culture butterflies lift the spirits literally as well as figuratively. Watching the resilience of the monarchs in my garden, who clearly haven't read that they don't fly in bad weather, has been uplifting. Nature, the villian of this piece, is also the thing that might help us heal.

Whilst the adult monarchs have been undeterred by the bad weather, the caterpillars are not so robust it seems. The good news is that I am having visits from female monarchs now, although the flower garden is awash with butterfly testosterone and the territorial and forward behaviour of the resident males, meaning the girls don't hang around for long. When I collect small numbers of monarch eggs, I take the whole leaf off the swan plant and place it into a takeaway container with damp kitchen towel at the bottom. The caterpillars emerge and I keep them in the containers for the first two or three instars - the early stages of growth when they shed their skin. You have to clean regularly to clear the frass - that's the polite word for caterpillar poo - but in those containers it's quick and easy. Then I put them outside into a caterpillar cage / castle with a potted swan plant. You have to keep different stage monarch caterpillars separated otherwise the larger ones will kill the smaller ones, inadvertently or not.

Lids covered so I don't advertise my local curry restaurants

There were three caterpillars that were getting big and needed to be outside, but the weather this week has prevented me from setting up a castle until last night. Every time I step outside it starts raining. A few minutes later it stops or it continues for hours. There is no inbetween. Anyway, the caterpillars went from the warmest room in the house out into 15 degrees Celsius that had come from the tropical low pulling up cold air from the southern ocean. It is mid-summer and this is a winter daytime temperature for Auckland. A shock to us humans and definitely a shock to the monarch caterpillars. They have not moved at all, not even to shelter under leaves from the heavy rain. Let's hope the glimpses of sunshine we are having between downpours will warm them enough to trigger activity again. The early red admiral caterpillars may have got a bacterial infection from themselves or their feeding nettles remaining wet, so I have my fingers crossed for the monarchs.

The red admirals have been doing a lot better since those early few that failed. I've had more caterpillars that have washed off the nettles in the rain, but I moved things around to aid ventilation and give the early chrysalis some sun, and it seems to have helped their health. Writing this actually prompted me to move another one of the castles with only chrysalis in to a sunny spot to hopefully dry everything out and deter infections. I went to check out another castle, but got rained on again and I've scurried back to the keyboard. In fact, every time I go out it starts raining. I'm starting to think I'm cursed. I can't wait until I have a covered area for the castles that protect them from wind and rain, but it is down Hubby's long to-do list. All the potted nettles have been eaten down to nothing and I have a lot of chrysalis. A couple of reds eclosed this week, despite the bad weather, but the majority are in the chrysalis stage. Some chrysalis got knocked down, but still look viable. I haven't had a chance to rig something so they are hanging again (rained off every time) so I hope they make it.

One of this week's red admiral butterflies

I should emphasise that the numbers of red admirals I am raising is nothing compared to some of the enthusiasts who are contributing to the Moths and Butterflies of New Zealand's Red Admiral Project. In total, I've released 22 to date. Some people have released hundreds. Still, every single one counts. I blogged about my lack of red admiral success last season here. What is lovely is reading about people planting nettles for the red admirals and finding that yellow admirals are coming into their gardens for the first time. I have not had any admirals in the flower garden, as far as I am aware, but I am happy to let them get on with things elsewhere and have the monarchs and blues make the garden home instead. My elderly parents walked up the garden on a sunny day before the bad weather came and watched four monarchs flit over the flowers for over an hour. That is special. It's a big reason why I made the garden.

I've been pleased to find that bar a few flattened annuals, the garden is holding up to the weather. I have been worried about the ground saturation and the high winds, so crossed fingers everything stays put on our hillside property. The rain has also meant less wasp activity, which gives the butterflies and moths more of a chance, but we've probably got another six weeks of wasp predation in Auckland, so we are not out of the waspy woods yet.

"Raindrops on roses..."

The only upside to this rain is that last weekend I replanted the raised bed around our car deck. The planting is a tropical theme, because I don't want more plants that need a lot of attention, but as always, a few butterfly plants have found their way in as well. There are swan plants and tropical milkweeds and the two yellow globe buddleia that I mentioned in the last post in between the banana, canna and day lilies and hibiscus. Those latter plants have been sitting in the plant cage for at least six months, if not longer, so it is great to get them in the ground. The plant cage is finally being used for what it was built for - keeping butterflies from laying eggs on plants too small to sustain the caterpillars. We (by which I mean Hubby) also moved several pink escallonia out of that raised bed and they were re-planted where they had a lot more room to spread. The butterflies have loved the pink escallonia this year and they have earned the right to stay in the garden. This rain has meant minimal transplant shock to them and nothing has yet died. However, some local cat thinks we've created the best new litter tray possible and the carefully levelled soil is being dug up for its facilities. This time I can't even blame the blackbirds.

As I finish this, it is sunny again outside and a female monarch is laying eggs on a mature swan plant. If I step outside to save the eggs, is it going to start raining again...?