Stink beetle delivery

According to Tom this is commonly referred to as a stink bug. I watched this one from when it laid it's first egg to it's last, 10 in total, and then flew off to do whatever Lady Stink Beetles do after delivery. It laid them down very neatly in two rows of five and didn't make a fuss about it. The legs were used to help direct them into place. The eggs are like tiny aqua coloured pearls glistening in the sunshine and it was interesting to see the structure of them in the macro photo as to the naked eye they just looked like little round eggs with no difference in the surface.

Peter and Max called in for awhile after their boggy boarding at the beach and Max was happy to stay with Nana and Uncle Tom while Pete went to the hardware store. Great that Claire actually took the opportunity to have a nice 2 hour sleep.

Decided to go out for lunch but first I took Max to the toyshop to buy a couple of jungle animals .... he has moved away from anything with wheels to things with legs at the moment and has long periods of imaginative play with them. So a couple of elephants later we were off to lunch. I did wonder if Claire and Peter were going to curse me because the noise that elephants make when playing (Max's imitation) is a fairly high pitched, grating, screech which out of the street is ok, but confined within the walls of a room might be rather disturbing.

Yummy lunch with Peter, Claire, Tom and Max at 3 Oceans winery and restaurant, Cowaramup. We were the only table there at 2pm...similar to when we visited them a couple of weeks back for breakfast. I hope that they are doing ok because they really are preparing very good meals at a reasonable price (reasonable for Western Australian standards which are generally the highest prices in Australia). Grilled barramundi for me with delicious buttery mash and a salad, all seasoned and dressed to my taste.

Hot one here today and water pressure is down to almost a dribble and so it is going to take hours to water this garden tonight.